The waiting period for installation was
approximately 2 weeks, December 9, 1998. Splitting the cable in my
apartment and installing the Lancity modem went quickly, but it took the
software installer nearly an hour to configure the ethernet card; he said
the particular brand was difficult compared to other brands. Once
installed, it worked flawlessly for about three months, until early March.
Since then there have been numerous brief outages, mostly with the athome
server for cached content in Ontario. Usually, but not always, it is still
possible to connect to the Internet even if the athome server is down.
There have been a few outages related to the cable signal proper (one can
tell by the modem diagnostic lights), but all-in-all, it is well worth the
monthly fee of about $C40.00. I recently (last night!) installed a utility
that measures upload and download speed; cached content from athome often
measures more than 1000 kbits per sec. I live in an older part of town, but
the cable infrastructure is new hybrid fibre optic / coaxial. I think that
is a key aspect to this system..a modern two- way symetrical
infrastructure.  They claim a theoretical 10Mbs in both directions. Of
course, this is not possible with consumer grade 10 Base T ethernet cards.
What you do experience is far superior to any telephone dial up system,
however. Some other points: it has no effect on cable television reception
whatsoever; the telephone system is not involved at all; there are no fax
capabilities via a cable modem system, so if you need fax, you will have to
retain a telephone line.