But here’s the dirt: it also has a tiny data cap on its 60 Mbps plan, plus yearly price hikes and not-so-great customer service. So is Mediacom a good internet service provider (ISP)? Let’s dig into the details and find out. There’s a 60 Mbps plan, perfect for couples who just want to binge The Great British Baking Show. In the middle of the pack is a 200 Mbps plan with enough power to keep the kids distracted on Netflix while dad goes wild on Call of Duty after a day of working from home. There’s even a gig (1,000 Mbps) plan that offers more than enough bandwidth for you, your kiddos, and your gamer buddies to all hop online at the same time. To be fair, this is what pretty much every ISP does after you’ve been a customer for so long. Mediacom just happens to be more transparent about it. Still, just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t mean Mediacom has to follow suit. And we sure do hope it decides to soften the blow with smaller price hikes—or better yet, do away with price hikes altogether. Let’s say you grab the Internet 100 plan at a starter price of $39.99 a month. Everything’s fine and dandy until a year later when Mediacom bumps up your monthly bill by $30. When your third year of Mediacom service rolls around, your bill goes up again. Now you’re paying the standard rate of $79.99 a month, and what seemed like a sweet deal to begin with is now a pretty high price to pay for 500 Mbps of download speed. However, CenturyLink’s competitive edge is its unlimited data plans that come with whatever internet package you purchase. Another perk is its contract-free subscription process, which means you don’t have to pay an early termination fee (ETF) if you choose to switch providers at any point during your agreement. If you’re looking to avoid monthly overage costs, or would like the option to try out a new internet service provider (ISP) without having to worry about financial penalties, CenturyLink might be a better choice than Mediacom. In the last few decades, the internet has gone from being a fun novelty to being an essential utility. So having a data cap on your internet can feel like there’s someone threatening to turn off your electricity if use it too often. But we don’t think many of us will go over that 6 TB data cap on Mediacom’s 1Gig plan. (If you do, we’re in awe.) Along with a modem, Mediacom also offers its own Xtream Wi-Fi 360 mesh system. This is a good option for larger homes or anyone who has trouble getting their Wi-Fi to reach every corner of the house. Right now, Mediacom lets you rent the Xtream Wi-Fi mesh system for free for three months, after that it’s only $5.00 a month.
Modem rental fee: $12.00 a month Modem purchase cost: $199.00 Xtream Wi-Fi 360 mesh system rental fee: Free for the first 3 months, $5.00 a month after that.
If you’d like to avoid that fee (and who wouldn’t, honestly), then you can buy your own modem or mesh Wi-Fi system. They aren’t at the bottom of the bucket when it comes to customer satisfaction, but they are pretty low with a score of just 60 out of 100 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s latest report.3 If you do have to call Mediacom, we have some tips for surviving your customer service call without gaining 10 new gray hairs. Just be warned that you’ll likely need to sign into your Mediacom account if you try to get support on its website.
Mediacom customer service phone number: +1-855-633-4226 Twitter:@MediacomSupport Facebook: @mediacomcable
Why we picked it: This is one step up from Mediacom’s lowest speed tier, but for that extra $10.00 a month, you’ll get upload speeds that are twice as fast (going from 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps), and your data cap more than doubles (going from 400 GB to 1,000 GB). Why we picked it: If you’ve got a lot of people using the internet at once, you don’t want to be competing for bandwidth. With 1 Gbps speed, you’ll never need to worry about that. Just watch out for that data cap.
