Comcast is launching a new prepaid brand called NOW offering wireline Internet, mobile, payTV and access to Comcast’s WiFi hotspots:
Xfinity remains the postpaid brand.
Today, I received email from my wireline Internet provider (AT&T) indicating they intended to raise my price by $5/month starting in June. This, after previously negotiating in January 2024 a reduction in price for monthly service from $88.00/month to $56.00/month (which was supposed to be good for a year).
Really, the $5/month increase is intended to incentivize me to sign up for auto-pay for which there would be a corresponding $5/month discount offsetting the increase. Given AT&T has advised my personal information, apparently including my full social security number was compromised in their recently admitted breach, now is not a good time for AT&T to be asking to store additional personal information. I guess that “free” credit monitoring isn’t “free” after all.
So, I’m giving Comcast another chance and will try its NOW prepaid offering. I’m opting for 100 Mbps service at $30/month. That’s inclusive of taxes and the equipment is also included and, according to Comcast, mine to keep albeit locked to Comcast’s NOW prepaid service. Further, Comcast will “make the tap hot”, without requiring me to pay for a technician visit should that be necessary (the dealbreaker when I tried to move to Xfinity postpaid in January). 100 Mbps may not sound all that exciting but it’s four times faster than what AT&T is able to deliver.
Because it is Comcast, I’m still skeptical as to whether they’ll deliver on their representations but, perhaps, the prepaid service being new they’ll be willing to make the effort. We shall see.
As an aside, the agent I spoke with did inquire about my mobile service. NOW Mobile is $25/month for “unlimited” everything. When I explained I didn’t need “unlimited” data and was paying Mobi $10/month, she readily and cheerfully admitted she was not going to be able to beat that. Uncharacteristically for Comcast, the attempt was a soft sell. I don’t at all mind companies asking for additional business, so long as it is not a hard sell.
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Is that internet offering using cell service or broadband cable line? If it’s wired that’s not a bad price at all.
Honestly all these NOW offerings seem to be very competitive.
It’s wireline Internet and, indeed, pricing is competitive.
The dilemma, for me, with Comcast is and always has been its reliability and, when needed, dealing with support. Ten years ago I left Comcast for AT&T precisely because reliability issues forced me to deal with Comcast support. At the time, some opined I would find AT&T’s support to be every bit as bad as Comcast’s. That’s now proven to be true but for ten years there was no need to deal with AT&T’s support.
Hopefully, Comcast has solved its reliability issues in my area over the last ten years and this install works as advertised. 
I don’t know what the reliability in your area will be like (it’s been rock solid here), but at least dealing with support isn’t like bashing yourself in the head with a hammer anymore IMHO.
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Before moving to Florida, I had Comcast service in New Hampshire where it was rock solid also. The challenge in south Florida is much of the network infrastructure is underground where there is a high water table. Much of what are now residential areas in south Florida were once part of the Everglades. Nevertheless, I’m hoping reliability will be sufficiently satisfactory.
Happy to hear that. The experience adds to my cautious optimism this will work out.
As long as you write down the support phone number, they have made it nearly impossible to find it. But I agree support is not bad anymore.
Comcast is the only high speed internet option for at least another year till Windstream fiber rolls out but I won’t hold my breath on it being any good. Comcast has been reliable, maybe a short outage every other month.
After a cordial enough but ultimately unproductive chat with support and as I expected, getting this up and running requires a technician visit. At least, they’re not talking about a charge for the visit.
The equipment arrived in a NOW branded box. It’s looks like a probably previously used standard gateway with Xfinity branding. There’s a sticker indicating it’s “customer owned equipment”. It would make sense to reuse older equipment swapped out for postpaid customers upgrading for the prepaid offering.
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Comcast’s technician arrived and is done. As suspected, the tap feeding my condo was turned off. With that corrected, my NOW Internet service is activated. It was an easy fix but credit where credit is due, the technician was efficient and polite. Perhaps, Comcast’s support has indeed changed for the better. There was no charge for the visit, which is as it should be since the issue was their equipment.
I’m getting the advertised 100 Mbps downloads for which I signed up. Upload speed is 10 Mbps. Comcast really ought to bump the upload speed to 20 Mbps to meet the new FCC definition of broadband. I do have the option of going 200/20 for $45/month but will wait and see on that. For now, I’ll monitor the stability of the 100/10 connection at $30/month.
The next step, for me, is getting the gateway into bridge mode to connect my already existing mesh WiFi.
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Placing the Comcast gateway (supplied at no additional charge and mine to keep with no monthly rental) in bridge mode turned out to be trivial. So far, this seems like it will work out. it stays that way.
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For reference I have gigabit internet from Xfinity and my upload speed is 25 Mbps.
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Symmetrical download and upload speeds are among the reasons fiber is growing in popularity. Cable Internet has long been asymmetrical.
Here’s the thing; broadband is now defined as a minimum off 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload. Comcast displays a “Broadband Facts” label showing 10 Mbps upload speeds for both NOW Internet tiers.
I’m not running any server farms over my home Internet connection, so, I expect, 10 Mbps uploads to be sufficient. That said, it no longer, according to the FCC, meets the definition of broadband and, therefore, is not supposed to be advertised as broadband. Theoretically, advertising service as broadband when it is not is subject to regulatory action.
And; your speed test suggests you are getting less than the gigabit speed for which you are paying. Comcast says "Typical download speed should be higher for its gigabit tier:
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I did get a network switch to hardwire both my home server and main pc which noticeably dropped the speed by 100mbps or so but yeah not getting that.
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I was going to refrain from sharing this tale of woe until there was resolution but it’s been 7 days and no such resolution is in sight.
My NOW Internet service has been “paused” since June 5th because Comcast was unable to take prepaid payment on that date. To be fair, the debit card linked to my NOW account was compromised and I had forgot to update the account with the new number.
No worries, according to the email from Comcast, simply updating my payment method via the Xfinity app would restore active service. Well, unfortunately for me, neither the Xfinity app or website would allow me to update my payment method. Instead, both advised me I had no NOW services attached to my account as if service was canceled rather than “paused”.
Support for NOW starts with chat via the Xfinity app. Chat support just kept telling me to use the app and had no solution for the app not working as described above. Eventually, chat support directed me to inquire at a local Xfinity store. Though the store sells NOW service, I was told they offer no support and they had no idea why chat support would direct me there. The store did provide a phone number supposedly dedicated to NOW support. All I got there was advice to use the app.
So; I researched the number for Comcast’s “Executive Care”. I now have a dedicated support liaison and their engineers are trying to figure out what’s wrong but still no resolution. Bottom line, for me, Comcast remains every bit as incompetent and miserable to deal with as they’ve always been. All I want to do is pay them and restore service but, to date, they can’t figure out how for me to do so.
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It seems the bottom line with NOW is if the self-help tools don’t work for whatever reason there is no backup. If one must do business with Comcast, I humbly suggest avoiding prepaid at all costs! Of course, I also suggest avoiding Comcast at all costs but that’s not always an option.
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I tried getting my dad the prepaid plans but comcast refused to service his house so had to get the 150mbps plan for 20/month (66/month after a year) instead. Sadly its the only option in my town.
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Today’s conversation with my Executive Care agent revealed some additional information. I’m not alone others are sharing my experience though he wouldn’t or couldn’t share just how widespread the issues are.
It would seem Comcast built a prepaid offering intended to be entirely self-serve using the Xfinity app or NOW portal. It’s so self-serve, agents (including Executive Care), apparently, have no back end tools with which to work. Given the price points, I completely understand the desire for everything to be self-serve, however, self-serve then has to work and for some number of customers it does not. Engineering is engaged trying to fix the 
s but there is no timeline for resolution. It literally could be tomorrow, never or something in between.
Meanwhile, I’ve reactivated my AT&T wireline service. Fortunately, I had suspended rather than canceled it while trying NOW. It’s overpriced and underpowered but, at least, it actually works. If nothing else, my “paused” NOW service will auto-cancel as of December 3, 2024. Perhaps, I’ll calendar the date. The one successful adjustment made to the NOW portal by Comcast, to date, is it’s once again possible to update payment information. I’ve given them a paused (pun intended) Privacy card with a $1 spending limit. Any attempt to take payment will fail.
I considered asking Comcast to move me to postpaid service (the same deal you got your dad is available at my address), however, Comcast still wants $100 for “professional installation” despite the fact the equipment provided for NOW is perfectly compatible and the previously inactive outside tap is already hot resulting from the original NOW installation. Making the outside tap hot for NOW required dispatching a technician, which Comcast did for free.
It will probably go nowhere but I’m going to mention to city hall, we need community broadband. Our current choices are pathetic.
The problem is at a bigger level than the city, comcast has monopolistic contracts throughout the state of Georgia, Windstream is the only competitor and currently their highest speed is 15mbps at 35/month.
Windstream is bringing in fiber internet that will be available at my house in a year or two, will see how fast they get competitive then.
When cable started as TV only, it was common for municipalities to agree to a monopoly contract with a single service provider. This was in exchange for the single provider wiring the municipality with Coax. Generally, as these agreements have been renewed the local monopoly on cable has remained.
Internet is a bit different because in addition to cable, in most locations, some form of wireline Internet access is available via telecom companies. Windstream is an example of that. As an aside, their top speed at your location is worse than the 25 Mbps provided to me by AT&T but their price of $35/month is far more realistic for the performance offered than AT&T’s $88/month offered at my location. I’ve managed to negotiate a price reduction with AT&T to $56/month but only through year-end.
Community broadband efforts are not necessarily precluded by agreements between municipalities and cable and/or telecom providers of Internet access.
What both cable and telecom companies do very effectively is lobby governments at all levels to restrict competition (to the point where many municipalities do agree not to offer community broadband). At the state level, there are some states who’ve passed laws forbidding municipalities within those states from offering community broadband. Georgia has no outright ban on community broadband though Florida not surprisingly does. These are the sixteen states currently banning community broadband:
- Alabama
- Florida
- Louisiana
- Montana
- Michigan
- Missouri
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- North Carolina
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
- Wisconsin
It does appear Comcast has updated its NOW portal with fixes intended to resolve my (and others) difficulties renewing prepaid service. It’s now (pun intended) possible to turn on autopay. Doing either that or updating payment information (again) is supposed to restore service and from the flow presented it looks like it would actually work.
I’m undecided as to whether I’m sufficiently motivated to try again. I think I’ll wait to hear from my Executive Care agent.
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This is what happened in Chattanooga, TN. (Nearest big city to me). EPB tried to expand outside the city and was sued by Comcast. At the time of the lawsuit EPB offered gigabit internet which was the fastest internet in the country at the time, for 70/month. Comcast only offered 60-80mbps for the similar price. I had a lot of hope that the law would be struck down by the courts but to no avail. The worst part was EPB was expanding into a rural area that had no internet at all, neither Comcast or Windstream serviced them it was only satellite.
As for Windstream, their entire Fiber expansion in town has been mostly funded by taxes as a revitalization initiative. I have doubts its wise to leave it to Windstream and not create our own city ISP but initial speeds and pricing looks to be fair. 30/month for 300mbps, 70/month for gigabit, and 99/month for 2 gigabit. There is wording everywhere that the price is guaranteed only for two years but there is no contract like Comcast. My gut says prices will go up after two years by a lot unless Comcast starts a price war.
Unlike Comcast there are no data caps and upload / download speeds will be equal. They keep leaving things on my front door letting me know fiber is here but when I check online its not, and recently I got mail saying it will be at my house soon so not even they know.