Originally Posted By: HangFire
Originally Posted By: madRiver
If you use xfinity for home phone service you cannot buy one and must rent.
I was told this lie as well, and believed it for a month or two. I was about to ditch the Xfinity service altogether and suddenly my Arris Surfboard became OK again. Ran like that for a year, Xfinity services ran fine.
Finally got Netflix, OTA antennas, cut the cord and now all that's left is the Surfboard for Internet. One of the happiest days of my life, returning that rental modem I never wanted- along with 3 TV's worth of settop boxes, and all the fees that went with them.
Ok, here is how Time Warner/Spectrum does it. Probably the same for comcast.
If you have VOIP phone with them, you have to use one of their modems. However, they can not charge you for it, if you have your own modem for data.
The setup I had was an Arris modem I purchased for data. It was split with coax into an identical Arris modem owned by Time warner, this was known as the "phone modem" and I paid nothing for it.
If you remote into the phone modem you will see they have all the wifi functions turned off on it, unless you pay them the lease service.
The arris modem/router combos are junk anyways. Recommend your own AC router no matter what you do.
So the tech was correct, you need to use their equipment for Phone, but they can not charge you for it, if you provide your own data modem.
We ditched all their services, but internet, and went to Ooma for phone, and it has been perfect for $5 per month.