Xfinity - To Kill off service to obsolete private modems starting August 8

[DaveLembke]

Ever since they upgraded their Leased Modems with built in wifi to turn everyones homes into wifi hotspots, I have been getting phone calls informing me that I should upgrade my modem to tap into the faster internet experience. But it was all just marketing babble trying to get people to switch to their modems for a "faster experience". I knew that this was nonsense and ignored all the many phone calls and messages on my answering machine because I was getting my full speed of service and the Motorola Surfboard Broadband modem that I own to avoid a $6 a month lease fee was running full speed, and I am not cool with providing the equivalent of a WIFI Tower out of my home for others for free.

However yesterday, I just got in the mail a warning from Xfinity that on 8/8/2017 they will be throttling my service and then on 8/31/2017 they will kill my internet connection if I still have my obsolete personally owned motorola surfboard modem in use.

I am temped to wait for 8/8/2017 and see if this is just scare mail to get me to jump to leasing a modem of theirs, however if they throttle me heavily then it could kill off my telephone and make for some angry people. I got a good almost 7 years of use out of my older Motorola Surfboard Modem which cost me $53 at Newegg and saved myself $72 a year.. saving myself about $450, and I guess maybe if I just buy a newer version the phone calls and the scare mail from them will stop.

Problem I have is that online they have a list of supported modems, but I have no way of getting to the page because they have it hidden behind having to logon to their website. Its so stupid that they dont have this out in the open and require you to logon to their website to see the list of supported modems.

Was wondering if someone who also has xfinity could copy/paste the list of supported modems here so I can look through it to see which modem would be best. Looking on google there are some lists, but they arent from Xfinity and I dont want to buy a modem to then find out that the list was incorrect, so to have it copy/pasted from their website to here would be best I am thinking. I havent logged onto my xfinity account in years. I dont even use their e-mail service. As long as i pay the bill and the internet works all is golden, but I dont have ability to look at content they have beyond the logon. Years ago I use to logon and look to see how much data was downloaded and look at graphs etc, but since there isnt a download cap "yet", I havent paid attention to how much download/upload goes on.

They direct me to https://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/ and there is a field for zip code and speed, but they aren't functional until logged on.

The zip code and speed I'm interested in is 05001 zip code and speed of 25mbps or less. I only have 7/1 now because they increased the cost to almost $91 a month for my 25/5 service and I can get by with 7/1 as a bare minimum for streaming and phone at a cost of $52 instead after taxes etc.

[DaveLembke]

Just a heads up that I no longer need help with this.

I upgraded my modem from Motorola Surfboard 5150U to a Motorola MB7420. I ended up going down to the Comcast/Xfinity location a town over and explained that my private modem was flagged obsolete and that I couldnt get to the information page because I didnt know my logon credentials since I havent had a need to use their e-mail etc. The guy behind the counter was really cool about this. He said kind of under his breath yeah you can buy a $50 modem or pay $6 a month and lots of people are buying their own to save money. I then responded that owning my own I saved about $450 over the last 7 years. I said they really should go back to the $3 a month lease fee because at that cost it might be worth while to lease because for $36 a year it would be worth the cost of $3 a month to not have to worry about replacing a modem if struck by lightning or it dies for some other reason.

I got this modem here for $69.99 on sale and then I was offered a 2-year extended warranty for $7.99. So I did the quick math and decided sure. I am still saving money this way and for 2-years BestBuy will have to replace it if it dies for any reason. So $77.98 for 2 years guaranteed, whereas 2 years guaranteed from Comcast/Xfinity would be $144 at 24 months X $6.00 a month. So I save $66.02 and for every month after the 24th month I save an additional $6.00 a month.   

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/motorola-docsis-3-0-cable-modem-gray/5050001.p?skuId=5050001&extStoreId=&ref=212&loc=DICAT&ksid=6e412709-a31e-41e9-9153-7879a9c044e6&ksprof_id=3&ksaffcode=pg255266&ksdevice=c&lsft=ref:212,loc:2&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9bXP8sG91QIVkDyBCh3ARgM8EAQYAiABEgI4ofD_BwE

The modem that the tech suggested to me originally was a $49.99 modem, but it didnt have as many channels and it bottlenecked at a lower speed. I figured it was best to spend just a little more in hopes that a higher bandwidth ceiling would mean I can stick with it a little longer than going as cheap as I can. Additionally I have trust in the Motorola Brand, and this other brand Arris I never heard of before which is this one here which is the exact model the cable company tech suggested: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/arris-surfboard-docsis-3-0-cable-modem-silver/7534146.p?skuId=7534146

He pretty much said that any DOCSIS 3.0 or higher Broadband Modem will work, most will have on them the Xfinity name etc to show that they support specific ISPs etc.

Sadly the local site for Comcast/Xfinity wasnt able to reset my password for my logon. I had to do this from home over the phone with tech support and have a computer handy to type in a security code to get to the screen to reset my password. But when I had the girl on the line helping me with this password reset, I also had her take the MAC address for the new modem and model number and when the telephone went dead, I knew that all I needed to do was swap over the modem, and then wait for them to flash it and then it go through a reboot, then turn my router on and then everything was back up and running again.

The nice thing also is that the girl at BestBuy who asked if I needed help and I was looking between the Motorola and Netgear Modems to decide which one to go with said you might find that you connect at a faster than advertised speed once you switch from your older DOCSIS 2.0 to DOCSIS 3.0 modem. She suggested the Motorola over the Netgear saying the Motorola was better which looking at the specs it was slightly better so it wasnt just a sales pitch to get me to spend more money. I thought it was uneducated info in the getting a faster speed than what my ISP advertises for my internet service. I figured it was a sales person who was pitching the line to make the sale, but surprisingly she was correct. My speed before modem upgrade was 7/1 and now its 12/2 mbps download/upload speed. So this made my day to get more bandwidth and not have to pay any more for my service to get that better bandwidth. 

Now to decide if I am going to sell my old modem on ebay or not. There is a flood of them out there. I have 2 of them a Surfboard 5150 and a 5150U, one of them was a spare I picked up for free which works. But thinking it might be more of a headache if I did sell them to someone who doesnt know the difference between DOCSIS 2.0 and 3.0 and wants a refund when their ISP is only using 3.0 now etc.    thinking they are probably pretty worthless and unable to be used together to form a coax network bridge etc like copperlink modems. Not quite sure what hardware is needed to simulate a broadband connection to make a private broadband network bridge etc.


Here is the Netgear that I was comparing the Motorola to: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/netgear-docsis-3-0-cable-modem-black/6794125.p?skuId=6794125

[Geek-9pm]

DaveLembke,
That was a very good post. Thanks. Many people need to know about that.

I have service for Xfinity. It is good, but there are few other choices in this area. I live in a suburb where AT&T has not updated their hard wire services. So the alternative is to go either cellular, very expensive, or TV cable.

Xfinity is of Comcast.  Just  type http://comcast.com and see Xfinity stuff.


Because my wife and I are on Social Security and are at the lower income level, we qualified for a very low-cost service from Xfinity. The modem is free.

While living here for the past 16 years I have used dial-up, DSL, TV cable and cellular Internet service. 
Also, low-income people can get some free or cheap Internet service on the free cell phone program often called the "Obama Phone". (USA only.)