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Review by Rakeesh See Profile

  • Location: Phoenix, Maricopa, AZ, USA
  • Cost: $120 per month (12 month contract)
Pretty much the usual fare for cable ISPs these days
Very expensive
If you have a local competitor, consider switching to them as Cox doesn't provide a good value
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

--- Update 02/02/2020 ---

Since the below reviews, I've been on Cox's fiber service after yet another move, witnessed that get capped to 1TB, and since gone back to CenturyLink fiber once they finished deploying it to my new neighborhood. Both offer GPON service, though Cox puts you on a cable modem RFoG unless you specifically request otherwise, and of course, the 1TB cap regardless of your choice.

Cox charges $120 a month, plus another $50 if you want no data cap. Cox also wants a 1 year contract.

CenturyLink charges $65 a month, price for life guarantee at the time I signed up, still $65 a month for new customers but without price for life though. No contract in either case.

Effectively Cox costs $105 more per month than CenturyLink for equivalent speed. Though in my experience, CenturyLink fiber is more reliable, has practically non-existent jitter, and so far appears to have better peering.

---Older Review Follows---

Soo...Cox has fallen way behind other ISPs. They've now become one of the most expensive cable ISPs in the US on a per meg basis. This is especially true now that they cap your data at 1TB, which is pretty much worthless if you like to do a lot of streaming or game downloads. You can gain back the service you already had a year ago with no cap, but it'll cost you another $50 a month. Their (rather bad) gig service features a very small upload capacity (35mbit.) While many ISPs offer $85 a month gig service, with a full gig upload even, Cox charges around $120 for a rather inferior (in terms of latency and reliability) coax connection. Plus if you want unlimited data (which is probably necessary with a gig tier,) you have to fork out another $50 as well, so you're looking at $170 a month. Compare to centurylink fiber, which is $85 a month after all fees, symmetric gig. AT&T fiber in other states is $80 for the same, Google Fiber is $70 for the same, Ting is $60, and you can actually find many ISPs around the US with similar pricing. So effectively you pay more than twice as much for an inferior copper service with Cox.

And that's just for their internet service. Their TV service...You'll pay insanely high prices for cable box rental fees, even their basic boxes are such power hogs that they'll make your house hotter in the summer, and it uses 60 watts 24/7, even while it is doing nothing. Compare to my Nvidia Shield TV which uses 10 watt while at full tilt and 1 watt on standby. Don't get me started on their contour and DVR boxes; they're much worse, and they're super expensive. You can get practically all of your content from internet based services for much less money, so why on earth would you subscribe to this?

Used to be Cox was pretty well liked on dslreports, but nowadays they're pretty well hated here, which is very well deserved.

---Older review follows---

Update (June 21st 2014)

About this time last year I unsubbed to TV entirely. No satellite either. I presently only subscribe to the 50/10 internet tier and it works quite well. The total bill, after all fees and everything, is $59 a month after a 20% discount that lasts an entire year. All things considered, I do believe Cox is ahead of the curve when it comes to ISP reliability and performance. While they aren't a Google Fiber, I do overall feel that the service is worth the price, but this is mainly because in the area I live in, the bar is pretty low.

Should another ISP ever come around, I'll update the review, but for now they're decent so long as you don't subscribe to their TV service. If you MUST have cable TV, I strongly urge you to consider satellite instead.

---Old review follows---

I am on the 27/5mbit package, and the internet connection itself is decent. However, to get a good price you have to bundle with another one of their services.

This is lame because their cable service is downright crappy. If DVRs existed in the 80's, they would closely resemble what cox has now. I think cox just figured "hey, they'll take whatever DVR we give them and won't know the difference" so they just picked the crappiest one they could find.

You'd figure "I could go cablecard and use my own DVR, right?" Well, sort of, but not really. They provide really crappy tuning adapters that are very flaky, so some of your channels can disappear at random. Plus, they blanket flag all channels as copy once, so custom DVR solutions (e.g. HTPC) will be near worthless if your goal is whole home functionality. Most cable providers don't do this, but if you have the misfortune of being with cox...well, I'm sorry.

Also their installers have no idea what the hell they are doing when it comes to cablecards. Had I not been a technically minded person, we never would have gotten them set up proper.

member for 12.3 years, 1647 visits, last login: 1 year ago
updated 4.1 years ago


kfw
join:2001-11-20
Norman, OK

kfw

Member

Cox Cable

The programing is terrible and I hate the 2006 DVR's they give us (with 2008 software). These people think we are idoits. I am fixing unbundle go for DIRECTV. At least I will have a better selections. The way they stack 3 progams and let you record only 2 sucks. COX NEEDS TO UPGRADE THIER EQUIPMENT). Sory I had to get that out.... COX TV = Garbage for progaming I paid good money to watch and have to watch again. It gets boring...
Rob_
Premium Member
join:2008-07-16
Mary Esther, FL

Rob_

Premium Member

Re: Cox Cable

Agree, just don't expect direct tv to work in a rainstorm. Many people are returning their crappy hardware.

-Rob
Rakeesh
join:2011-10-30
Phoenix, AZ

Rakeesh

Member

Re: Cox Cable

I used to have directv, never had any issues with rainstorms unless they were REALLY bad, and even then the outage wouldn't last long. You can easily get around that problem by using a bigger dish. Up north (canada) they use 24" dishes just to get a proper signal at all on ku band. Just use one of those down south and you'll never have any problems.

I've had more cable outages with cox than I had with directv. That is, hardly any worth mentioning.

Also, directv and dish both offer VASTLY superior equipment to cox. Cox DVR's have a ridiculously slow user interface and all sorts of bugs. I think they picked the cheapest brand available and just thought "hey, it has the letters DVR, that means they'll love it no matter how much of a POS it really is."

kfw
join:2001-11-20
Norman, OK

kfw

Member

Re: Cox Cable

Rakish, Thanks for your comment, my Dad has Direct TV and loves it so much he cut off the cable company providing him with all his services. He uses Radio Internet instead of AT&T DSL that never got fixed...

Local Cox keeps getting more expensive and more of the basic goes into the top set boxes... Cox's choices of DVR are just stupid. I know of technology that reads between the signals to gives your local and expanded services. I am watching cable companies suing these people. If the outcome is good, (we know the cable companies put an enormous amount of money resisting this.) We just might get what we want at a cheaper price. COX raised their prices here again and I am dreading just looking at the bill, much less paying it…
sparky007
join:2011-08-25
Phoenix, AZ

sparky007

Member

Hold on.

That's a good deal on the internet.. Hold on when your discount runs out.