Back last July, my cable company started charging a $6.00 per month cable fee (which the bill mentioned was $5 less than $11 per month! I’m not paying more! I’m saving money!) After that, a lot of people bought their own cable modem.
After a few months, they raised it to $11 per month (which as the bill pointed out is $2.50 cheaper than $13.50 per month. More savings!) Even more people bought cable modems. Now, my cable company is charging a $2.50 per month Network Improvement Fee. Can’t get out of that one.
You need to make sure your modem is compatible with your cable network. I did this by checking my cable company’s website which lead me to a page that showed four compatible models. Three of those were no longer made, and the other was a DOCSIS 2.0 model that could give me a maximum throughput of 60mbs.
I then went to Amazon looked at various models, and read the comments and the answer to customer questions whether a particular model worked with my provider. I ended up with a TP-LINK DOCSIS 3.0 (16x4) mode for $50 that should get me a maximum of 680mbs.
The final step is connecting your modem to your cable. Many cable comanies can do this automatically. You just plug the modem in. Not with my cable provider. Two hours trying to get to a customer service person on the phone, then listening to that person tell me the advantages of renting, and finally waiting four more hours waiting for my cable company to configure whatever they needed to configure for my modem to work.