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Review by scottct1  - Location: Newington,Hartford,CT
- Cost: $99 per month
Good "Been Mostly Reliable over the past 12 years!"
Bad "Silly Bandwidth Cap"
Overall "I feel that its a great value for what your getting"
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We have been with Cox Internet for over 12 years and over those 12 years we have only had minor issues. We did get knocked offline for a week when that freak snowstorm hit a few years ago. Other then that it's been smooth sailing.
We recently upgraded our service from the Cox Premiere Plan to the Cox Ultimate Plan not to get the higher speeds but because we got the letter we were over the bandwidth cap. My son makes a lot of Minecraft Videos for Youtube which uses a lot of bandwidth, plus I have been having work done on my house so I have been watching my home security cameras from work a lot.
Upgrading to The Ultimate Package was a pain in the butt as they wanted to charge me $60 to send a tech out. I told them no way was I paying $60 for a tech to come out and tell me my levels are fine then leave. So COX canceled my order.  I came here to BBR and bitched and the good folks from COX helped me so I was not charged for the Tech Call. And yes the TWO techs got to my house and asked what was wrong and I told them I wanted to upgrade to the Ultimate Plan, they asked me what my current plan was and I told them the Premiere plan, and they said that there was no need for a tech to come out for that as if my modem was good enough for Premiere then i was good to go to Ultimate. They made a call and had my modem re-provisioned and soon I was getting over 60 Mbps.
(Note if your looking to upgrade for the faster speeds, I should note that other then running speed tests you would never know you were on a 60Mbps connection as the pages and everything still loads as fast as when I had the 30 Mbps service. The reason for this is most sites are capped so your not going to get faster speeds from them.)
One thing that upsets me about going to Ultimate, is I notice that other areas COX serves have faster server for their Ultimate Tier, for example Rhode Island's speed is 100 Mbps, Las Vegas top speed is 150 Mbps. Yet we are all paying the same thing for the ultimate tier. Come on COX and show Connecticut some love.
Another thing I find strange is COX offers its Ultimate Subscribers UNLIMITED offsite backup service, but its not UNLIMITED as storage to COX's Offsite Backup service is counted against your bandwidth cap. If you try using their backup service you will quickly find yourself going over this cap.
Every year of so we look around for new Internet provider options, but no one in our area comes close in matching the services we get from COX Internet. We had Uverse come to our house the other day telling us that Fiber Optics was now available in my Neighborhood and I could not enjoy speeds of up to 20MB down... when I told him I had COX's 50 MB service he knew I would be downgrading if I moved.
So overall I am very happy with COX. I would like to see a boost of the speeds to match other areas since we are paying the same thing and would love for COX to increase the bandwidth cap as well. We are starting to enjoy streaming video and movies, and this use is only going to pick up in the future.
Update - 10/1/2013
Today COX upgraded the speeds in the Connecticut area, my speeds have gone from 60 Mbps to 177 Mbps. Very NICE! 
member for 11.6 years, 261 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 4 days ago
Comments:
 Rob_Premium
join:2008-07-16
Mary Esther, FL | The Silly Bandwidth CrAP That's there for one thing, to protect their video income, which is stupid. I'd like to see data CrAPs become illegal in both the phone/cable/mobile industry. Your paying for internet, not for a restriction
-Rob | |
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| Review by chuckkk - Location: Warner Robins,Houston,GA
- Cost: $69 per month
- Install: about 7 days
Good "High speed transfer, fairly reliable."
Bad "Very occasional serious drops in data transfer, intermittent long ping times, etc."
Overall "Connection Quality improved, ~56Mbps download speeds"
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The modem log still is filled with "Unicast Maintance Ranging T3 timeout errors, and the "DHCP Renew Warning Field Invalid" errors. This makes the model log sort of useless for diagnosing intermittent problems. You would think Cox has had enough time to correct the problem.
A recent go-around with customer service sort of forced me to replace the old Doc Sys 3 modem with a new one. Naturally, as usual, that proved that the underlying problem was with the CMTS, not anything at my location.
As to the cable TV side - - Frequent multiple commercials, copy once flags, and high prices. If the competing local cable company ever gets it's internet service up to "modern standards" I'll seriously consider switching back to them. In general cable TV service from cox is very reliable, although pushed updates and so forth often occur in the wee hours, and can cause outages during the process.
The commercial quantity is such that I'm seriously dropping all but basic tv.
member for 11.9 years, 1157 visits, last login: 12 days ago
updated 12 days ago
Comments:
| | Local cable company TV. Cox internet. I think you can use your competing local cable company for TV and Cox for internet. | |
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| Review by KahunaNui - Location: Fayetteville,Washington,AR
- Cost Contract price not specified.
Good "Amazing Customer Service - Speed and Consistency (Stability) are pretty much excellent"
Bad "Like any broadband, when it's down you're toast. They all should offer a dialup option as part of the package for down times. "
Overall "Best provider we've come across yet (and we've been through quite a few in a LOT of different locals). "
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We've been all over with all kinds of ISPs and so far, they've been the best.
Every time we've dealt with TS they've been extremely responsive and fixed whatever is wrong.
Never experienced what we have with so many others ("Must be user error...") They actually
admit when something is amiss! Amazing.
One thing that could make them even better if they offered a dialup option when Internet is down.
Realize this is not the norm, and mainly DSL providers have done this in the past, but nevertheless
like any other broadband, when you are down you are TOAST.
Another thing that would be nice is to get CREDIT for never going over their set bandwidth maximum!
HOW ABOUT ROLLOVER on Gigabytes NOT USED?!
The only thing I can comment on installation-wise, sometime afterward when connection mysteriously
slowed to a crawl, they took the time and resources to correct internal [wiring] problems!
That was all I was present for, and found that to be amazing as well. Now the majority of the time
the connection ROCKS.
member for 13.4 years, 267 visits, last login: 17 days ago
updated 17 days ago
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| Review by donurs - Location: Irvine,Orange,CA
- Cost: $60 per month
Good "Stable & reliable connection. Speeds regularly upgraded."
Bad "None."
Overall "One of the best."
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Have been a continuous user of Cox Communication's services (Digital Suite) since 1998. They have made major strides in keeping up with technology changes and are a very dependable ISP. All services are extremely stable and customer service is awesome.
member for 12 years, 905 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 17 days ago
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| Review by vraeden - Location: Gainesville,Alachua,FL
- Cost: $69 per month
Good "When it works properly, it's fast."
Bad "Lower Level Customer Support doesn't know computers and doesn't care"
Overall "Knock on neighbors door and ask to do a speedtest when you think you'll use the internet the most."
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Update 3: September 17th, 2013. Three years ago, I moved to Northwest Gainesville. After getting the wires replaced in the house, the speed was phenomenal...until this month. Now, I'm dealing with the exact same issues I was dealing with prior in the review. Low level tech support that doesn't know how a computer works...low speeds during peak hours, high speeds when I need to be asleep. Avoid if you can find something in your area. DO NOT SIGN A CONTRACT. They have started offering deals if you sign a 2 year agreement. I would recommend strongly against that given my overall experience.
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Update 2: Back to an overloaded node. During peak times, can't pull down more than 1Mbps down when I should be getting closer to 12. The previous higher up I spoke with before no longer works there...so I don't have anyone on the inside to contact to get it fixed again. I do NOT recommend based on this frustrating experience. It used to matter to me because of gaming, now it matters to me for watching things on Hulu, etc.
Update: It took a very high up person reached through these forums to tell me the truth about my bad speeds. The problem seems to be fixed now due to work on their end. Turns out that the node I was on was seeing full utilization during peak hours...they added more capacity.
The phone support and in-home tech visits are currently terrible. The forum support from Cox and the support from the higher ups in Cox is superb. This same higher up is looking into improving the lower level support structure--I hope to update this review in the future with good news.
So, now I often get 20Mbps down during the day, and 8-12 down during the evening. 12Mbps down/ 1 Mbps up advertised package.
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I have the Premier 12Mbps down/1Mbps up package. The up speed is pretty consistent. But the down speed is only good when no one else in the complex is using the internet, typically the day time.
I'm living in an apartment complex with a lot of PhD students and their families. The neighborhood is flooded with wireless signals, many unlocked.
I can't seem to get the consistent speed problem fixed...the cable company knows it's a problem and just doesn't do anything about it. I've had this problem for at least 6 months and have had two techs come out to look at it, both with different stories. One claimed overloaded node, the next claimed bad tap. Obviously, I just want it fixed.
At my old apartment, I had the lower 7Mbps package. At the time I left, the speeds were consistently around that number, even at night when I play intense FPS games. That's why I think the service has potential. Just need competition in the neighborhood.
»www.speedtest.net/result/690350340.png
member for 6.2 years, 527 visits, last login: 6 days ago
updated 18 days ago
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| Review by djatk - Location: Ocala,Marion,FL
- Cost: $168 per month (12 month contract)
- Install: about 14 days
Good "Getting online was instant the day of install. I ordered before we moved in. Provided my own modem."
Bad "High variability in download speed, and generally far slower than "ultimate". Unexplained drop outs"
Overall "In semi-rural central Florida there are not many choices. Cox is reasonable but not super."
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My monthly cost is for Cox High Speed Internet Ultimate and Cox Digital Telephone Essential. Alone, the HSI is $99.99
I provided my own Cisco DPC3010 modem (which I recently replaced due to thermal issues with the original). Cox HSI sees this box as "RSA3010".
In semi-rural central Florida there are not many choices. I can't say I'm unhappy because the service has been "on" with decent speeds until quite recently. I think my failed Cisco box was causing intermittent failures. It is too soon to know if the dropped connection is fixed. As with most cable systems, there is a pronounced effect on speed across the day, presumably due to load. In this area there are a lot of "snowbirds" - residents only in the winter, so summer speed is great!
I've been very pleased with Cox technical support who, once you get past the person with the script, are very knowledgable and helpful.
member for 23 days, 2 visits, last login: 21 days ago
lodged 22 days ago
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| Review by GilbertMark - Location: Gilbert,Maricopa,AZ
- Cost: $110 per month
Good "Got an appointment quick with a fast install. Very reliable service!"
Bad "OBSCENE pricing. You can't unbundle without penalty."
Overall "We're leaving and headed down that DSL rabbit hole again with Century Link."
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September 2013
CenturyLink arrived today to turn on the DSL and port our Cox phone number. The installer Luis was awesome and set up the equipment and a computer even though we hadn't selected this as an option since it cost money. My wife called Cox today to cancel and they asked her why. We've been loyal customers of theirs for 6 years and 5 months. Apparently that means nothing to Cox since they wouldn't give her a deal or try to keep our business whatsoever. Screw 'em! Bye. Our DSL speed is FASTER than the "premium" cable we had with Cox by 8Mbps. Guess they have been just sticking it to us all these years. I hope our experience with CenturyLink is a good one, I don't ever want to have to go back to you rip off artists.
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August 2013
Times are tough. We got rid of our digital box a year prior for a reduction of $10 a month. Six months ago we cancelled TV for a savings of about $30 We currently have phone with unlimited nationwide minutes and premiere internet. We're still over $100 which is obscene for a phone line and internet. My wife called Cox and explained how we wanted a lower cost option. They were willing to remove the phone line and reduce our bill by $12....
So we signed up with Century Link as the only other real option here in Gilbert. The package there is $38 a month for phone (no nationwide or features) and 20 Mbps internet. We'll post a review on them later. It will be 15 days until they can turn the service on. We're porting our number.
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March 2008
We moved to Gilbert from Goodyear. Cox has had maybe two outages lasting 30 minutes tops. We're very happy with our service and reliability.
We wish there was some way to unbundle their packages to save money. We pay an awful lot for phone, TV and internet. Every time we try to remove something they just tell us how they'll compensate by raising the prices on the remaining services we have.
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April 2007
My wife and I just moved to the Phoenix area (Goodyear). We received an install date within a couple days of the moving truck dropping off our household goods. The installer arrived at the end of the appointment window, but at least he called ahead a couple hours to say when he would arrive (never had that happen before).
At the time we hadn't unpacked our modem yet so the installer set up the TV right away. We found our modem, called in the MAC address and were up and running within two minutes. We're getting good speeds up and down so we're happy.
member for 12.4 years, 1665 visits, last login: 8 days ago
updated 29 days ago
Comments:
Rob_Premium
join:2008-07-16
Mary Esther, FL | Alternatives Look into getting a Magic Jack if you need your number. Or, google voice can forward your number to your cell phone and, that's free.
Also, Century Link has higher latency than cable. They also have a 256 Gig CrAP
am not touching them with a 10 foot pole, if they go and Verizon comes in, hopefully, we can get FIOS.
Tons of options.
-Rob | |
| | | | | Rob_Premium
join:2008-07-16
Mary Esther, FL | Re: Alternatives Actually, phone went from $59.00 to $39.99 which isn't bad, considering they give you the modem, etc..I'm not touching Centurylink with a 10 foot pole, most we can get is 1.5/256. If even that!
-Rob | |
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 ·CenturyLink
 ·Cox HSI
| Subject Thanks for the info on Magic Jack but we'll stick with a regular land line. I have never been a fan of internet based phone calls, the audio quality just doesn't cut it.
Our only big downloads are the occasional movie on iTunes (1 every other week), so we'll NEVER approach a 250 GB cap.
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»hackThatPhone.com | |
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| Review by Cameron - Location: Roanoke,Roanoke City,VA
- Cost: $50 per month (24 month contract)
- Install: about 1 days
Good "Internet"
Bad "tv tier"
Overall "went to dishnetwork for tv stayed for net"
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I like cox cable after many many posting they finally upgraded there internet to the 50 and 100 mbps which i am on the 25 mbps tier and paying 40 a month
I went back to dish network for tv, becuase I like the fact that an single router can support 2 tv's this something cox not figured out yet I dont know why
excuse the spelling
member for 30 days, 12 visits, last login: 3 days ago
lodged 30 days ago
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| Review by BlankenG - Location: Alexandria,Fairfax,VA
- Cost: $300 per month
- Install: about 5 days
Good "High speed - bundle of Phone, Internet and TV"
Bad "Cost - plan to switch phone to Google Voice"
Overall "Plan to let it cook for a while and researching methods to drop the cost"
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Used Verizon DSL for 13 years. FiOS never came to my neighborhood.
Left Verizon (painful exit due to email address confusion - they dropped my email with telling of the proper process), went to Cox on a Thursday. Cox stabilized on Tuesday and finally after a couple of more days it became very stable. This does not make sense to an individual (me) that has been using the Internet and systems for many years. While the Cox support was totally obnoxious, I think that they were busy cleaning up something. The field rep that came to my house was extremely good. The help desks were a waste of time.
Cox has still not proper configure my email account. I cannot log in! (not too bad I'm still using the Verizon account)
member for 13.1 years, 97 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 30 days ago
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| | web based email.. u do know there's lots of web based email options out there.. gmail, yahoo mail, etc etc. | |
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| Review by amungus - Location: Manhattan,Riley,KS
- Cost Contract price not specified.
Good "fastest available in area"
Bad "recent troubles with consistency"
Overall "usually very good"
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Update - Sep. 5th 2013:
Back to Cox since around June 2013. The house had a rental modem/router combo unit (Cisco, I believe) and speeds were inconsistent, as was wireless stability. Replaced with a modem that I purchased, and new router. Speeds stable and consistent ever since. Wired connection was slightly better on the rental, but it's nice to own my own stuff, and I prefer to have a router that I can tinker with a little bit.
Currently on the "preferred" plan (25Mbps I believe) and speeds are consistent.
Their fastest plan is 100Mbps, I think. "Powerboost" allows for 188Mbps, so I have heard.
It's good to be back.
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I've had Cox internet since 2002. When I first signed up, I was on the 3Mbps "preferred" package and would get 4.4Mbps most times. Since the upgrade to 4Mbps, I got 4 down, and 512kbps up, which was good.
At that address, they were great. Not only was the service good, their support was awesome. Any problems were solved quickly and by friendly people.
One day a line was snagged by a passing truck, and they had people out there fixing it that very same day, and double checking every point on the road. Techs were always friendly and took pride in their work, and for good reason.
At my new address, I signed back up with them, on the standard "preferred" service again. Things went smoothly, and speeds were consistent.
After about a month, I had to go to the "basic" 256kbps up/down for financial reasons. It worked, barely. I suffered through it, and was still able to surf web pages fairly well.
Recently, I opted for the "premier" package because of a promo offer for 3 months at $40.
I have yet to see 9/1 speeds. Upload has been mostly consistent, at 1 Mbps, but download speeds have been nothing short of horrible. Sometimes, in the early morning hours, I can see 5Mbps, but this is NOT what I am supposed to get.
After numerous calls, and troubleshooting, the issue is still unresolved in my area. The last tech mentioned that my modem might be bad, so I might try a new one. We'll see. From the forum talk, I gather that something bigger is to blame, so I can't say that the local folks are really at fault here yet.
Speaking of the modem, I went with one that they wanted to loan me. Instead they offered a very nice option that I did not know about at the time.
Monthly payments on it. For 4 months, I paid it off about $14 at a time. This was very nice since I didn't want to drive down to a local store and plunk down however much all at once.
Since these troubles, I must say I'm slightly disappointed at the level of service though. Phone techs have been good and bad, but none of this is their fault, and really they can't do a whole lot other than dispatch a tech. Sure they tested my signals etc. but were rather unhelpful the last time I called...
The service tech who tested everything was about my age; young adult. Very knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. He informed me that there was nothing really wrong on my end, and that there wasn't much he could really do.
If the speeds return to 'normal' I'll be a happy camper, but for now, I'd rather have a reliable 4Mbps than this flaky "premier" service which has been horrible.
Download speeds in the evening hours have varied from 2.5Mbps down, to 512kbps down. Very inconsistent to say the least.
Still a good isp for the area, and the people are great. At this point, my patience is running thin, so I may yet consider DSL even though I'd rather not have to get a phone service with that. Either way, as long as the service is consistent, it really is unbeatable around here, so if you go with them, and they're sailing along smoothly, you should be just fine.
UPDATE - 2-27-06
The premier rocks. Finally got the 9/1 package, and can sometimes get 11Mbps!!! My internet goes to '11'!!! Still a lot slower at nights on occasion, but that's because there are tons of college students in my area, and that's just how cable works sometimes. Hey, no complaints here after things got updated. It has become more consistent, and that's all that matters right now.
UPDATE - 12-1-06
Back to "preferred" service for the past several months. Speeds have been very consistent, and I've only had a couple of very short outages that never really affected me. Upload is 512Kbps, Download is now 6Mbps as per a recent upgrade. I've seen speeds nearing 7Mbps at times, but it's usually more consistently around what they advertise at 6Mbps, which is plenty fast for me. The bump for me is reason enough to stay on the preferred instead of spending any more money on "premium" services, though the premium is pretty fast!
Overall, Cox is still doing pretty good w/their internet service around here, and the speed increase is a nice bonus. As long as it's consistent, I'm happy.
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UPDATE 7-2-07
Well I've been "upgraded" to whatever the latest speeds are now 6-7Mbps I think, and things are going well for the most part.
No recent disconnects or REALLY bad speed drops like before. Things have just been, well, stable for the most part.
Every once in awhile I do a speed test, and have got some incredible "boost" speeds of up to 22Mbps! ..Granted, those don't last very long, but sustained download speeds have been up to 1.5Mega BYTES per sec! ...Avg. is more like anything from 800KB/sec to 1.2MB/sec.
They must've changed some things at their office, because things have been mostly stable.
Only weirdness is that my IP address has changed a couple times, once it was to some address that was in/near Louisiana if I recall...
Still a fair deal around here as long as you can get a stable link. DSL is nowhere close to their speeds though it is usually a bit more reliable in the long run.
member for 8.8 years, 1282 visits, last login: 5 days ago
updated 30 days ago
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before the upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 I had similar issues you are having but not that slow.
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