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Aug 11 / Ozymandias

Time to Return your Rented Cable Modem?

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Just a quick note to suggest folks who rent their cable modem (usually for $4-5 dollars a month) think about buying your own and returning the old one. Here in Seattle Comcast tends to be the most common broadband provider. I’ve been renting an old Motorola Surfboard from them for years – first for $4, then $5, then just last week I noticed the price had increased to $7 a month. Some folks at work pointed out that for $85 you could buy a new Motorola SurfBoard 6120 DOCSIS 3.0 capable modem from either Newegg or Best Buy… and as a bonus, thanks to DOCSIS 3.0, you effectively get a free speed boost. (My connection speed leapt up by around 30-40% downstream and doubled upstream on several tests.)

The speed boost may not stick around (at least without paying for higher tier of service), but at $85 you can quickly recoup your rental costs and cut your cable bill. Apparently lots of folks are doing this – the folks at the Comcast office were very familiar with my request, and I saw two other people doing the same thing. Something to think about!

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  • Jim

    I made the exact same calculation about a month ago when I got the notice about the price hike from Comcast Seattle. I got the Motorola DOCSIS 3.0 modem and it was trivially easy to get set up. I suspect that they provide the Motorola as a rental, because the support guy knew exactly what was going on with it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/tracey.frankcom Tracey Frankcom

    I don’t have much good to say about Comcast. No, that’s inaccurate – I really don’t have anything good to say about them.

  • http://www.facebook.com/tracey.frankcom Tracey Frankcom

    What irritates me with them, and with other providers too, is the way they do intro rates then hike, hike, hike. Plus, since they took over our service, our broadband has been a hell of a lot more unreliable than it ever was with AT&T. For that matter, since they forced us over onto digital cable (thereby making it impossible to watch one show and Tivo another, since we’re still on our clunky old Series 1) the cable TV has been woefully patchy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jeff.henshaw Jeff Henshaw

    Andre, do you have Comcast voice service? I think that may require comcrap’s rental.

    • Deezul

      Yep. I bought a cable modem 7 years ago when I first set up my service, so I never paid rent for one. But when I switched to VOIP through Comcast, they replaced my cable modem with one of their combo VOIP/Internet units. $5 a month rent, and I can find any way to purchase one.

  • http://www.facebook.com/joanne.frank Joanne Frank

    Thanks for the tip. Comcast is the only broadband service that I can get in my hood and it infuriates me that I have to bundle with cable service just to get the lowest rate. I’ll definitely look into this.

  • http://www.facebook.com/andre.vrignaud Andre Vrignaud

    @Jeff: Nope – dropped landline years ago. So they have no hold on me. ;P

  • Will

    Maaan! I’d never heard of you before, but I just stumbled onto an article on Gamasutra you wrote way the hell back in 1997 analyzing the experience of putting Crimson Sands together. It’s wild to read that kind of origin story from that kind of in situ perspective, think about the early architecture of the whole MMO architecture, hear UO talked about as an upcoming game and a bold and adventurous concept. I love it.

    • http://ozymandias.com Ozymandias

      Glad you enjoyed the article… going in the wayback machine there! :)