Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First let me say that this unit will not ship with the battery although the web-site will say battery included under product details unless by now Amazon has changed the website. The good news is that when I called Amazon to report this they were kind enough to ship me the battery at no cost and that is one of the reasons I am a loyal Amazon customer. Good customer service. Now for the Infinity TG862G-CT here is what I know: 1. This is the only 'retail' residential gateway you can purchase IF you have telephone and internet from Comcast. I verified this through both Comcast and Arris. Basically you are going to pay for the Wi-Fi and 4 port router whether you use it or not. In my case I use a separate NETGEAR Nighthawk Wireless 4 port router which has proven to be an excellent performer. 2. Your individual experience with Comcast on this is highly dependent on the agent you get. My experience was both good and bad and very time consuming. You might as well hook up the unit which is the easy part of the entire experience since it takes you maybe one minute to put your connections in. At this point you will have neither phone nor internet and you will be calling Comcast hopefully on your cell phone. They will need some serial numbers from you and then they will 'provision' the device. I had tried to call before I disconnected my old one but it seems Comcast wants to make it as difficult as possible. Having a cell phone to call Comcast is key. 3. Arris will tell you that when you speak to Comcast and it is time to configure how you want the residential gateway regarding the Wi-Fi portion you are going to need to ask Comcast to speak to a Level 2 or Level 3 Technician. In my case I did not want the Wi-Fi on at all and simply wanted the unit to function as a 'bridge' to my NETGEAR Nighthawk. Sure enough until I could get a regular agent to transfer me to a Level 2 Technician it was like communicating with an alien. Once I was connected to a Level 2 Technician everything went along much better as we were speaking the same language and he knew exactly what was required. It turns out that only Comcast on their end can make this unit function as a 'bridge' unit. You will not be working with software on your end trying to make this happen so actually that is a good thing. It probably took 30 minutes for the Technician to call me back on my Comcast landline phone once he had taken all the information down. So then my phones were working and the light on the unit said the unit was online so I hung up and went to my wireless devices and my hardwired desktop only to find that none of them were working. So I called the Arris technical hotline because you get through to that immediately and that technician was very helpful and after some complicated troubleshooting he determined that although my phone functioned normally my internet had not been properly 'provisioned'. So back to Comcast and this time just a regular agent was able to 'provision' it properly and bingo we had internet. 4. If you do use the unit as a 'bridge' unit for internet (and I assume most people will because there is no way this will be much of a wireless unit unless you are standing next to it) then Arris recommends that you use ONLY one of the four ports on the back of the unit. So in the end I replaced my leased, older, simple unit which did everything fine but cost $10 per month which in my case meant I had paid Comcast $600 for the previous five years. You are not allowed by Comcast to purchase a 'retail' unit that is simple and would provide phone and internet. 2 minutes to install it physically and way over an hour on the phone with Comcast and Arris to get it to function properly. There was a certain satisfaction with walking into the Comcast Service Center and getting my receipt for their simple unit and ending my $10 per month charge. Does it make sense to purchase this for $200? Flip a coin. It will take me 20 months to break even assuming I stay with Comcast. The unit I turned in was certainly very profitable for Comcast. Five stars to Amazon for their customer service. Four stars for this unit for two reasons: 1. You are forced to take a Wi-Fi capable unit even if you don't want one and 2. $200 is a high price.