To Xfinity....AND BEYOND!!!!

In case anyone didn't catch it, I did make a play on a Toy Story reference. Now that I have that out of my system, I can get to the task at hand. Since moving to Colorado and settling in, I have only found two pockets of the state that have Time Warner as their cable provider. It also just so happens that I do not live in either of them, so our cable provider is Comcast.

Emily initially subscribed to them because of the affordability and the fact that we only really needed internet at the time. When our modem came in the mail, both of them put me up to the task of setting it up, which I was perfectly okay with. 

The initial setup seemed simple: look at the instructions that came with the box, and follow them to a tee. I was able to do just that, however, at first, the box wouldn't cooperate. Matt and I figured that it meant that the modem we were sent was faulty, so we went to Best Buy to buy a new one. They only had one brand, and it was way overpriced, so next we tried either Staples or Office Depot since it was right next door.  At any rate, the one we tried didn't have any modems at all, and we were about to try the other one when I instantaneously piped up and insisted that we try Walmart instead. Well, we headed there next after I convinced Matt, and when we got there, I headed straight for the Home Entertainment department.  

Once we get to the right department, I start hovering in and eventually find the wireless routers. Fortunately for me, the Cable and DSL modems are also in the same area, and we settle on a Motorola Surfboard model (which is apparently co-owned by Arris now -- I had to come to this conclusion). We also grab a Belkin N150 wireless router to go with it -- they're cheap and only last a year, but why not, and since we are at Walmart anyway, we grab some essentials and head for the self-checkout.

Once we get our items scanned and paid for, we head back to the apartment, and I start back at square one. I then start to follow the instructions for the Motorola modem, since we are going to set that up first, and of course, no progress is made whatsoever. Emily then proceeds to call customer support and, being the persistent type that she is, "bear-claws" her way through Comcast's customer service phone tree.  After a few hangups and some "choice words" we eventually get a service visit for the next day and all is right with the world.

Flash forward 24 hours: so on the day of the visit, the technician comes out and looks around to see what we've tried so far and also what he is dealing with. The guy is super nice and considerate and after looking around, discovers that not all of our outlets are wired for Cable. Well this wouldn't have occurred to the average person--or even me, and we have a nice little chat about internet standards. The irony is that before the visit, we were not able to use the internet directly, however, we were able to use a special service known as "Xfinity Wi-Fi" which is like a "hotspot" that a customer's modem puts out for when a mobile device is outside of the home. After some time passes, he is eventually able to get our internet up and running to where we can use the internet through our regular SSID (or network name).

In short, would I subscribe if I were on my own? I would give it a solid "maybe."

Front of Xfinity box. The only difference between ours and 

this one is the manufacturer.

Rear of Xfinity Box.