I'm another instance of a person that actively chose to go to DSL over Comcast, even though I took a substantial speed cut (at my old place, I had 35/35 FiOS, and I switched to 7mb/800kb DSL). The price between the two services was the same ($50), but it was that significant for me to not use Comcast.

And now, I'm pushing my new apartment complex to switch over to FiOS, since I'm literally 1.1 miles away from my old house, as the Google Maps suggests.

Long story short: I chose 1/5th my old connection speeds to avoid Comcast.

Yah, I'm in the same boat. In late Dec, as soon as I saw Comcast supported SOPA, I setup a Sonic.net account here in SF. I love Sonic's tech support (one of the only few companies I'll get on the phone with for support), and their values - no caps, no support of fucking-with-the-internet bills. However, AT&T fucks up the whole equation with their shitty copper (in some places). Not Sonic's fault at all, of course.

Some parts of SF are starting to get fiber with Sonic. Can't wait to be able to qualify for this. It'll be just like my brother's connection when he lived in Japan circa '01.. Voting with my dollars I guess.

Just did this as well. Well not fios, switched from comcast cable internet over to sonic DSL. I top out at 4.5mb/700kb, i'm struggling a bit, hard to ignore the speed difference, but I am that passionate about not using comcast as well. Was actually one of the best phone calls I've ever made, cancelling my service with comcast.

Yeah, I can switch to 1.5/.7mbps DSL or stay with 16/3mbps cable. I saw u-verse came to my area but I had to yell at a manager to even get them to consider selling it to me without video. They agreed but when I asked them to cut my DSL the same day uverse comes in, they told me they could do that if I bought the video package. Toss in how AT&T treats its wireless customers and you're dealing with a level of incompetence and evil that makes Comcast look very attractive.

The question isn't whether comcast sucks, its whether it sucks worse than the competition. Here in Chicago, its clearly the better choice. That 3mpbs upload is pretty sweet for RDP and file transfer. Heck I even run a little webserver off my desktop and my dynamic IP hasn't changed in 2 years.

While I have no problem with the comcast bitching (they can be terrible at times) I just never see the equivalent for AT&T and other monopoly telcos. Why don't AT&T and Verizon get the same treatment? It took me 2 months of phone calls to get business DSL at our satellite office (new building) with Verizon and they even managed to fuck that up on site. I'm finding it hard to believe Comcast is any worse than these guys. In fact, I'd go as far as saying Comcast Business is pretty impressive. American based tech support during normal hours, great speeds, and no caps.

I suspect most of the complaints are from home users who are just joining the rage-fest and have zero experience with actually switching to the competition and will pretend to enjoy substandard speed and service just to "stick it to Comcast." Err okay, but that's not a rational or positive attitude.

Also, some of the comments in this thread are hilarious. Sick of the 250gb cap so you'll switch to wireless 4G? Heh, enjoy non-published dynamic throttling to 128kbps when Clear decides you've had too much internet. I'd rather have 250gb at 16mbps than "unlimited" at 128kbps.

AT&T sucks too.. I've had 2 billing disputes with them. Both times I called and asked to speak to the people who say I owe money, so I could understand what was going on (as it was for accounts I never setup). They told me I couldn't speak to those people. I had to file complaints with the BBB to get the billing dispute resolved (magically it got zeroed out and corrected at that point).

I have to say when I had comcast, I didn't have any billing issues.

Same here. Seattle has a city negotiated franchise agreement (a.k.a. monopoly) with Comcast. https://www.seattle.gov/cable/franchises.htm

I've heard that Verizon's Fios service is excellent...

What is amazing to me is that Quest doesn't take advantage of their existing right of way to build out last mile fiber. Lazy dinosaur. That right of way is a huge untapped asset.

This really blew me away when we moved here. I'm assuming it was a carrot to get infrastructure build out but I have a hard time imagining that there wouldn't have been competition to do that even without the concession. I'd love to drop Comcast for an alternative.

Have you checked out Clearwire? http://www.clearwire.com/

They've got great coverage throughout Seattle and I have been very happy with their home internet plan. $50/month for unlimited data with 6mbps down and 1mbps up.

Yeah, I've heard of them but to be honest most of what I hear is bad. That's not personal experience, I've never used them, and I regularly do a search on Clearwire to see if things have improved. So far still seems to be a lot of issues, at least in Seattle.

That's actually not true.

I believe the Mayor's office has said they'd love to have more ISPs in Seattle, but the company's don't want to come in and lay down the cable.

Are you in an area with 4G coverage, just not into your building? When I was living in a house that was literally just outside the coverage area, I had success using a long USB cable to hang my modem up in a corner window, and broadcasting WiFi from there.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm thankful that I turned out to actually have a decent 2nd option.

My main reason for writing this was to encourage others, especially in the bay area, to make sure they've really looked at all their options. Some might find a nice surprise like I did.

I did the same thing, and another quick plug for sonic since there are likely people here who would find this useful: I'm using their basic dsl service (single-line) and even that comes with a free static ip address. No more messing around with dynamic dns providers just to get ssh access to my desktop at home.

Just moved into a new place and were about to sign up for Comcast, but instead I think we will be going with Sonic!

Thanks!

Definitely give them a call to find out what sort of speeds you can expect in your particular situation. And never hesitate to call their tech support with questions or concern, they have been nothing short of amazing in my interactions with them.

I have them in Sacramento. Fantastic ISP, make sure you can get their Fusion service. You won't regret it.

I have only two options but am not as lucky as you, 1mbit DSL and Satellite internet which has very high latency and a very low (as in quantity) daily download limit.

I chose DSL because it is better all around but complaining about a $40/month bill for those speeds seems silly to me because that is already $20/month less than my 1mbit connection.