Keith Graham

I have been paying $10 a month to the cable company to rent our cable modem for 30 years. I never got around to replacing the old modem and returning it and I feel stupid.
Today I finally replaced the modem. I bought a $50 replacement for my modem from Amazon. I got the same brand and model number in order to prevent any problems, but that isn’t really necessary. I could have upgrade to a faster more modern modem, but that might have caused issues. I do not play online games where modem speed is an issue. I simply browse the web.
I received the new modem a few days ago and today I went into the cellar and unplugged the old modem and plugged all of them into the new modem.
Problems:
I did not get any internet. I read the instructions on the cable company’s website carefully and wrote down my account number and other information. I was supposed to type in a special URL that would let me register the new modem.
It turns out that you have to wait 10 minutes for the cable company to realize that you have a new modem plugged in.
Once I waited, the URL popped up, I plugged in my account number and then after another long wait, the system told me that it had found me. I pressed a continue button and then the new modem initialized and I had a new modem working.
Things to know:
The modem is not your cable box. It is a smaller box that is connected to cable coming into the house. It is connected to your WiFi router via a yellow (usually yellow, anyway) network cable.
In my case I have what is known as a “telephony” modem where I plug my telephone cable into. Some people don’t use their cable company for telephone access and won’t have this kind of modem.
Usually the cable signal comes into the house on a COAX cable. If you have a cable box for TV then you have a splitter that sends part of the signal to the cable box and half to the modem. This should have been done when the cable was installed, but be aware of it.
I have 30 days to return the old modem to the cable company so I won’t be charged rent for it. I will hold on to the old cable box for a week or so, just to be sure that everything works.