Now for those of you who live in the United States, that name is quite familiar to you. For those that don’t, Comcast is one of the largest cable TV and broadband providers in North America.

I really have no complaints about the Internet service Comcast has given me over the past 7 years. They have been reliable, and quick to resolve any problems, and the number of outages has been very low.

I’ve been paying approximately $65 USD per month since 2002. My rates have not changed more than a couple dollars, while the speed of the service has increased several times.

Until yesterday my service was rated at 6 MBps download speed and 1 MBps upload speed. Compared to some services that’s pretty fast although in the real world your actual download speeds never reach the actual speed that your service is rated. At most the best I was seeing was about 10% of that speed or around 600KBps. Still not bad but not great for 2009.

I happen to live in an area where there is actually true competition for your ISP and television service.

I can choose from a number of companies, but until recently they were all pretty much the same, cable companies using the same basic infrastructure.

This past year Verizon, another huge mega company in these parts of the US installed their fiber optic network into our region.

They have been constantly trying to get me to switch both my TV from my current satellite provider and also my Internet service.

There offers have been quite tempting, especially for the Internet service where they were offering me basically 4 times the speed at the same price I was paying now.

Internet service is kind of like a lot of things in life, you don’t really pay attention to it most of the time if it’s working correctly. It’s there, you use it, but you don’t think too  much about it unless you have a problem.

I was just about ready to make the switch and go with Verizon’s FIOS service, but decided I would give Comcast a call first and see what they could offer me. After all, no company likes to lose a customer.

But I have to admit I was pretty surprised at what Comcast actually offered me. I made it very clear to them that I was strongly considering switching to Verizon FIOS. Not only did they offer to triple my speeds, they offered to do it at a price of $29 per month. They were willing to cut my monthly bill in half, and then some and give me far more speed without requiring any long term contract.

So I said yes, Verizon’s service would still have been a bit faster but also more costly and then you have the hassle of changing over your networks, and personal email addresses.

So within 10 minutes of making the call, my speeds literally tripled.

So I wonder just how much money I’d given Comcast that I really didn’t have to over the past year?

If you live in an area where you have competition with both your television and Internet providers, you may be surprised at just how much pull you have, even if you’re not really thinking of switching providers, you can certainly use the option of switching as a bargaining tool.

I also did the same thing with my satellite TV provider getting them to substantially cut my monthly fees and offering me some new updated equipment at no cost.

Unfortunately I know a lot of areas in the US where there is limited or literally no competition for either television service or Internet service, and I’m sure that applies to many reading this.

But if you are lucky enough to live in a region that offers competition and choice, make a few phone calls, you might be surprised at the response you get. I was. Well maybe I wasn’t. Just don’t be lazy like me!

- Dave -

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