Thursday, August 15, 2013

Saving money from the cable companies

The nice people at Comcast started charging us $7 per month to "rent" our cable modem.  That seems ridiculous given how much you already pay for the monthly data service.  I went out to Amazon and bought one on sale for a bit over $50.  It should last about 5 years but even after 3 years, I am $200 ahead.
When you get your new cable modem, you have to call the cable company and spend about 5 minutes with them so they can activate your device.  Pretty simple other than trying to read long strings of serial numbers to someone who spoke and understood very little English.  Nice service Comcast!

The one I bought can be found here, but there are several reasonable ones on the market and they go on sale occasionally.  The key is to make sure yours supports DOCSIS 3.0, which means it can support higher Internet speeds.

I have no idea if this applies to DSL.  Because I haven't had it, I don't know if they annoy you with a monthly DSL modem rental charge.

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