Cox continues to slowly but surely expand unnecessary usage caps and overage fees. DSLReports.com readers in New Orleans have written in to note that Cox has informed them via e-mail that they'll soon be paying significantly more money for the exact-same service. Unlike a few years ago, when cable companies used to try and pretend the caps were necessary to manage network congestion (false) and that imposing them was "only fair" (also utterly false), Cox doesn't even offer an explanation for the new costly and confusing changes.
"Your Cox High Speed Internet service currently includes a data plan of 1 TB (1,024 GB)," the e-mail states. "Beginning 07/06/2017, if you exceed your monthly data plan we will automatically provide additional blocks of data for $10 per 50 gigabytes (GB), as needed. This will not impact 98% percent of customers, but instead only charges the heaviest Internet users."
Again, whether this will only impact some customers, or questions over whether or not one terabyte of usage is reasonable -- are utterly irrelevant. There is no functional purpose for imposing these restrictions outside of charging more money for the same service, something that's only made possible by the lack of vibrant competition in far too many American markets.
Usage caps do serve one purpose: protect entrenched cable provider TV revenues from the rise in streaming competition. And in many instances, further advantage can be had be exempting a company's own streaming services from the caps (aka "zero rating"), putting competitors at a notable disadvantage by making cutting the cord more expensive and less attractive.
Cox raised its caps to one terabyte last fall after some indication by the former FCC that it might begin policing the practice. It has slowly but surely been expanding these restrictions into additional markets after initially only "trialing" then in Cleveland last year.
Again, the debate isn't about whether 1 terabyte is generous today. That's wholly irrelevant given the lack of necessity for these confusing limits in the first place. The debate is whether these caps should exist at all, given caps don't aid congestion and flat-rate broadband has been perfectly profitable. While 1 terabyte gives most customers plenty of leg room today, it's inevitable that the majority of consumers will ultimately run into these caps and overage fees as household-wide 4K streaming and future bandwidth-intensive applications arrive tomorrow.
There's some additional conversation about Cox's slowly expanding usage caps and overage fees in our
Cox forum.