 Review by jsimmons 
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 3374 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Falls Church,Fairfax,VA
 $42 per month
 about 1 days
 "Courteous sales; Fast install; Worked 1st time"
 "None so far"
 "I'm pleasantly surprised."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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Background
I've been on DSL for 5 years. ISP is Earthlink on a Covad provisioned DSL circuit using a Verizon dedicated loop. I have been paying $49.95 a month for 1.5 Mbit/384Kbit and to be honest the price was a bit steep given current broadband pricing. Earthlink offered me a price reduction to $39.95 if I'd re-up for another year commitment. Earthlink now gives new customers 3 Mbit service for the same $39.95 price but because I'm on an old dedicated DSL loop, they will not upgrade me (policy), and besides, my distance from the CO is 16,000 feet, so I don't qualify for anything more than 1.5 Mbit anyway. So DSL is a dead end for me, and FIOS is not yet an option.
Last fall, in an effort to save a few bucks, I gave Verizon DSL a shot. Verizon was pushing $29.95 for "the same" 1.5 Mbit service, and no contract for current phone customers. But once the service was installed, the highest speed they could get on my line was 860/128. And ping times were high because of the way they provisioned my circuit. So this was a non-starter for me. I cancelled that service within 3 days.
Last week I received a promotional offer from Cox in the mail offering their 4 Megabit High Speed Internet service (HSI) for $39.95 with no CATV services required. Since I am satisfied with Satellite TV, I decided to give Cox a try for internet service.
The Process
I called the sales office on 5/9/05. The very helpful sales rep took the order, set me up with an email account, PIN, and scheduled a hookup for Tuesday 5/10/05. I decided to stop by the local office and pick up a self install kit and do the install myself. I had been a Cox CATV customer some years back and my cable lines inside the house were still in tact.
On Tuesday 5/10/05 I got home and checked the pole out front... Sometime during the day, Cox had stopped by (as promised) and connected the main cable line to the underground line leading to my house. I patched my inside cable to the outside line, connected the cable modem and presto.. It synced right up.
I plugged in my PC, went throught the Fast Connect web site to get registered, and I was online. I then reconfiged my router/firewall settings from DSL to Cable, plugged the router into the cable modem, rebooted the router and modem and in another 2 minutes, my home network was fully functional on Cox. I reconfigured my email clients and setup was complete. The whole process took less than 30 minutes.
I then ran a quick speed test and was getting 4.6 Mbit down / 512 Kbit up. Very fast. Pings to first hop were 11 ms. Pings all the way to dslreports.com were 17 ms!!
Conclusion
What more can I say. So far its been a very smooth ride. I'll update this after I've been online for a month. If the service remains consistently good, I'll cancel my DSL in a week or so.
--Update 8/21/05--
Still very smooth sailing. No outages to speak of (except during the wee hours of the morning when maintenance was being performed). I did cancel DSL and no looking back.
Speeds were recently upgraded to 5 Mbit/2 Mbit and I'm consistently getting closer to 6 Mbit down and 1.5 Mbit up. Very nice.
As a result of the good service and reliability of the HSI, I've just ordered digital phone service as well. Adios Verizon.
--Update 5/24/2007--
Just had my 2-year anniversary with Cox HSI. Still loving it. Price has increased by $2 a month, but speeds have also increased significantly and powerboost has been added to the network. Reliability is super... seldom any outages. I've bumped the tech support rating up to highest level now. A recent problem that required a truck-roll to fix was done on the same day I called. Also, there is a large contingent of Cox sanctioned techs who participate in the DSLR Cox forum and are always willing to help those who post there.
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