It seems to work fine for me in MA. Comcast does change their rates and packages so only a teenager has the attention span and patience to understand it all.

I believe you still lose the automatic ID to the emergency operator when dialing 911 which might be important for children and/or their babysitters.

I have it in Maine and haven't had any issues at all. I also have high speed internet and digital cable. It is a significant savings over the phone company. 911 works for us (I know because I dialed it accidentally once, meant to dial 411).

When you call to get a bundled plan no matter what they offer ask if they can do better. And when the plan runs out (they are often for 1 year) do it again.

In most major cities, emergency police, fire, and medical services can be reached by dialing 911. Enhanced 911 (E911) automatically provides the emergency service with your telephone number and location when you dial 911 from your home phone. Comcast Digital Voice service may have E911 limitations specified below:
 In order for your 911 calls to be properly directed to emergency services, Comcast must have your correct service address. If you move Comcast Digital Voice service to a different address without Comcast approval, 911 calls may be directed to the wrong emergency authority, may transmit the wrong address, and/or Comcast Digital Voice service (including 911) may fail altogether.
 Comcast Digital Voice service uses the electrical power in your home. If there is an electrical power outage, 911 calling may be interrupted if the battery backup in the associated multimedia terminal adapter is not installed, fails, or is exhausted after several hours.
 Calls, including calls to 911, may or may not be completed if there is a problem with network facilities, including network congestion, network/equipment/power failure, or another technical problem.
 Prior to changing your address, or if you have any 911-related questions, please call 1-800-COMCAST. Comcast will need several business days to update your service address in the E911 system.

Alarm monitoring services generally prefer regular telco service over VoIP, which what Comcast provides, despite their marketing efforts to call it something else. Keep this in mind if you are planning an alarm system.

Regular telephone service will be hands down more reliable than any form of VoIP. If you have at least one regular dial phone on the line, it will continue to work during a power failure, usually for several hours at a minimum, sometimes indefinitely. No bets on how long Comcast service will stay up.

You may not save as much money as you think with Comcast. Most places have fairly low tariffed telephone rates available. You just have to say no to all the telco up selling of services like enhanced caller ID, call waiting, etc., etc.

thanks for the follow up. Being a VOIP service my main concern with their phone service was whether or not there is a delay in hearing the voice from the person you are talking with. My understanding is Comcast uses their own internet pathways...so there is no delay, at least that's what they explained...but just wanted to get other's experience.

Regarding the 911 feature... I was told depending on what carrier's service you're using, some 991 calls go to a remote station and they in turn would call the local authorities .... where as the comcast rep I talked with told me a 911 call with their service is more direct to your local authority (if I have that correct).... my main concern though was with the voice quality... sounds like it's good.
Thanks

My only comment about Comcast is they have announced they want to take over NBC, subject to regulatory approval. That will give them access to the creation of shows, as well as the ability to kill antenna broadcasting forcing those who want NBC shows to buy cable. Your local NBC affiliate is also very concerned, Comcast could kill them by not providing a broadcast signal.

"some 991 calls go to a remote station and they in turn would call the local authorities .... "

Adding another chance for errors and delay.

Who cares about minutes when seconds count?

I would never rely on VOIP or POTS for an alarm. Too easy for someone to cut the line. Don't most people get wireless backup?

"I would never rely on VOIP or POTS for an alarm. Too easy for someone to cut the line."

Many very sophisticated alarm systems use the internet for continuous monitoring.

Any dropout for more than a few minutes IS an alarm.

The monitoring station and alarm panel are in continuous contact over the internet using a secure link.

We use POTS for the internet backup, but there are no phone lines external to the building besides the fiber that feeds the telecom room.
The whole room is controlled by the phone company and contains their equipment to break out the fiber.

Monitoring runs about $150 a month but we are protecting some very classified material and equipment.

Brickeye,
I am curious about this. If your internet goes out they treat it like an alarm? Do they really take this seriously? I mean, the alarm monitoring company calls the police and tells them the internet connection has been lost so they should send a call to check it out? Will the police take that seriously? I'm doubtful. Especially during the winter when phone/cable/power outages are common. And if it has to be out for a few minutes before the alarm sounds, what type of response time would you be looking at? If I can save the wireless charges I'd love to, so I'm wondering what you think.

. where as the comcast rep I talked with told me a 911 call with their service is more direct to your local authority (if I have that correct).

If the homeowner calls 911 on the phone, the call is routed to the appropriate local government emergency dispatch center. If you have telco POTS service, the routing is completely automatic. If you have any form of VoIP, you must make sure your VoIP provider knows what your residence address is.

In the case of Comcast, they are both the VoIP and broadband provider, so they know where you are automatically. Then question then becomes, which is more reliable, the telco or Comcast. The telcos have been in the voice game far longer than Comcast and are very experienced with this sort of thing, having had a hand in the development of the 911 system.

Comcast is new to voice and has little experience. Their voice calls are routed over the Internet, with contention and delay issues. The telco's voice calls are circuit switched over dedicated lines. They are much more reliable.

Excepting sophisticated alarm services not routinely available to or used by the average homeowner, all the alarm monitoring companies do basically the same thing.

Upon an alarm indication, they call the residence the alarm came from. If nobody answers, or if someone answers and gives a duress code or doesn't know the all-ok code word, the alarm company then calls the police at the customer provided regular police administrative number. They do not call 911.

I have had cable-company-provided (Knology) home telephone service for over 10 years and have never had any problems. Phone service and call quality is exactly the same as POTS, from my perspective. I even had a power company monitor for time-of-use metering, and the VoIP service that I had was fine for that use as well. Most of my neighbors, many with alarm systems, had similar service from either Knology or Comcast (we had a choice of providers).

I too was thinking of switching to cable-based phone service. What equipment/wiring is involved? Will I need an adapter to plug my phones into cable outlets, or new phones, or something? Is there any downside? What I like about POTS is that the couple times a year that the power goes out, the POTS still works for emergency calls and whatnot.

As far as non-POTS service goes, you get a battery backup that is good for 8 hours. If you lose power, as we have had happen, for days at a time, the battery backup is insufficient. Of course, if you have a generator to take care of power loss, battery backup is a non-issue.

As far as non-POTS service goes, you get a battery backup that is good for 8 hours. If you lose power, as we have had happen, for days at a time, the battery backup is insufficient. Of course, if you have a generator to take care of power loss, battery backup is a non-issue.

Non-POTS providers do not have the same battery capabilities as the telcos. Telephone exchanges run on batteries, with float chargers keeping them up. Exchanges usually also have back up generators.

If you are not close to the exchange, you will be connected to the POTS line through a Remote Terminal, a large box or boxes containing telephone equipment, which will also contain a number of batteries.

If your "telephone" service comes through a cable connection, you will find the cable company only has minimal battery capacity in its repeaters. Anything but a very short outage is likely to put your telephone out of service.

The battery backup for your non-POTS service is installed in your house. That is an 8 hour battery. The battery backup for the provider is another issue entirely.

The battery backup for your non-POTS service is installed in your house. That is an 8 hour battery. The battery backup for the provider is another issue entirely.

And if either one fails during a power outage, you have no telephone service. If the cable provider's battery fails in any of the units in the chain between the cable company's head end equipment and your home, your eight hour battery will do you no good, since your cable service will be out.

No cable service, no phone.

Don't you all have cell phones? Are you REALLY worried about telephone service if it's out for longer than 8 hours? Won't you have bigger issues if that's the case (heat/AC and refrigeration come to mind). Plus, if your electrical service is really that spotty, you might need to consider a larger backup generator anyway. I mean, really, when was the last time you had a significant power outage and needed to be on the phone and couldn't use your cell? For me, it was during a hurricane... but EVERYTHING was down, so it didn't really matter.

As for using cable phone service, to the consumer, it's exactly the same as POTS. Just plug your phone into a telephone jack in the wall. The cable company comes out and installs some equipment outside of your house that converts the signal. It's not like Vonage where you need a converter for each phone or something like that.

It is exactly like Vonage. It is VoIP, just like Vonage. Don't let Comcast's weasel wording fool you.