I asked a Comcast employee yesterday if he could help with the following problem, and I was advised to post it in the forums rather than send a private message. This topic has shown up over the past 18-24 months in a number of forum threads, both here and elsewhere, so I'm not sure what good this will do, but here goes...
I recently noticed that I was not getting anything near the speed I was paying for (Business class starter 16/3). So I called support and they scheduled a technician visit. Before the technician arrived, I decided it would be worthwhile to buy my own modem, and get rid of the rented SMC gateway. So I looked at the approved modem list and called tech support for an opinion. I was told that "any of the Motorola Surfboards will be fine." So I went to Staples and bought an sb6141.
When the technician came he checked my connections, removed an old filter that was on the box at the curb, installed the new modem, and everything was great. Things were so great I decided to go for a current promotion and up my speed to the 50/10 tier. Within a few hours my speed had been increased, and everything worked great...until that evening. Then the speed crashed hard and never improved. We're talking somewhere between dialup and DSL speeds.
So I got another technician out, and after puzzling over things for a while, he told me he had gotten on the phone with another Comcast tech guy, and they had reprovisioned the modem. I ran a speed test, and everything was great, again. That was week before last. Everything had been just fine until this weekend, when my speed crashed again. I power cycled the modem, and it got somewhat better...between 20-35M download. (I should mention that I get excellent upload speeds. No problem there at all.)
Today I'm back to around DSL speed. I called tech support and they said all they could do was schedule a technician visit. So that is set up for Wednesday morning. From everything I have found about this issue, apparently there's an issue with the bootfile for this modem. I don't need to hear about how "you have to get the right person on the phone from tech support. Regular tech support people can't help you. Only a supervisor can push the new bootfile to your modem." I have read that comment in so many threads I'm sick of reading it. I'd like to hear from people who are using this modem and how their problem was solved, if it indeed was solved.
I apologize if my tone seems a little nasty. I have been dealing with this for three weeks, and I have believed my problem was solved three times already. Not trying to be jerk...I'm just frustrated.
So, if anybody has any insight about this, particularly, anything that I should bring up with the technician tomorrow, I'd appreciate hearing about it. If speed is going to be a recurring issue, then I'm certainly not going to keep the 50/100 tier past my 30 day trial period. In fact, if DSL speed is what I'm going to get, then I see no need to keep Comcast. I'll get DSL.