Review by Cignus Location: Tempe, Maricopa, AZ, USA Cost: $126 per month Install: about 14 days Caps of 1000 gigabytes/month Always have full purchased speed at all times Usage caps seem artificially low Only real game in town if you are a cord cutter

Pre Sales information: Install Co-ordination: Connection Reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

Nov - 2005

I ordered COX 1 week before I moved into my new house. The sales guy was very straight forward with me and was able to answer all of my questions. That was a pleasant surprise from my last ISP.

My HSI and Cable were scheduled to be activated the day I moved into my house. Upon moving in I discovered there were no cable outlets in the house at all (There was a large amount of furniture from the previous owners and they said they had COX). I called COX and they scheduled for a 3rd party contractor to come out and run the lines. That would be the next day.

Next day comes, contractor installs the wires (two outside lines and a wall fish). I call up COX and register my modem. I'm told it will take a while for the HSI to register with my modem by tech support. I goto work and when I come home that night I've still not got a HSI signal. I call up tech support we go through the normal things... nothing is working. I request for a technician to come out. The schedule one for Friday afternoon (this is Tuesday night now)

Friday afternoon shows up and the tech arrives early (he called me ahead of time... both of which were pleasant surprises). I'm not sure what he did since I had a good signal to the modem over the cable line according to his equipment but after 10 minutes I was in business.

That was two months ago and I've been using the living daylights out of my connection with out a problem.

I do alot of gaming and the standard COX service is perfect for me (4 meg down 512 up). I would recommend COX to anyone who moves to Phoenix

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THREE YEARS LATER.... Nov 2008

It's been just under three years that I've had Cox for Internet/Cable TV/ Phone and things are still moving along swimmingly. I upgraded to the "Premium" service level in the summer of '07 and that was a painless experience. I put in the upgrade request to the Cox via their website and I got a email back in 24 hours saying my account had been upgraded please reboot the cable modem.

All of my complaints are directed at their TV service, but this is not the forum for that. I would still recommend Cox internet to anyone who's moving to the Phoenix Metro Area.

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SIX YEARS LATER..... Nov 2011

So now it's 2011 and I sold my previous residence and moved to a new house. The previous owners had used satellite for their TV and who knows what they used for internet. I called Cox to transfer service and wanted to get an additional line pulled for my home office so I requested a pro-install (the house was missing a couple of things for cox service so I figured I may as well have things done right the first time) I schedule my appt for Saturday morning at 8am.

The normal MO for cox is they call you about 15 minutes before they show up and they are 4 times out of 5 at the early end of the appt window in my experience. So 8 AM Saturday rolls around when I don't hear anything by 9:30 AM I call Cox to confirm they have the correct phone number on file and not my Cox phone number. They have my cell phone and I am still with in my appt window so I hang up. I get the 15 minute heads up call 2 minutes later...

So the tech shows up, he's a contractor but seems pretty knowledgeable (I showed him my set up and my basic plans and he made some suggestions to make my life easier which turned out to make my life easier (that's refreshing!!)) So he goes to make the connection and starts tracing the wiring in the house which he quickly describes as "a ghetto fabulous satellite install" pretty quickly he has another guy there toning out lines trying to figure out where the tap is in my neighborhood (that was a solid 20 minutes, turns out the taps in my neighborhood are all mislabeled... awesome!) they finally get a new line pulled from the tap to the house and do two wall fishes for my TV and cable modem so brand new wire across the board (bonus!).

When it's all done and said for HSI, Digital Cable (using a tivo and 2 way card with tuning adapter), and phone service. Total time is about 1.5 hours, not to shabby considering the wall fishes and messed up labeling.

My only gripe is that in my old house there was a box that went on the side of the house for the phone service. I now have one of those combo surfboardV 5222 modems instead of my Surfboard 6120, but that is a minor gripe since I only have the home line for spam calls anyway.

Not a bad experience and I continue to be pleased with Cox's services.

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Almost 9 years later - June 2014

Still with Cox and still satisfied with the internet service. My usage profile has changed since I first got Cox. It used to be a ton of online gaming which has transitioned to a ton of streaming from various sites, with various devices, and always top quality from the service. I work from home 25% of the time and have never had a issue with speed or drops during the day that I've ever noticed (I use a IP phone and am on conference calls all day so I would defiantly notice).

I have made a ton of changes to my account I dropped phone in 2012 and TV in the first part of 2014 and haven't looked back. On the "premier" internet level I've had no problems. That being said I at most have one or two streams/downloads going and don't share my connection with a bunch of other people.

At this point in time I would still recommend Cox to anyone moving to the area. The area I'm living in is in the Google Fiber footprint (if Phoenix/Tempe/Scottsdale) is selected. So if Google Fiber happens I will be seriously evaluating my options.

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Almost 11 years later - June 2016

Let's call it 11 years with Cox, still Internet only still having good consistent service. No real changes from the last two updates, still in the same house paying for the pro-install in 2011 was worth it still as I'm approaching 5 years in the house and still have had zero issues with the line or quality.

Cox has been pulling fiber in my part of Tempe for the better part of 9 months so in theory we should be getting fiber to the house here in the 85283/85284 zip codes.... However I'm not holding my breath and figure we will see DOCSIS 3.1 at some point. Not thrilled but not disappointed either.

The biggest changes to service have been on Cox's side around usage caps... everyone gets up in arms about them, but honestly so long as I'm not getting throttled while I'm under the usage cap I really don't care. Right now the usage cap for me is 1TB a month on a 300MB line... I average 650GB to 750GB a month and that is with a heavy streaming profile. I just purchased a 4K tv so it will be interesting to see how much additional bandwidth I use. And given that so far Cox has a history or soft enforcement of caps I don't really care.

AS for switching... well CL maxes out at 40MB at my address so not happening... In theory I should be in a footprint for a google fiber hood, however since it's been almost two years since google fiber announced their intentions to come to Phoenix/Tempe/Scottsdale and there hasn't been a peep since my hopes are not high. So I stay with Cox for now and maybe one day Google will bring competition.

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14 years later - September 2019

So since the last review gigabit has come to my neighborhood along with usage caps. The gigabit is the standard Docsis 3.1 for Cox and while it has been stable the speed tests are all over the map from 995 megabit to downaround 450 megabit using the dslreports.com testing app. Other speed test apps show variability in speed as well, but not to the extent that dslreports does. In day to day usage though I don't notice any real speed difference with the only thing I do that really tests my line is the occasional Steam download.

The only issue I had since 2016 was a splitter going bad in my attic that I forgot was there (from the original house install in 2011), which required a truck roll. And once that got removed things went back to just working.

I'm keeping an eye on the wireless ISP's with 5G that are supposedly coming down the pipe in the next year or two, but until then I'm still rolling with Cox.

Still recommend, still use it, still no major complaints.

sam green @68.2.105.x sam green Anon 2014-Jul-4 2:23 pm how about elephant in the room - data caps The price you pay for capped internet is egregious. Not just that - COX Communiactions are actively pushing people into ordering overpriced business bundles by capping internet. With the speed they provide it takes less than a day to exhaust it. It's a classic monopoly, when cable TV company also happens to sell internet. They are not interested in making people use more. They are not offering plan with double data for extra 5 bucks. "Increasing" data cap with buying next tier is but a gimmick: price is much higher, the data cap - just a little bit. And they are not offering you to only pay for data cap increase. What they are interested in is selling more TV subscriptions. So while the service per se is pretty good, the business practices they have would make me get away from them the very moment viable alternative shows up. 2014-Jul-4 2:23 pm: · hey mods ·
	thornnnn join:2002-02-14 North Kingstown, RI thornnnn Member 2014-Jul-20 4:24 am Re: how about elephant in the room - data caps cox cap 250/300/400 GB .. verizon fios caps 10 TB .. its not even close.. you can hit cox cap in a few hours .. I have no idea how long it would take to hit verizons cap. I wonder what the caps are in japan or korea.. modern nations? 2014-Jul-20 4:24 am: · hey mods ·
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