 Review by Bit 
UPDATED: 220 days ago
member for 275 days, 213 visits, last login: 145 days ago
 Laguna Hills,Orange,CA
 $45 per month
 about 7 days
 "Reliable, pretty speedy, fair price, not enforcing caps"
 "High latency sometimes"
 "Pretty good service here, I'm happy"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I've had Cox internet for a really long time now. I originally ordered Cox service in 1997 when it was Cox@Home. I saw an ad in the newspaper about "new" digital cable and cable internet so I signed up for both. The price in the ad was the "real" price so 'pre-sales' info was accurate.
I called up and made an appointment to swap out my analog cable box with a digital one and install the HSI. Back then they used proprietary cybersurfr CDLP modems. The price was $30/mo for service and the choice of a $15 modem rental or $400 modem purchase. I opted for rental for a total charge of $45 for a standard 3000/300 plan. Two installers showed up, one for CATV, the other for HSI and they did a good job.
The service has been very reliable over the last 11+ years. It goes down on rare occasion, the longest I can remember being about 7 hours once. Usually when it goes down it is for about 15 minutes and this happens a few times a year according to router logs. Overall I'm very pleased with the reliability. The only problem I have are rare periods of high latency running up to 150ms or even 200ms to local servers. It's enough to kill my real-time gaming but when happening is still good enough to keep my VOIPO brand VoIP service working okay. These periods will seem to last a few days or up to a week like something has "broken" in our local area and then it gets fixed or upgraded. This latency problem occurs once every few months but I've never called about it and these problems seem to just fix themselves. Usually latency is pretty good; typically 30ms to local game servers and about 95ms to the east coast.
I've never had to call tech support so I didn't rate them. In fact the only time I've ever called Cox about the internet service was the 2 times I bought new modems and provided them with their MAC IDs.
Services are average for a cable company. For $45 I got the "Preferred" plan which is 9000/768 with Powerboost providing temporary speeds of about 30000/5000. Last time I looked Cox offered Usenet but I use Giganews so I can't review how Cox's usenet servers are. For usenet I've always used Giganews and have no problems maxing my connection even without encryption. I rarely use torrents so I don't know if Cox interfers with torrent use. The Cox portal is a typical ISP portal with local news, tech support section, ads for their own services, account management, and webmail. I don't have any use for any of it but it seems well laid out for those who would use those types of services.
Value is pretty average. When I first signed up in late 1997, service ($30) + CDLP modem rental ($15) was $45 total. Today, after a recent price increase service is back to $45 (not counting my purchased Motorola modem). But during that time my download speed has gone from 3Mb to 9Mb and upload from 300kbps to 768kbps. With Powerboost I usually get 30Mb down and about 5Mb up. So value has gotten better. A faster 15Mb tier is available but it's $60 per month. But with powerboost, I see 25-35Mb speeds for all but very long downloads anyway. I'd rather chug along at 9Mb and have that $15 more than paying for my VoIP service (which is only $11/mo).
Cox does have montly usage caps listed in their advertising and TOS/AUP but I routinely go well over those limits and have never heard from them. Apparently Cox is not enforcing these montly usage limits, at least here in Orange County, CA.
My only alternative here is AT&T dry loop DSL (since I don't have POTS) and pricewise Cox is a better deal. I would recommend Cox in my area. They're not perfect but a good service. I would only consider switching to AT&T if they rolled out U-Verse which they are in other areas of the county, but I've been reading about AT&T going to caps+overage fees so it looks like I'll be a Cox customer for another 10 years.
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