rarebreed why did you get rid of comcast?
I just had DirecTV installed yesterday, and as soon as Verizon DSL gets activated I am ditching Comcast as well. I host the Calvert SOMD scanner feed, so I monitor Comcast's internet performance 24/7 -- and I can verify, it does indeed suck.
Performance wise it was good, I got 5mb out of the data pipe OK, just that it rarely goes more tehn 12 hours without a 1 to 5 minute outage. The LONGEST I have seen the scanner feed run continiously without a break (and they are short ones, and you are automatically reconnected) was just over 48 hours, typically 6 to 8 hours.
For a long time I thought it was a problem with the cable signal (corrected with a dedicated feedline to the cable modem) -- or the cable modem (got a new one) -- or power (got a UPS) -- I'm DONE. DSL is a little slower on the bandwidth but 3mb will work fine, with 768kb uphaul. It will be interesting to compare reliability rates with Comcast, could not get much worse....
-dg