Time Warner wants to replace my cable modem

[Grateful11]

Just got an email that says they want to replace my modem at no charge.
Is this a good idea or bad, it might be a conspiracy :wall:. There's nothing
wrong with the one I have except it's about 4 or 5 years old.

[mikeylikesit]

It's Time Warner; that can't be good for you.

[StingMe]

May be planning a speed increase - older modems can't keep up. If you're happy with the current performance then there's no need to trade the old one in.

[rz]

I've had to replace my cable modem with them a few times. The first time it was because it would freeze for about 30 seconds a couple of times a day. Took 2 replacements to get one that didn't have the same problem.

Last time was when the wiring to my house needed to be replaced. The service guy came in to test it, and told me that the modem I had was several generations old, and he gave me a "new" one. The only difference I can tell is that the new modem is physically smaller than the old one. I haven't noticed any speed improvement.

[Big Daddy Cool]

ask them why they are replacing it and with which model(s). Then do your research.

[MacMagus]

If it's that old, it's possible that it doesn't support modern standards, which could give you a substantial speed increase.

OTOH, I agree with the sentiment that anything TW wants you to do can't be good for you.

[mikebw]

You old modem probably only supports DOCSIS 1.0, which limits transfer speeds to 38,000/10,000 kbit/s. DOCSIS 2 or even 3.0 would allow more bandwidth- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths

[BernDog]

They upgraded our network here a while back (cable one). I'm not up on the tech, but whatever. I was having connection problems, so I called tech support and they said I was supposed to have brought in my old modem for an exchange several months earlier. Swapped it out and problems solved. No faster speed, but I suppose the new system would allow that to increase in the future (whenever it's worth it to them to flip the switch).

As a side note, it's nice that they have no problem sending messages to my cable box or email when there's something they're trying to sell me, but for this, they only put a small note at the bottom of the bill for one month. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who missed it.

[mattkime]

let them swap it.