COMCAST CONS

Even as Comcast blithely submits itself as the world's most progressive broadband service provider following its merger with AT&T Broadband, it subjects its subscribers to toothache-caliber anguish as it switches from Excite@Home to its own high-speed data network. But consumer pain is coming less from the understandably difficult technological undertaking of changing to a new network and more from the needlessly arrogant manner in which the cable operator is accomplishing the task. That includes customer service calls that last longer and are less entertaining than the uncut version of “Dances With Wolves.” Comcast aggravated subscriber angst by raising high-speed service fees $5 per month though obviously aware that the Excite@Home switchover already promised a bevy of customer-unfriendly disruptions and difficulties. Then it slathered battery acid on bleeding wounds by hawking grandiose new services enabled by a merged AT&T/Comcast nirvana. Those services specifically include telephony, which ironically depends so much on the reliability currently lacking in the company's high-speed Internet offering. Interestingly, Comcast's nascent love affair with telephony won't be consummated for at least a year. By then, the cable operator correctly assumes, consumers will have digested the bitter aftertaste of today's shoddy high-speed data switchover pill. The question is, will Comcast be able to deliver the telephony goods as promised — and with a lot more on the line than high-speed Internet access — or will this be one more example of hype exceeding performance?