Whew boy, it's been a whirlwind today! Lesson learned, if you bring your own modem to Xfinity, they will disconnect your service on month 11 of your 12 month contract, so you will need to manually renew your service contract before the 11 month mark is up, or you'll have an unexplained service disconnection. Personally, I can't wait until T-Mobile pairs up with Starlink to provide wifi everywhere, making cable companies like Xfinity and CenturyLink obsolete (oh Please Please Please). Nothing in the works on that currently as far as I'm aware, but I see that as the next logical step.
Once T-Mobile or any other cell service provider is able to offer 5G speeds normally everywhere, then we'll start seeing options to hotspot all your devices, or otherwise tie them to your phone's service, and ideally, someone else could still use the internet at home, while you and your phone go elsewhere (a common occurrence for me since I'm a real estate agent and I have to show houses). But for now, I have to wait for a service technician to come out to look at my modem which was working just fine two days ago, so I can't wait for them to figure that out. I just looked up the details for Starlink's internet service, and for me at least, I can pre-order that service in 80918. If you go to Starlink's website, you can check to see if it's available in your area. 99 bucks a month, plus the cost of the satellite dish that has to be installed on your home, but then you get to leave Xfinity, so that's appealing. The idea of the satelitte dish is that you'll have coverage everywhere, so you're not limited to the cables in the ground. I consider the internet issue to be a specific concern for Colorado Springs. There are areas, mainly west of I-25, that have fiber options, and a few small time internet providers that service limited areas. Otherwise you're limited to Comcast's Xfinity, or CenturyLink. Now, since you're still purposely reading an article about internet providers in Colorado Springs, I assume you'd also be interested to know about which is faster: CenturyLink or Xfinity? Xfinity is faster. The reason is because Xfinity uses a coaxial cable connection, while CenturyLink runs through the phone cable. The internet speed through a coaxial cable will always be faster than what you can get through a phone cable. Also, my upload speed was terrible through CenturyLink (0.88 mbps), but their technician told me that was because we were so far away from the neighborhood transformer box. I got better customer service from CenturyLink, by a good amount, but uploading a video showing on a house for a client would take an hour on that kind of speed. It was unacceptable. So anyway, the city of Colorado Springs opted out of the Senate Bill 152 back in 2017, which means the city is now allowed to offer a government sponsored public internet option. Our city would have to actually build that infrastructure first, but now we have the option is what that means. As far as I know, nothing has been done to create a city-sponsored internet option, so again we're back to Xfinity and CenturyLink, unless you happen to live in one of those lucky small fiber areas. Then along comes Starlink, and I'm really liking that third option. Currently they have speeds up to 150 mbps, and Elon Musk expects them to have speeds up to 300 mbps by February. It's a one price fits all, though the cost of the home satellite dish sounds like it will go down in cost over time (it's $500 now). So if you were thinking of your internet options for Colorado Springs, there don't seem to be a lot of good options other than the upcoming Starlink. There are some smaller local companies, but they're all going to be limited to the same phone or coaxial cables, so some physical limitations may still be there, but at least you'll get better customer service. I haven't looked much into these other companies, but they seem to have more limited service areas, and they will cost more than Xfinity and CenturyLink, so you'll pay a bit more for that better customer service (I hope). Those are my thoughts on internet here. In other news, I am continually amazed by the real estate market in CS. I recently submitted an offer for a VA buyer couple on a property, and my buyers offered 50k over asking, the highest they could afford to pay on a house. I got a call the next day from the listing agent (really nice of her to do that by the way), and she told me that they had a few cash offers that were 20k over my buyers' offer, and some VA offers that were 50k over my buyers' offer. She called me to let me know so we weren't waiting to hear, and so that we could get a reality check of what our situation was in comparison to other offers. It's the wild wild west in Colorado Springs right now. On top of these crazy high offers, is the doing away with the appraisal. What I mean is, a cash offer doesn't need to do an appraisal, and when you're offering so much more over asking, what does it matter to you? It's just a number at that point versus what the most interested buyer is willing to pay for the house. With a financed offer, unless the buyer is buying the house with mostly or all cash, the lender will require an appraisal on the property, because the lender wants to make sure that they are not overloaning on the property. Many buyers now are offering to pay, cash from their own pockets, the difference between the appraisal and the purchase price, what they offered on the house. What I've been seeing in the market now has been in the 15-30k mark for how much buyers are offering to pay above the appraised price, if the appraisal comes in lower than the purchase price. Now that's not all houses, and a lot of times the appraisal doesn't come in low, but buyers now are willing to risk a lot more more. What's more, they actually have that cash to back it up, which leaves other buyers in the dust. It's a really tough market out there, and when you're one of 50 offers, it's tough to have an edge. If you want a house in Colorado Springs, you need to willing to offer more money, and usually more cash, than other buyers can or will. If you can't or won't do that, then you're not getting a house in Colorado Springs. That's the reality of our market here, and it's one thing people need to understand about our city right now. There are no deals, there is no speculative property, and if you don't make enough income, you simply can't afford to buy. It's getting expensive here.
18 Comments
Richard S Carbonneau
5/17/2021 04:28:59 am
Have used my own modem, and router for more than a decade with xfinity without any service interruption. When you do this you must call and report the devices model information to tech support. Maybe that why this happened.
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Kevin Bond
5/17/2021 06:05:51 am
Thanks Richard! I figured they would have had that info from when I first set it up, but I guess not. That makes more sense now.
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Brian
5/17/2021 01:02:59 pm
Have has Comcast for nearly 20 years, and have never had to do this. Please research before you post.
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Kevin Bond
5/17/2021 03:33:53 pm
I'm glad you've had a much better experience!
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Scott
5/18/2021 07:37:10 am
Actually, I switched to centurylink because they now have fiber optic lines (in some areas) which is much faster and more reliable than cable. BUT centurylink customer service is terrible terrible ... much worse than xfinity.
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Kevin Bond
5/18/2021 07:46:19 am
CenturyLink told me fiber isn't available in our neighborhood, so no such luck for us! Usually my customer service was through their site chat, and I was usually able to resolve whatever issues I had quickly. Seems to be different for everyone!
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Arlo
5/21/2021 03:09:13 pm
I totally disagree. I had Xfinity/Comcast for a number of years and finally dumped them because of consistently HORRENDOUS customer support. The straw that broke the camel's back was when my bill went up with no prior notifications and I couldn't log into my account for several days to check the reason. When I called customer support (and waited over 40 min listening to the "your call is important to us" message - yeah, right!) I got the complete runaround and was actually told 3 different things about the billing issue). I told them to cancel the service (as an aside, I used my own modem with no problems for over 4 years, saving a bunch of money from the exorbitant rent Xfinity charges for a modem).
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Kevin Bond
5/21/2021 03:14:53 pm
Sounds like CenturyLink Fiber is a great option, if available. I do remember being much more pleased with the customer service with CenturyLink when I had them.
Donna Martin
5/18/2021 01:27:17 pm
Just FYI for lower income people...
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Kevin Bond
5/18/2021 01:29:28 pm
Thank you for that info Donna! That's good to know.
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Kimberly Bolding
5/20/2021 09:45:06 am
I do believe that Xfinity internet essential only offers a limited amount of data and speed.
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Lynn
5/20/2021 12:27:43 pm
I have the essentials and data is limited which I was not told. I got billed an extra $100 one month and that is how I found out. It took me months to pay it off. So I recommend asking about limits and how to monitor usage. I think it's terrible that they offer this great lower cost service to those of us on low income then charge more if usage goes over limit. Especially if not told there is a limit.
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5/20/2021 05:02:06 pm
Man I so wish people that don't actually know data about something's they make these false expert blog posts about would stop.
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Kevin Bond
5/20/2021 05:24:52 pm
Hi Aaron, I'm not an expert on internet, never claimed to be. Yes, fiber is faster than coaxial. I wish they offered it in my neighborhood. I hadn't thought about trying to get the Starlink company to notice my humble post, and that sounded like a pretty good idea for a second, but I highly doubt they would care about giving me any freebies.
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5/20/2021 11:49:16 pm
First, I'd like to applaud your responses to the varying degrees of comments your original post solicited. Could have very easily gone for some low hanging fruit there, but you kept things cordial.
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Kevin Bond
5/21/2021 06:27:01 am
Thanks Brandon! I appreciate your thoughts. I realize this post isn't what everybody is looking for, and that's ok. It looks to be slowly becoming a "comments more interesting than the actual post" sort of a deal. I have no idea why Google liked this page, but I'm glad it's stirred something in people.
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