Comcast to Leave Dallas & Fort Worth
28 04 2005
Oh no! Not again – that’s right; we are doing it all over again.
As you know we first have cable TV in 1995 when we purchased our house in Garland. The cable company called themselves TCI which also known as Tele-communication Inc. Not too long, they announced that they found a way to make cable to offer high speed internet and it’s already available in my area.
Of course, we are thrilled to have high speed internet at this time. It was like $49.99 a month – it was very expensive back then when not many people have one.
It wasn’t easy to setup cable on desktop because we are using Windows 98 at this time. We have to manually setup gateway, IP number, account, password, etc. Things get a lot easier since Windows XP make it very easy and automatically pick up by cable modem.
In 1999 during dot com boom, TCI was acquired by @HOME Company. Of course, it gets better and improves many things. Unfortunately, @HOME got acquired by ATTBI in couple of years later.
In 2002, Comcast acquired ATTBI broadband division which affect whole DFW community especially their email address. Lucky, I don’t use ISP email address as my primary – always used different one.
Recently, Comcast announced that they are leaving DFW for good. It will change within 6-12 months. We will have new high speed internet Cable Company called Time Warner Cable. Time Warner have been offering cable service everywhere in Texas except DFW area.
Time Warner Cable and Comcast officials said Wednesday that the changeover would be largely invisible to customers and probably won’t be completed for nine to 12 months.
“Comcast will work to make this transition a smooth one for our employees, customers and community partners,” said Sanford Ames, Comcast’s area vice president for the Dallas market.
Image that we people in DFW had to suffer so many changes over years. Probably more than 50% of Comcast subscribers have to change email address again. Not good. Nothing we can do but this new company should last long time. We will see.
I was told that Time Warner Cable is pretty good too. We will see.
By the way, as you know that we already have cable service debate in Supreme Court last month and they will announce final decision if cable service should halt monopoly scheme. So, we probably will see more changes ahead of us in few months.
To view Comast’s announcement – Click here.
Grant W. Laird, Jr.
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com
I believe TW Cable offer Road Runner Residental Broadband which is pretty superior since I was early adopter of RR back in 97/98 when it rolled out in Rochester. I only had used it till Feb 99 before I moved out of Rochester. I sure missed it. Of course the cable modem was kinda big.. but I am sure that has changed now since you can buy our own cable modem and subscribe to any Broadband provider.
Here in Tucson, we have both Comcast and Cox… both are competing here.. :shrug: I have Cox w/ 4mb/512kb setup and Comcast has 4mb/??kb (what was yours?)
I know Cox has faster setup 5mb/ 764kb (?) for extra $.
and I am sure TWC (or RR) might have several offering to choose from.
Time warner has roadrunner premium which is a program designed to have cable internet run at 8 Mbits instead of the usual 4 Mbits we get around here. I am moving to austin on May 19th and am seriously considering roadrunner premium since they will throw in 2 wireless connections for 2 computers as a part of their installation fee, down size is..it’ll be 85 bucks a month. (for normal 4 mbit speeds, it will be 45 a month) Roadrunner is the premium cable provider and tries to push the benchmark for speed. Lee
Guys,
Moving to Time Warner sound positive according to your words – I am not worrying too much about it right now. I am more worried about in general especially in deaf community who had to deal with high-speed broadband provider change frequently.
Since I maintains Deaf Network of Texas mailing list, I can see big pain in the ass when everyone will jump and asked me to change their email address. Even we have website that allows subscriber to change email address themselves, most people don’t do that.
My current mbps speed is 6mb down & 768 up with Comcast Gold package – it cost us $10 a month extra for this package. Yes, it’s pretty good.
Anyway, I will keep you guys posted how we are doing next few months.
gwlj
http://densinyliquelo.com/forum/messages/171.html lieutenantminuteundivided