Metrocast

[DoWhat]

$7 per month for modem rental?
F-You.
Never knew it, until I saw the bill sitting on the counter (wife takes care of the bills).



Installed a new modem today.
Went with the Motorola SB6141. $67 on Amazon.
Metrocast does Mac IP Authentication, so you need to call them and give them the Mac IP of your new modem.

Very easy to do and it will save you $7/month.

F-Them.

V/r
DW

 

[corollinout]

Hope you got a good one. The white Arris modems have a lot of issues as well as a couple other. Also, make sure your coax connection is nice and tight. Hate for ya to get disconnected due to noise.

 

[DoWhat]

Hate for ya to get disconnected due to noise.

What should I look for per the noise issue?

 

[GopherM]

Got the same issue here with AT&T (in NW Georgia) and they won't let me provide my own gateway. Why is that. They say they have technical complaints. So what. If I use my own gateway then it is my problem and not AT&T.

 

[Goldenhawk]

What should I look for per the noise issue?

Not sure about your modem, but my Motorola Surfboard has a configuration page (by visiting 192.168.100.1 in my browser) that shows me signal strength on each upload and download channel. It shows signal to noise (S/N) ratio (mine are in the 36-38 range) and error counts. My error rate is on the order of 0.00002% - for every two megabytes, about 3 bytes must be retransmitted.

If you have a loose or dirty connection, your S/N will be worse and your router will have higher error rates - slowing things down considerably.

About a year ago, I was having frequent internet disconnections requiring the modem to be rebooted several times a day; one of my eight download channels was showing a S/N of five or ten, much worse than the expected 35+. Metrocast sent a tech who found a poor connection at the street. He cleaned up the connector and replaced a filter in the utility box, and the problem went away. So Corollinout is right - connections matter.

 

[glhs837]

Got the same issue here with AT&T (in NW Georgia) and they won't let me provide my own gateway. Why is that. They say they have technical complaints. So what. If I use my own gateway then it is my problem and not AT&T.

Why is that? Simple, same reason Metrocast shut me down and sent a tech to cut off all the connections I had made less than 12 hours before, and dork up my modem. Profit center protection.

 

[SandieGarry]

Last summer, a lightning strike fried my Metrocast modem and my router. I couldn't get a tech out for at least 24 hrs due to the storm. I asked if I could buy my own and they said yes. I did, a router and modem. I figure about now I'm starting to save money. My monthly rental fees were stupid. No problems with service in any way.

 

[warneckutz]

Be aware of the speed package you purchased. I had the middle package and I was renting a modem from them as well. Turns out the modem they offered me couldn't even handle half the speed of the package I purchased. Bought a new high-speed modem and everything was peachy... Metrocast truly is garbage.

 

[Clem72]

Be aware of the speed package you purchased. I had the middle package and I was renting a modem from them as well. Turns out the modem they offered me couldn't even handle half the speed of the package I purchased. Bought a new high-speed modem and everything was peachy... Metrocast truly is garbage.

DOCSIS 3.0 or newer should work with all tiers. Not sure you can buy a new one that is on an older standard, they haven't been made for years.

 

[Clem72]

$7 per month for modem rental?
F-You.
Never knew it, until I saw the bill sitting on the counter (wife takes care of the bills).



Installed a new modem today.
Went with the Motorola SB6141. $67 on Amazon.
Metrocast does Mac IP Authentication, so you need to call them and give them the Mac IP of your new modem.

Very easy to do and it will save you $7/month.

F-Them.

V/r
DW

I agree modem rental fees are a rip (a hold-over from the cable box rental fee), though you should have expected it. I bought a nice modem to swap out a failing one for a relative with Comcast (thinking to avoid the fee), and as it turns out they no longer charge a fee. Or rather, they bake it into the base price. So I returned the modem and they overnighted one to replace it.

 

[warneckutz]

DOCSIS 3.0 or newer should work with all tiers. Not sure you can buy a new one that is on an older standard, they haven't been made for years.

This went down a few years ago. Did a little research and the modem could only handle 10 or 15 Mb while I was on a 25/Mb plan.

 

[awpitt]

$7 per month for modem rental?
F-You.
Never knew it, until I saw the bill sitting on the counter (wife takes care of the bills).



Installed a new modem today.
Went with the Motorola SB6141. $67 on Amazon.
Metrocast does Mac IP Authentication, so you need to call them and give them the Mac IP of your new modem.

Very easy to do and it will save you $7/month.

F-Them.

V/r
DW

It's been at least ten years since I rented a modem from Metrocast.

 

[Clem72]

So this thread reminded me that I have never been able to make use of one of those metrocast wifi locations. So I reset the password on my account and logged into the metrocast portal page.

Noticed a link for usage and checked it. Turns out we have a 350GB cap on the highspeed ultra tier of service. And my family apparently gets pretty close (they show last three months of usage) using between 250GB and 300GB per month. We watch Hulu daily and Netflix occasionally, only ever on one TV.

So I am fairly sure on busier months I may have popped the cap (kid downloading games for PS4 or on Steam at 50GB a piece), but I don't remember getting billed for overages.

So I checked Metrocast's acceptable use policy (not updated since 2011, WTF) at https://www.metrocast.com/policies/high-speed-internet-acceptable-use-policy/ which states that it is our responsibility to monitor our own usage, and going over the cap is a violation of the AUP which they can use to terminate your service if they see fit.

So, Metrocast has my physical address, my phone number, and my e-mail address and has never once, ever, sent me a notification letting me know I may be near the CAP for my plan, but they consider going over the CAP a means for terminating my account. In fact the AUP goes so far as to insinuate that you must be a pirate or running illegal servers out of your home to even approach their cap, which is patently false as our family does it with only a couple hours a day of internet TV viewing and regular internet browsing.

 

[awpitt]

So this thread reminded me that I have never been able to make use of one of those metrocast wifi locations. So I reset the password on my account and logged into the metrocast portal page.

Noticed a link for usage and checked it. Turns out we have a 350GB cap on the highspeed ultra tier of service. And my family apparently gets pretty close (they show last three months of usage) using between 250GB and 300GB per month. We watch Hulu daily and Netflix occasionally, only ever on one TV.

So I am fairly sure on busier months I may have popped the cap (kid downloading games for PS4 or on Steam at 50GB a piece), but I don't remember getting billed for overages.

So I checked Metrocast's acceptable use policy (not updated since 2011, WTF) at https://www.metrocast.com/policies/high-speed-internet-acceptable-use-policy/ which states that it is our responsibility to monitor our own usage, and going over the cap is a violation of the AUP which they can use to terminate your service if they see fit.

So, Metrocast has my physical address, my phone number, and my e-mail address and has never once, ever, sent me a notification letting me know I may be near the CAP for my plan, but they consider going over the CAP a means for terminating my account. In fact the AUP goes so far as to insinuate that you must be a pirate or running illegal servers out of your home to even approach their cap, which is patently false as our family does it with only a couple hours a day of internet TV viewing and regular internet browsing.

I could see them using this as a means to cut people off who have "cut the cord" and only use Metrocast for Internet. Since Metrocast is the only real option for high speed broadband, that would leave cord cutters out.

 

[Clem72]

I could see them using this as a means to cut people off who have "cut the cord" and only use Metrocast for Internet. Since Metrocast is the only real option for high speed broadband, that would leave cord cutters out.

That would be me, and several others on this forum. 350GB was probably a good amount in 2011, when most streaming consisted of crappy 240p 300kbit streams from network websites or youtube, but today the majority of streaming is in HD and UHD options are becoming common (Netflix, Amazon, and soon Hulu).

Though I think we would have heard if they were cutting people off en masse, so perhaps they are ignoring the caps for the time being. I know Metrocast monitors these forums, maybe one of their reps will chime in.

 

[awpitt]

That would be me, and several others on this forum. 350GB was probably a good amount in 2011, when most streaming consisted of crappy 240p 300kbit streams from network websites or youtube, but today the majority of streaming is in HD and UHD options are becoming common (Netflix, Amazon, and soon Hulu).

Though I think we would have heard if they were cutting people off en masse, so perhaps they are ignoring the caps for the time being. I know Metrocast monitors these forums, maybe one of their reps will chime in.

Checked my usage and I'm up to 112GB so far for August. It says that my limit is 250GB but you said 350GB.

 

[Clem72]

Depends on your tier, check the AUP I linked above. 350GB is for the fastest speed (Highspeed Ultra I think), 250GB is the tier below. Sounds like you probably get pretty close to your limit as well.

 

[awpitt]

Depends on your tier, check the AUP I linked above. 350GB is for the fastest speed (Highspeed Ultra I think), 250GB is the tier below. Sounds like you probably get pretty close to your limit as well.

Okay. I always thought I had the highest tier. I've been thinking about reducing my TV channels and sign up for a streaming service like Sling or Vue. Nice to know I could do that and I have room to upgrade to faster Internet for the streaming.

 

[awpitt]

That would be me, and several others on this forum. 350GB was probably a good amount in 2011, when most streaming consisted of crappy 240p 300kbit streams from network websites or youtube, but today the majority of streaming is in HD and UHD options are becoming common (Netflix, Amazon, and soon Hulu).

Though I think we would have heard if they were cutting people off en masse, so perhaps they are ignoring the caps for the time being. I know Metrocast monitors these forums, maybe one of their reps will chime in.

I checked previous months usage and I usually top out around 200GB.

 

[wubbles]

They don't enforce the caps. They might if you become a problem and are way WAY over (like someone that torrents 24/7). But there have been months where I have gone over 700GB (double the cap) and it hasn't been an issue. It's not hard to to hit with 2 people streaming 4k. Doesn't help all the great Netflix original shows that stream in 4k. It's something like 15-20GB per hour. Shoot, we both binged Stranger Things separately in the same week which would have been like 250-300GB in a few days. Both of us download a game (Battlefield 4 being a recent example, 50GB each). Just some examples of heavy data usage that can occur in a very small amount of time on the high-tier package. A family all streaming can easily blast through the roof of 1TB a month. I think that clause is in their AUP so they can cut someone off that really is causing serious congestion by maxxing out their connection all day every day.