Contrary to past tech-support posts, I’m asking you a question, rather than answering one. I have Comcast high-speed Internet service at my home. We recently moved, and so I called Comcast to transfer the service to the new address, which happens to be about 100 feet away from the old one. Of course Comcast wasn’t able to make the transfer as quickly as I needed it done, so I was in a bit of a bind.
So on a whim, I took my cable box from the old address to the new one, and connected it to a coaxial cable coming into the new place, and what do you know, it works! The thing is, I don’t know why it’s working, or whether it might suddenly stop working at any moment.
I do have a few theories:
1. Service follows the box, not the physical address. That is, perhaps all cables remain active once they’re connected, and so the cable at the new address was always on, and when I connected my box it worked because my box is “active” in Comcast’s database and it doesn’t really care where it’s connected from. Perhaps if I didn’t pay my bill the box would stop working regardless of what cable I plugged it into.
2. The previous tenant hasn’t canceled their service yet, or Comcast simply hasn’t turned it off yet, even though it was canceled. In this case, I would be getting “free” service although I could be cut off at any moment. However, since the previous tenant moved out 2-3 months ago, it seems like the service would already have been disconnected if it were going to be. Then again, it is Comcast, and what incentive to do they have to turn the cable off? It costs them money to turn it off, but it costs them nothing to leave it on.
3. They already updated the physical address in their database, so the service has already been rerouted at the software level to the new place, even though nobody has come out to do anything physically. I find this highly doubtful, because I connected the box within 24 hours and I have a hard time believing Comcast could do anything that quickly. I know for sure that nobody has physically been to the new address to do anything.
4. Dark magic.
Does anyone know the answer as to why my Internet connection is working?
I don’t think they send techs to turn stuff off. I moved into a house a few months after nobody had lived in it. A few months later I plugged in my TV and the cable worked (which i cancelled). they then came and turned it off.
The cable had basically been “turned on” for six months.
I know of many cases where the basic cable service remains “on” when there is no cable box. In this case one can connect the cable directly to the TV to receive basic cable service.
i wish someone knew the answers to your questions. i’m trying to figure out the same thing. i want to use my cable box at someone elses house for one night to watch pay per view. they just have basic cable service.
I too just moved one city over have not transferred my comcast yet and plugged in my digital boxes and they do get the same service package i had before including hbo however only one line into house works so i had to split all boxes off that and the little boxes do not work only the big boxes so i am also clueless as to why the landlord swears it hasnt been used up here in 2 yrs as old tenant used satelite am i safe or when i cancel mine will this quit too?
Any clues?
Hi,
I know this is an old post, but…
I have Optimum at my house and I have Optimum for Internet only at my store about one mile from my home.
For this past super bowl, I had to work the store, so I took one of my cable boxes from the house and connected it at the store. Only basic channels would come in on the box (good for the SB cause it was on network tv) but every other channel had the on screen message telling me to call to order that channel.
Modern cable boxes are like network devices so I was under the impression that they are addressed by ip or Mac address. However, I now think it has to do with how they route the data over their networks… If your move was short (like the 100feet mentioned above) then the box may have been on the same part of the network (thus the system did not perceive that the box had actually “move” anywhere.
My 1 mile move (actually into the next town over) may have put the box on a different part of the network and thus the system wasn’t “looking” for it there and as such the box wasn’t getting the “ok” to receive channels.
Side note: when I reconnected at home, I had to call to deactivate the box. The box had lost is programming either because of the move, or because I took a while to reconnect. (I kept it at the store for a few weeks.)