Foreign.

Welcome to around the House with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

Whether you're tackling a DIY project, hiring it out, or just trying to keep your home running smoothly, you're in the right place.

With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends, and the latest innovations for your home.

Home.

It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

Eric G. Had a chance to sit down and discuss some ways to save some money on your cell phone bill with our friends at Comcast.

If you caught our midweek special podcast last week, this is the full interview that you didn't get on the podcast.

Here is Eric G. Welcome to the.

Around the House show, your trusted source for everything to do with your home.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today.

And today we are going to dive into our lifestyles, technology, everything that we're doing around that makes our life a little bit easier.

I got Rigo from Comcast Xfinity brother.

Welcome to around the House.

Oh, Eric, thank you so much for having me.

Delighted to be here.

We're coming up again on the holidays and the timing just feels too perfect.

So thank you for having me, man.

I tell you what, you guys, in full disclosure for everybody out there, you guys have lent me a phone to use to play around with, and quite frankly, I'm impressed.

I've been a full disclosure.

I've been an AT&T customer my entire life.

I think since before it was singular and AT and T and stuff.

And yours works a little bit better.

Works a little bit better.

And I'm that's being kind to my AT&T people over there.

But I tell you what, there's a lot of things, there's a lot of advantages that I found going when I got them right next to each other.

It don't lie.

Oh, that's music to my ears and to to all the folks here that work hard at Xfinity, because that's exactly what we love to hear from our customers.

E. So glad to hear it.

And no doubt there's a lot of great options out there, but we do believe in our product and that it's a differentiated product and that it's the best one out there.

I think what's cool is you guys do such a great job of combining your massive network out there as well as with the phone carrier coverage, because there's only so many towers out there across the U.S. you guys are on a brand's towers.

But really how it seamlessly meshes with the basic online stuff that you see on the stores and the retail locations and even the houses in the neighborhood.

You can have a lot better coverage just from that seamlessly working within each other.

That's exactly right, Eric.

And if you don't mind, I'd love to share a little bit of what's happening behind the scenes here to make that work.

Let's do it.

Yeah.

It's a little bit of what we call WI FI offloading.

And it's this process of shifting mobile data traffic that's on the cellular networks and onto WI FI connections.

And what happens when we do this?

It helps reduce congestion with the cellular networks, which gives customers such as yourself faster and more reliable connectivity, especially in areas where we have the strong WI FI coverage.

Man, I tell you what, I was at a concert and of course concerts are horrible for trying to do anything on a wifi on a connection over the top of a. I don't care what network you're on, it's overloaded.

It's overloaded dozens of times a year.

You're putting way too many people on a cell tower.

It's just the kind of the Achilles heel of a system.

But when there's a.

You guys have a WI FI spot there, it can snag.

It changes the game all of a sudden.

Oh wow.

I could actually live stream part of this concert if I wanted to.

Where there's not a chance that's going to work together on anybody's cell network in most cases.

Oh, you're spot on and hits close to home, or my old home, I should say.

I lived in Pioneer Square, right near Lumen Field and of great concerts.

Right.

And that's exactly what would happen to a lot of folks.

And you can see them walking around trying to get signal and it's gridlock.

And so this is where our Xfinity Mobile Power Boost comes in.

That's a unique feature that takes WI fi offloading to the next level.

And when you're on Power Boost, you're able to get 1 gigabit per second over WI Fi.

So this means customers can enjoy the ultra fast performance.

Performance for streaming, gaming or video calls or just as you described it, when you're out that you can actually stream it while everyone else could be struggling.

Yeah, And I caught myself because even though I am an Xfinity customer, when I pay my bill, it's not like this is some paid segment here.

But the thing is with me, my att, Apple Phone does not work well because of the way AT and T has it set up to do that.

Offloading.

Right.

It's always not working right.

It's never jamming on the right stuff.

You guys have got that engineered.

So it works well because those other guys don't.

And I'll say that just as a customer, it's frustrating.

There's times I have to go in and turn my WI FI off and I'm trying to force it to work.

Not with you guys.

That phone just kept smooth, just smoothly working through that.

And it was impressive.

Yeah, Seamless connectivity.

That's what we're after when it comes to power boost.

So whether you're at home or you're on the go, we want customers to stay connected through the Xfinity, through Xfinity's extensive WI FI network.

And that's exactly it.

You shouldn't feel any kind of pain when it comes to this.

It should be just like you're walking around.

It should be no issue at all.

Getting seamless is what we're after and we're very happy to hear that.

That's exactly what it's been for you.

And I know other customers, man, I tell you what.

And I used to live in Seattle, now I live down in Portland.

But I tell you what.

Yeah.

Coming out of a Hawks game, trying to text pictures or a video to a buddy is not going to happen, you know.

No, absolutely not.

Right.

You, you could, I can't tell you how many times, just even walking around, not attending the game.

But they're in Pioneer Square.

And anytime you have just congestion of, or density of folks hanging, walking around, hanging around, you're going to feel that.

And this is where the advantage comes in again, a power boost.

And one of the things, one of the data points I want to throw out there, we've done a lot of research and here's what the Data tells us.

94% of the devices connect via WI Fi.

So this is why it's so critical.

It's too important to make sure one, we have a great gateway and whole home coverage, but we also want to make sure we have that on the go.

This is why we're going to continue to make investments in this space.

I want to just throw out a fun fact.

I know you're down in Portland.

I don't have that number, but we have 100,000 free hotspots in Washington alone and that number is growing daily.

You know, let's shoot back 10 years and we'll talk about your guys network because I use it heavily.

I'm a kind of a power user on the residential side because I'm doing video and this kind of thing all the time.

So I always go for a little bit faster connection.

But it is absolutely amazing what you guys have been able to do with coaxial cable out there to get speeds because I've got a super fast.

I actually got faster network speed here than my neighbor across the street that's got carbon fiber and I'm on Comcast cable.

So it's amazing how you guys have taken technology and advanced it so far and they're continuing to do that because the speeds keep getting better and better.

That's right.

And it's a lot of that has to do with the investments in our gateway in the home we're after.

Not just certainly we're making investments in our infrastructure and we always have to continue to make improvements there.

We believe we have the best network, but it really comes down to how it feel how that WI fi works in your home.

And so the investments have been on in that gateway.

We want to make sure that customers have the best experience in the home.

Whether they're in one of the bedrooms or they're in the garage or wherever they are, they have to have the best WI FI experience.

And that's what we really lean on when it overall, when it comes to the network.

It's making sure we have great WI fi.

And what's cool with that is that's the foundation for what you guys have done with the cellular coverage.

Because if that's not working right, then of course, when you jump onto some to a hotspot WI fi location, if that's not working great, you're still in the same boat of not having a great connection.

But with that speed and bandwidth, it seems it makes.

It makes it work really seamlessly.

That's exactly right.

And that's what customers have told us.

You mentioned a little bit of that pain point you had with one of our competitors.

That's exactly what we hear from customers, and that's why we've made these investments, is we want folks walking out there and we don't want them to even think about it.

They need to be focused on enjoying the experience, whether it's a concert or a game.

And just to be able to use that handheld device seamlessly and not think twice about, oh, why is it slow?

Or why isn't it transferring over?

And to your point earlier, around how much the technology has advanced in the last several years, it is amazing.

I recall those Moments of having some of those challenges of, hey, why is it not trying to make a WI fi call?

And it's just, it was so clunky.

And that's been.

Our mission is let's solve that.

Let's make sure that's as easy as possible for the customer.

Yeah.

And even the web access from the phone, because we use our phone so many different ways now.

It's not only are we using it for directions, but we're sitting there looking up the latest gas prices on the app or we're messaging back to somebody that, hey, here's our.

Here's my location.

I'm on my way there.

There's so many different uses and it's so amazing when I look at how much WI fi I actually use versus cell coverage on our phones.

To find out more, head to aroundthehouse online.com around the house will be right back.

What's up?

This is Sticks it in Ya and.

Satchel from Steel Panther.

And you are listening to around the.

House with Eric G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should, too.

1987.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

Now let's get back to the conversation with Rigo Tapiti from Comcast and continue the conversation about technology and saving some serious money on your cell phone bill.

Again, there's a new app for that.

That's exactly right.

And there's.

You just reminded me of sometimes car rides or when we're on the go.

We could be simultaneously doing four things at once.

You could be using your navigation, you could be looking up restaurant and everything else you just described.

So it.

That's why it's so important to make sure that we have these hotspots because there's a lot happening on the device.

We need to make sure that WI fi, that connection is just perfect.

Again, we're just doing more at once, more simultaneously than ever before.

Or that most frustrating part, when you go to use that app that you haven't used in a month or two because you're using it for special situations like traveling or whatever, and you go to hit it, it goes, oh, I have to update first.

And when you've got one bar out in the middle of nowhere, you're like, I don't know if this is going to work.

Yeah.

So you get stuck.

Yeah.

You just reminded me of my last trip I went out to.

Was it Cannon Beach?

And I was out hanging out in Oregon, my first time there.

Beautiful, by the way.

And I read.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's funny when you're out at Cannon beach, like that same kind of thing.

The other one that's most frustrating.

And I'm an Apple user, right?

So that's what I have on my everyday carry phone.

But I have so much stuff on there.

Everything's in the cloud.

I go to press to show someone a video that I did and it's frozen for five minutes trying to pull down the video off the cellular network.

And it's another pain point as I'm nervously standing there going, give this a minute.

And everybody else goes, I hate the icloud for that because now it's, you gotta wait there two or three minutes for it to play.

And you're like, I was just trying to show a video.

You nailed it.

We're in this new age of having things on servers, right?

Whether it be Apple, the Apple cloud, or I have Google Drive.

And there's nothing more frustrating than when you run into that you want to.

You're hanging out with your family, you want to show them something and it's just not connecting, right.

Because of the congestion or the cellular network just can't keep.

But when you're on the power boost, that's the benefit.

You're going to see that seamlessly.

It's going to feel just like you're at home on your own network.

And again, that's.

It's to make sure that everyone can feel great about those special moments when you're having lunch with a friend and you don't get to see their friend too often.

And it should just be a great experience no matter what.

There's nothing worth trying to flag down the waiter, waitress or whoever's serving you and saying, do you guys have a WI FI password here?

Yeah.

And then security.

Now you have to worry about security too.

You log on to some of these networks and you don't really know what you're accepting, right?

And you don't know who's on there behind the scenes.

That's something you just won't have to worry about when you're with Power Boost, right?

That's all that all protects your data, it protects your phone.

And you just reminded me how many times are we going to restaurants now?

And they're digital menus, right?

There's a QR code and you go there, right?

So we're using that more and more and that's not going to stop.

It's only going to continue to be.

We're going to continue, continue to use that more and more.

And I'm seeing it more and more common that I'll Just say that the guy sitting in the corner of the bar with his laptop open or coffee shop and he's got a mirrored WI fi signal to what's in the coffee shop.

And wow, that was easy.

Got into that one.

And now they have full access at times into your system.

So you need to be very careful with what you're clicking on out there.

Yeah.

It is a new age, I think, to your point.

I loved your point earlier around how much we've evolved with technology and connectivity.

But we all also know that brings other challenges.

Right.

And that we're in this age now where we have to really be mindful about what networks we connect to and protecting our data.

There's just so much now coming up and it's not to scare us or anything.

It's just a reality.

And that's why we love our product is you're not going to have to worry about any of that.

You're.

You don't have to worry about that.

You know, that potential person in the coffee shop doing what they might be doing.

Hey, forget it all.

Throw it out the window.

If you're on power boost, you're protected.

Don't even.

You don't even think about it.

Man.

That is a good way to go.

And you guys offer way all the phones out there as well.

I'm a. I'm an Apple guy, so I was trying to learn the, I guess the Samsung way of things with the phone that you guys sent, which is a little learning curve.

It's two languages.

When you're.

Let's call Apple French and Samsung Galaxy World of things out there as English, you gotta learn some language things on there because they completely work differently.

They do.

And I'm a Android user myself.

I cheat.

I have Apple for work.

I have Android for personal.

But you're right, they are like two different languages.

And that's one of the things we really focused on is in our retail experience.

We've expanded our retail stores throughout the Pacific Northwest, both in Washington and Oregon.

We're now up to 64 retail locations.

And the reason I bring this up is it's all about the experience.

We get customers walking through our doors every day that are longtime Apple loyalists or longtime Android loyalists, but they're interested in trying something else.

And one of the benefits is when you come into our store, we'll sit down with you, we'll make sure that everything gets transferred over carefully and that it's as seamless as possible for you to transition to trying that out.

We know it's not easy.

Again, we're all creatures of habit.

So when you go through that kind of change, we want to be there to support you and help you.

Yeah, I know, it's.

I don't know, once you get into that language, it's so easy to be like, okay, now I'm sucked in.

And brands do that.

Of course they do.

They want to, they want to do that.

Once they get you, they want to keep you.

So I get that that's a smart business model for them.

But, but somebody that uses a PC all day.

And then I learned Apple, it's one of those things.

I don't do Apple at work.

But I tell you what, it's nice to have that.

But I totally get the Android things thing of things because it's so versatile compared to the box that Apple is working in.

So there's plus minuses.

You nailed it.

And I think that you, if you go and ask a hundred people, you might get a hundred different things.

But ultimately when I.

That's the way I look at it too, Eric, is it just, it's a little.

Android is a little more versatile, but if you really like, you know, simplicity and just a certain, what I call consistency, Apple may be the way to go.

I think it just comes down to the individual and what kind of works better for their rhythm.

For me, I again, I enjoy both, but I tend to lean a little more on the Android side.

Yeah, I get that, I get that.

And there's.

And the other thing is too is that it seems like the Android side has a few more apps and stuff out there because sure, Apple's got a death grip on that.

That's what they.

Yeah, there's a little more flexibility.

Exactly, exactly.

But nonetheless it makes it really easy.

And then I've noticed how you guys really combine things together.

So now you're taking the residential Internet bill or cable bill depending on what everybody's plan is, whether they're streaming or if they've got the full on package of every movie, every TV channel.

And then you're putting your cell phone plan within that and it really gives a pretty good package with one company.

You know, that's been.

Our mission is to offer up what we call the total home solution.

But now adding in, having that mobility tied to it, we know how important that is and we really at the core it's our Xfinity Internet product in home.

But tied to that we know is very important is also entertainment.

Right.

Television.

We offer protection with our Xfinity home service, whether it's Self monitored or we offer a monitored service as well.

And with new technology coming out, Eric, that, that we call WI FI detection, more to come here.

But what's exciting about this is there, there is a new technology that will allow devices in your home that are connected to your WI fi to be able to alert you about what's happening surrounding your home.

To find out more, head to aroundthe house online.com around the house will be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

We would love to hear from you.

Have a question or comment, hit us up on social media or our website aroundthehouse online.com now let's get back to the conversation with Rigo Topiti from Comcast and continue the conversation about technology and saving some serious money on your cell phone bill.

So you're going to start, I'm giving you a sneak, sneak peek.

It's early, we haven't sent too much out yet.

Technology.

I was the home, I was the, the smart home tech speaker for the national association of Home Builders.

And so there is some amazing stuff with this.

Using that same technology you can actually, if you've got grandma in the house alone, you could actually use that to detect falls, for instance.

With that losing privacy, you, you know.

That it's big thumbs up.

I have a 90 year old grandmother who I just love and care so, so dearly and that's a real thing, right.

We want to make sure that she's safe.

She has it in her home and those are the kind of those that's the benefit of this technology, right?

It's protect and help also let us know if something goes wrong and we can check in on her.

She, she's absolutely for it because it helps also make her feel safe.

But that's the great benefit of this technology.

The other thing I'd call out is just going back to our earlier point around protection.

You know, it's the same thing, right?

We got folks, you want to have a secure WI FI network.

This isn't just a dumb pipe, right?

Our service, we've invested so much into our infrastructure and ensure that everything is properly encrypted to protect our users.

That's what it's about.

We don't, we, it's a smart pipe to ensure no one can get into your, into your data.

Because again that's where we're headed now.

Right.

Folks are now shifting as we have more and more of our information online we tend to see folks go after some of those soft spots and that's why it's critical to have secure service in the home.

And I'll.

I got a new one here for you.

I have.

I had in my last house that I just sold, two of the cameras, just the camera only not monitored, but two cameras out in front, kind of by my front door and one in front of my driveway.

When my house was on the market, I could hear what is.

What does every person do when they come.

Walk through your house that's on the market?

They walk through the house, they walk out in front in the driveway and they have the conversation with the realtor of what they like and what they don't like and even what they might offer.

And your microphones are really clear.

I could hear every discussion coming out of that.

Now.

We fully disclosed we had cameras on the outside of it.

But human nature is human nature.

And I learned more about what people liked and what they didn't like and what they thought the house was worth before they had even left the property.

It was kind of funny.

That's awesome.

You know what?

I didn't even think of that.

I haven't sold a home recently.

Congratulations, by the way, on that.

Data is so powerful, right?

How you collect data and it helps us.

I'm sure you made some adjustments based on what you were hearing.

And I had a notebook that I would just sit there and bring it up and go back on the.

Have my phone out.

I just go on the app, go back and go, okay, here's where they start talking because it's marked clearly on the app.

And put my headphones in.

And if I even wanted to cheat, I would just download that and throw it in my AI transcriber and it would transcribe it for me real quick.

And then I could just read through it, but you'd see what the comments were.

Real lifetime.

It was pretty funny.

Oh, that's hilarious.

But I love that.

Super smart on your end.

And that's another piece, right?

You think of AI and how that's taken off and it's all tied to connectivity.

Right.

And we're all.

Everything is designed.

Technology is designed to just make things easier.

So that's another piece that I thank you for bringing that up.

The benefit of AI, but it's all tied to how well you're connected to it.

It's only going to work as good as your conn.

So great.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

And AI is going to be again as we as apps change.

You know, if you notice over the last few weeks, as you're using Google and Edge, all of a sudden they're really pushing the.

Do you want to search using our AI platform?

And all of that stuff takes bandwidth and if you don't have it, you don't have it.

And it's gonna, it's gonna cost in the user experience personally if you don't.

So it's more and more important.

It's not.

It's kind of like when I was a kid and we had aol, right.

You did all you could within the bandwidth and otherwise it was just a really slow day.

Yeah, I remember those days.

The dial up AOL connection.

Oh my God, how patient were we?

Oh my.

And then remember when it would just.

It would kick you off like you were.

It felt like it was going smooth and then all of a sudden you had to reset it and, And.

Oh man.

Yeah, somebody was calling on the phone and was trying to get a hold of my mom and I was a kid and we had the one phone line in the house and he'd been tied up.

The phone.

Well, yeah, yeah, I'm with you.

I, I was in that kind of home too.

We had one line and it was, there was always some.

A little bit of shouting back and forth.

You're tying up the line.

I got a call coming in from grandma or from someone else and.

Oh yeah, and here we are now, now with AI and a lot of people are scared of it out there.

And I always just say when you're scared of something, play around with a little bit so you understand it, you know it.

You can really get some great information.

Of course it's not 100% truth.

It's doing the best at finding stuff, but every month it's getting smarter and smarter and it can save you.

I was using it trying to find out history of my dad because he worked for the government and wasn't always clear exactly what his job was.

And so I got into a conversation on my cell phone with Grok going back and forth and sure enough I found out more stuff about my dad that I'd never know.

My family didn't even know, but that could dig deep and that would have saved.

That would have taken me days of research and in 20 minutes I had way more information than I had before.

So there's some great uses for it out there.

Of course it's scary.

It's just like when the Internet was coming on.

It's scary, but it's going to change and speed things up a bit for us too.

I completely agree with you and I hear the same out there.

The echoes around the uncertainty and the fear around it.

But I think that's what comes with any new technology.

I was having this conversation with my mother recently and she for the first time started dabbling a little bit with it and she's like, hey, but I just, you know, is it safe?

And will my.

Will someone take this information?

And I think we're in this learning stage, but I really talked to her about embracing the technology, learning through it and I.

We haven't even scratched the surface, right?

And I'm no expert in this space, but really love to tell people about embracing technology because there's ultimately going to be, there's an opportunity that comes with it to grow from it.

And this whatever reminds me of too is we just, with all of this, all this new technology coming, the demand on bandwidth, the on making sure we have the right amount of capacity, that's what we've been working on too, Eric, is we know there's companies out there that are making big investments to continue to add, build up their servers.

But all this is capacity.

Right.

And we have to continue to make investments there.

We're in a great position today.

We feel we're the leader in that space.

But we also know what's ahead.

Have to continue to make those investments.

Man, it's so funny.

And I'll say this, and this is not just because you're here.

Like my mom's house, she's late 80s and in her house there is not.

You guys aren't in her regional area.

So another cable company comes in there.

I walk into her house and oh, I just had the cable.

They put a new box in and I look at it, I'm like, I had this box with you guys like 15 years ago, 20 years ago.

And I'm like, oh, it's that old remote, that old silver remote.

Okay, that's new.

It's shocking at how many other companies out there that are other competitors of yours that are just using that dirt slow old technology and they're still throwing a band aid on it and kicking it out the door where you guys every couple years have the latest, newest, greatest stuff.

That's fast.

Yeah.

Thank you for sharing that.

It breaks my heart when I see that box you just described with the old silver remote.

At one time it was great.

When it was back 10 year, it was, it was the, it was the newest and the latest and the greatest.

But we've come such a long way when it comes to equipment especially tied to entertainment or wi fi.

And I see that on the Y, on the Internet side as well by the way.

I've been my travels.

I have family throughout the country and some of the areas where we don't service.

I have family out in Texas and there's a good part of Texas we don't service.

Here in the Dallas metro they have some equipment that's just so dated they're not even on Wi Fi.

Wi Fi 6.

Right.

So they're on our old docs's legacy equipment.

And it just breaks my heart because the technology further we're so further ahead.

But some companies out there, I won't call it call out any specifically.

Yeah, I'm not here to bash people but it's just, it's a fair comparison.

Like in Cannon beats same thing.

Not close.

It is dirt slow.

To find out more, head to aroundthehouse online.com John and Eric would love to hear from you.

Send them a message on the website aroundthehouse online.com around the house.

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All right.

Welcome back to the around the house show.

We would love to hear from you.

Have a question or comment, hit us up on social media or our website aroundthehouse online dot com.

Now let's wrap the conversation with Rigo Topit from.

Com and get back to Eric and John.

Exactly.

And so we can't do that to our customers.

Our customers expect the latest and greatest.

We have to make those investments.

We know that it doesn't.

It's quite an investment.

But it's the right thing to do because that's what customers are looking for.

They want to make sure they have what's the newest and we have to keep up with that.

Yeah.

When your data speeds haven't changed in a decade, you might be slightly behind the curve.

And I'm just going to say that to the other people out there, you might be slightly.

It's like somebody going, hey, thanks for signing up with us.

Here's your brand new iPhone 4.

Enjoy it.

Yeah, that's right.

And one of the things we started to do, we start to send these emails out to our customers.

For any of our existing customers out there and any of your subscribers, they probably have received this where we send you a report card essentially on your network on how it's working.

We send you updates on when we upgrade your speeds at no additional cost through the investments.

That's what you should expect.

Haven't.

If you haven't.

If you're on the to your point, if you haven't had an upgrade or a speed in 10 years we should be asking why, what's, what's, why are we not making enhancements or investments we want and we feel we still have an opportunity to even do more of that, which we will, but it's so important to continue to make those investments there as well.

Yeah.

And guys out there, if you are Comcast affinity customers, and I'll tell you this, and sorry to give away a bunch of your boxes, but if you've got equipment that's four or five years old in there, head down to your local Xfinity store and get it upgraded because you're missing out on the latest and greatest.

So make sure you've got upgraded equipment because I tell you what, it's a game changing difference.

When you get into that stuff where you're Quad View and some of this other stuff that you can watch for your favorite football games on Sunday or.

Whatever you're doing, you're spot on, Eric.

We've started some trials of proactively reaching out to our customers and encouraging exactly what you just said is to, to bring in their equipment into our local to their local Xfinity store.

We have great teammates there ready to take care of you, walk you through the whole process and ensure that you walk out of there and set up a box with it seamlessly.

So when you get home, it's ready to go.

But we want you all to bring in your old equipment to get the latest and greatest.

I tell you what, not having to run coax cable and having those wifi TV boxes, I haven't had to use my cutter sit in a long time because I don't have to worry about sitting there making custom cables and doing my own install, which I can do.

But it's like nice to be able to just plug it and go.

It'll fit right there.

I have to run cable under the crawlspace and out.

Oh, I remember those days.

I've moved around quite a bit in the company.

I won't bore you through my journey, but I spent a couple of years in technical operations and not an easy thing.

So I'm right with you, Eric.

So excited about the enhancements there.

I still remember putting on the ends.

Doesn't surprise me that you figured out a way to do that very effectively.

I just want a little bit of your background.

But yeah, we've come a long way.

Yeah, it's nice.

And again we were starting out talking about phones, but this is all that background base stuff that makes that so reliable that it just really helps.

And boy, it's sure nice not Having to look around in a restaurant and go, what's the WI fi in here?

What's going on?

Trying to figure out the passcodes.

What works?

Yeah.

If you're on Xfinity Mobile, you'll never have to worry about that.

Forget about that.

It's not even going to be on your mind ever again.

Man, I love it.

Mine's a little old, so about halfway through the day now it's doing that.

It's paid for.

So halfway through the day it's going.

You could charge me.

Oh, yeah, it's.

You get.

It's a creature of habit.

It's charged all night.

But again, smartwatch is another one of those health things that's really smart.

And I wanted to get a smartwatch because if I fell and for the safety, some of these things in the safety, from heart monitoring to exercise to how much you're moving to fall safety, if you fall and don't react, it can actually call your emergency contact.

Again, safety stuff's key for me.

I love that you call that out because think about what's also changing in the health space.

Right.

Rings are out there, watches and you name it, that's so important to us.

And that's what technology offers.

And by the way, that all ties to what connectivity.

And so it goes back again.

Health data, all of that.

You wanted to be.

You wanted to be protected.

We feel we're again in a great position now and we're making investments to be in the same great position in the future for all of our customers.

Man, that is awesome.

That is awesome.

And yeah, I mean that smart space is just getting started and you might as well get prepared for Black Friday.

It might be time for me to switch over.

Now.

You got me thinking that's a pretty good deal.

Cause my phone's almost paid for.

I'm like, okay, okay, might be the time to do it.

Please bring.

Consider it.

Because we have some great deals with what we call the tips where you get.

We.

You get an extra payout during this period because of the deal on top of what you would have received under the normal window or of time throughout the year.

So if there was any time and you've been thinking about it, pop on in into one of our Xfinity stores.

And that's why we keep opening, opening those up because our customers love them.

And these are mobile experts that are going to make it easy for you to upgrade your phone or switch from the other carriers.

And I tell you what, guys, no reason to jump on.

I want 800 number call you guys up when you can just walk in and deal with somebody face to face, and they handle it.

To me, I'm old school like that.

I'd much rather just walk in and have a smiley face, deal with it with me and work through it and leave with whatever I need versus the other way around.

So for me, that's the best way.

Those stores are awesome.

Awesome.

Yeah.

That's my style, too, Eric.

We know.

Yeah.

The folks can certainly go on to xfinity.com or call 1-800-XFINITY.

But I'm a little what I would describe as old school myself.

And I like to walk in, lay down on the table, and let the experts do the work.

That's what they're trained for.

While you can sit back and relax, watch a game or whatever we have on the TV that you want to watch, we'll take care of you.

That's awesome, Rigo.

Thanks for coming on today, brother.

I really appreciate it.

And, guys, there's the hot breaking news there with that sale.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

Thanks you so much, Eric, again, for having me.

You're doing such a great job here and just appreciate you giving us some time.

No problem, brother.

I appreciate it, Johnny.

I love talking to the guys over there at Comcast Xfinity, but it also sounds like a sponsored segment, even though it's not.

I just like saving people some money.

And quite frankly, I'm going to do the same name.

So I'm going to switch over and get rid of my at&t.

Sorry.

At&t.

Because it's going to save me a few grand a month, a year, just on switching over.

So that's going to save me a couple bucks.

Yeah, that's where the loyalty lies is to your wallet, my friend.

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is, man.

Speaking about loyalty, I was.

We only got a minute or two before we run out of time here, but I was really shocked today.

I found out reading the Cheap Tricks Live at Budokan was not recorded in Budokan.

Did you know that?

I did know that.

Oh, man.

I had no idea that was in Osaka.

And the Budokan tape sucked.

Oh, no.

We've all been taken for a ride for the last 50 years.

My childhood is broken now.

Oh, wait a minute.

It already was.

I'm like, I've been lied to for since I was a child.

Just put that head back in the sand and pretend you never heard that.

Because when I hear the crowd, I like to believe it's Budokan.

Just leave it at that.

Yeah.

If it has been for 50 years.

Doggone it, it's.

It is.

Okay.

Okay, well, ship.

We'll write the ship.

It's still Budokan.

This is how American history works.

We just say stuff and then it's history.

That's how it was.

History again.

You know that's right.

We've changed so much history in the past that the wisdom of John Dudley again for the win.

That's all I got, brother.

That's it.

I wanted to thank everybody out there as we go out here to break.

And this has been a really big weekend here, and I just want to thank all of our listeners in Portland, our new hometown station, our old hometown station, for tuning in on FM News 101, KXL.

You know this to you guys that didn't hear the first hour of the show here, I just want to say thank you for tuning back in.

It is so nice to be hungry.

You know, this show around the House started on KXL when It was an AM channel back in 1988.

So that is where the roots were.

And it went from 88 all the way to 2019.

And then when Alpha Media went through its troubles, they got rid of all the weekend stuff.

We changed over to Salem Media.

They were gents to us over there and they had been nothing but awesome.

But when my buddy Mark came back over as the new GM over there, he invited us back over.

And it is so nice to be back home over there where the roots of around the House, where it's nice to be back home again and all is right in the world with that and it feels good to be doing it.

And it's post Budokan, so we're safe.

Exactly.

So we're safe.

No revisionist history needed there.

These are real roots we're talking about, kids.

Yep.

Nothing fake about that.

And hey, guys, we want to hear your feedback as well.

If there's something that you want to hear from us or you want to hear us talk about, make sure you send us a note over over@aroundthehouse online.com.

we really would love to hear from you.

And we've got so many episodes up there on the podcast.

If you're listening on the radio and you're catching us for the first time, dive into the Wayback machine.

There's thousands of episodes out there for you to take a look at.

So if there's a subject that you want to hear, you can just search and find it there on your favorite podcast player.

Johnny, thanks for coming on today.

Man love doing this stuff.

And what a great early December holiday kind of episode here.

Celebrating coming back on the air in Portland.

I appreciate it.

Here we go.

Thanks, brother.

I'm Eric G. And for Johnny D, you've been listening to around the House.