Xfinity CableCARD Support and Activating New Cable Modem

If you do self activation, you shouldn't have any problems. I mean, I can't make any promises, but I've never heard of self activation of a cable modem ever even touching a cable card.

Now, if you call them up, and get a confused person on the phone, and they touch your account playing with cable modems - all bets are off...

(To answer your specific question, I've done it in the past 6 months, but certainly not in the past couple of weeks, that's going to be a pretty narrow needle to thread)

 

I have done some beta testing with Netgear. I have activated and deactivated several modems with Xfinity this year, some requiring a phone call. At no time did cable cards even come up.
I did have a couple CSR's ask me "who do you use for cells phones" though.

 

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This is comcast... so no guarantees.

Plan A:
If the stars and the moon align, all you have to is disconnect the old cable modem, and connect the new cable modem in it's place. Then you likely need to either reboot your router, or get it to release/renew it's ip address. Then, on any downstream device (if the stars and the moon and pluto align) attempting to go to any web site (like Example Domain), should get kidnapped and redirected to a activation portal. If this doesn't happen, you can manually go to Xfinity Activation . You log in your your xfinity credentials (make sure you know your userid and password, because if they're stored in a password manager, you might not be able to get to them at this moment). And you should be able to click Next, Next, Next, wait for the modem to reboot, wait a little more, and be all set. It's doable, but sometimes, fussy.

I, find the stars and the moon don't always align, and have trouble doing this through routers. So instead of the above, I always:

Plan B:
Disconnect the router completely.
Plug my laptop directly into the new cable modem.
Close all web browsers
ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew when plugged into the new cable modem
Launch a web browser, which has a near 100% chance of being redirected to the captive portal.
Activate on the portal, let it activate and reboot, validate the entire internet works on my laptop.
Then disconnect the laptop, reconnect the router, reboot the router.

I have had to do Plan B often enough, that I just do it that way always. Feel free to ignore all of Plan B, as Plan A really does work for most people on the first try.

Yes. But, you should be able to self-activate back to the old modem if the old modem is still in the supported list.

 

A friend, living in a trailer park, was using an old modem. The feed was Comcast. I gave her a newer modem. When it powered up it displayed a phone number, which asked for the serial number and MAC address. The modem was then fed an update, reset, and went on-line. I think it was a Netgear modem. I have replaced my modem several times and always called my cable feed who transferred me to the ISP. The operation took maybe five minutes.

 

Done both, new modems have nothing to do with CCs on Comcast here, but one Comcast region is not the same as the next.

 

Plan C:

From the phone number on file with you account (having your account number handy is a good idea as a backup in case the association is not automatic) and having the mac address from the back/bottom of the modem, call Comcast and ask to activate a new modem. And while there are billions of things that can go wrong, activating a modem is about as easy and simple as things get for the CSR you talk to. Of course, the CSR typically is going to try to upsell you (I suspect, like many such staff, they get a small bonus if you add/upgrade), but politely decline, and thank them, end the call, and just browse on.



Some people have self activation always work well for them, others seem to almost never have it work. Sometimes if it fails it will work the second/third attempt a few seconds later (I would not be surprised if that is because the system has not yet processed that the original modem is disconnected/offline, and the system will not let you activate a new modem if the original one is still online (this prevents against certain hijacks)). I believe there are some limits on how many times you can change your modem per day using the automated process (so if you have a dozen modems you are trying out, self activation may stop after a few). But the good news is making an actual call seems to work every time (even when you exceed those magic limits).