Mediacom Internet Review: Customers Call It “Fast” and “Stable”

You initially get a good deal from Mediacom during the first year of service with discounted rates. After that, prices double (or more) and you lose the autopay and paperless credits. This isn’t ideal, but it's a fairly common practice to get a limited term of discounted prices from any internet provider, and you still get fast speeds.

The drawback of these plans is that only the 1Gbps plan or the Xtream Connect plan offers unlimited data, so if you’re on the 250Mbps or 500Mbps plan, you have to pay $10 for each additional block of 50GB data you using, even if you only go over your data cap by 1GB.

There is also the Xtream Connect plan catered towards low-income households that need cheaper plans especially since the Affordable Connectivity Program ended. Households that qualify for federal benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and Tribal Assistance Programs may apply for this discounted internet plan with free installation. At $28.99 per month, it’s not the cheapest internet available, but it offers greater speeds and reliability than a 5G home internet plan. You can also cut down the cost with the Lifeline program.

Mediacom performs below average in HighSpeedInternet.com’s Customer Satisfaction Survey, and poorly in the 2024 American Customer Satisfaction Index compared to other non-fiber internet providers. The reasons contributing to these results could be the steep price hikes after the first year, the extra fees, and variable service.

“Techs sent to the hinge have always been friendly,” says Reddit user TheHillPerson, who commented on a Reviews.org post. However, the customer service phone line has left more to be desired. “When we've had intermittent neighborhood issues, I was unsure if the issues were directly related to my service or not. The techs were unable to comprehend the question of if my drops coincide with the neighborhood issues or not,” they write. “They just kept saying there's a neighborhood issue right now.”

Another customer, Nate Harvey, an operations manager in Des Moines, Iowa, has switched back to Mediacom after a two-year stint on CenturyLink, which was much slower. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” he says. Eventually, he hopes to switch to Metronet. 

When it comes to interacting with customer service, beyond the usual phone and web-based chat support, Mediacom offers a text service called Molli, a chatbot that can connect you to a live agent and answer customer service queries. “It was pretty easy. You tell Molli what you need, and eventually you get to an agent,” says P.J. Villaflor, who has previously texted Molli to get reimbursements when his service was offline, as well as when he wanted to downgrade his plan to a slower speed. “I don’t have to call or look for a number, it’s always on my phone so if I have to get a hold of someone it’s pretty swift.”

How long it took to get a real human on the phone: It took 30 seconds to get through the automated phone tree, and then immediately to a live agent.

How the chat service is: Straightforward and fast.

Mediacom is a decent cable provider, but it seems a little disingenuous to offer promotional prices that are half of the actual normal price. This increase will be a deal  breaker for some customers’ budgets, but you could downgrade speeds after the promotional period is over to save on your monthly bill. 

Overall, you get good speeds out of Mediacom, but you’d be better off with a fiber provider if one is available. If that’s not possible, make sure you buy your own router to save you from the monthly router rental fee. “The biggest thing that improved our service was purchasing an aftermarket router and a whole-home mesh system,” Harvey advises.