Married to Comcast?

Because of a clever marketing ploy called the Triple Play (phone, cable TV, and high-speed Internet), Comcast and I have been going steady for years. Our relationship is based more on need than love. Comcast needs money from me each month and I’m hooked on the services she provides. While we didn’t get married this week, I committed to making us an item for at least a couple more years.

In the time we have been dating, I have never cheated on Comcast. But annually, when she raises my monthly bill, I confess to seriously checking the dance floor for a younger, flashier, and less expensive partner like satellite TV or a sexy tablet computer with built-in 3G. However, my roving eye is just that as I always come back to Comcast despite the tempting offers that are out there.

Comcast can be expensive to live with. A couple of years ago when she insisted that I start calling her Xfinity, I knew it was going to cost me money. Somebody needed to pay for the makeover, but I didn’t want to spend any more on her new wardrobe than I had to.

So this year when I was notified that prices were going up (around 11 percent for my plan), I went through my bill item by item looking for ways to cut costs. One fee that seems excessive is the $7 monthly charge for “voice equipment,” really just a modem although it is a specialized one that supports combined voice and data services. Mine, an older Arris model, quietly sits by my computer performing flawlessly. Had I been able to buy it when I first ordered the Triple Play, it would have paid for itself years ago.

After a bit of research (OK, a lot of research), I discovered that Comcast now permits customers to buy their own, under its customer-owned E-MTA (for Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter) policy. The catch is that Comcast has only approved a few models for voice and data, making them expensive and, according to online discussion threads I read, hard to get. (If you just want to buy your own data modem, Comcast provides a list of dozens of supported models on its web site.)

The online consensus was that the only accepted way to beat the monthly rental fee was to buy an Arris TM722G modem at a Best Buy with a Comcast Connection Center. Further that a service call from Comcast would be required to set it up. Not all Best Buys have these centers; for me the closest store with one is about a 75-mile round trip. When I called the Comcast rep there, I was told that they were out of modems and that the modems were back-ordered and would take months to get. But the rep also told me I could get one at a Comcast store (another name for a Comcast office).

So don’t believe everything you read, your mileage may vary, sometimes things are easier than you think, and all those clichés.

Yesterday I picked up the new modem at the local office in Bremerton. It’s made by SMC Networks (not Arris) lending further credence to the previous paragraph. Setup was an easy do-it-yourself process. I didn’t even have to pay for it right away as the $150 cost was added to my bill.

So far, so good. The new modem is sleek and sexy. Unlike the Arris model, it supports a wireless home network (an item on my to-do list). It’s probably my imagination, but web pages seem to load faster. And if I want to pay for faster download (I don’t as the idea was to save money not spend more), the new modem complies with the DOCSIS 3.0 standard.

My MBA nephew would probably tell me that spending $150 to save a $7 monthly rental fee is not a good business decision. If so, he’s right. The modem comes without a warranty. Plus in the two years it will take to pay for itself, technology will likely change and I could move out of the local Comcast market. But when you are into a long-term relationship, you don’t bother with details like that.