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Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

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Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#101

Post by tzs »

mindslight wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #33

a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month "Unlimited data" should mean you can saturate the connection 24/7. Anything less is deceptive advertising. For a gigabit connection, that would mean around 300TB per month.

Hear hear! Furthermore any plans with "caps" should have to list the average bandwidth as the largest headline, with the peak bandwidth relegated to a subpoint. For example 1TB/month is 386 kB/sec. That's on par with a DSL connection, not 2024 broadband.

That would mislead and confuse a lot of consumers. It would suggest that a 5 Mb/s DSL connection with no data limit would be better than a 500 Mb/s cable connection with a 1 TB data limit, when in fact something like 90% of users will not come anywhere near 1 TB of data/month and will be much much much happier on the cable plan.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#103

Post by slimsag »

addled wrote: post #55
fn-mote wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US you could seek recourse via your state Attorney General. You might hope the FCC would care (but they don’t). The GP already lost 6 days of work… how much would the likely payoff be to make it work their while to continue dealing with that company?

An additional option to consider is to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I had an issue with my wireless carrier repeatedly refusing to issue credit for a months-long ongoing problem on their end. Within 2 days in filing a BBB complaint, I had a rep from the company asking how much I thought seemed fair and if I wanted a bill credit or a check.

The attorney general’s office consumer protection division in your state does what most people think the BBB does.

BBB is just a review website. Like Yelp.

Filing a complaint with BBB is like saying 'I left a bad Yelp review' ... useful, maybe.. if the company cares..

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#104

Post by userbinator »

throwup238 wrote: post #64
ReverseCold wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate. The FCC should probably require this to be disclosed in some standard location. So many people are mad because “I paid for a gigabit and I can’t use the whole thing”… but like you didn’t pay for a gigabit you paid for a gigabit shared among 100 other people, which means peak-of-sums you should usually get gigabit, but it’s not guaranteed. The internet…

If that’s the case they should market the plan’s throttling upfront. “Unlimited mobile data” comes with very clear fine print that isn’t buried in the TOS about how many gigabytes the customer gets before it drops them to 3g speed.

I believe in those cases even after you pass the throttling limit you can continue to transfer data at however much 3g speeds will get you for the rest of the billing period, and thus they won't cut off your service for using "too much".

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#105

Post by godelski »

ReverseCold wrote: post #46
userbinator wrote: post #33

a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month "Unlimited data" should mean you can saturate the connection 24/7. Anything less is deceptive advertising. For a gigabit connection, that would mean around 300TB per month.

I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate. The FCC should probably require this to be disclosed in some standard location. So many people are mad because “I paid for a gigabit and I can’t use the whole thing”… but like you didn’t pay for a gigabit you paid for a gigabit shared among 100 other people, which means peak-of-sums you should usually get gigabit, but it’s not guaranteed. The internet…

  > I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate.
They typically advertise as "up to" and often hide data limits in small text. This is also common among phone carriers who say "unlimited data" or worse, "unlimited 5G" but then throttle you after you hit a certain data limit.

I'm not saying this to justify their actions. I actually think this is worse because it demonstrates clear intention to mislead. But it's something to be aware of because they will argue (and frequently some smug person that I guess has a boot fetish) and then blame you for not reading. But I strongly disagree. Words mean things, and they mean what a reasonable person would interrupt. You can't just hide stuff in legal language. No person has enough time to read all those TOS agreements and even if they did, it's not in normal language that's understandable by the average person. If a contact is fair only if participants are informed and consenting, then I don't think most of these contacts should hold up (they do).

But hey, we live in a world where courts have decided that "boneless wings" doing clearly mean "without bones". But I for one don't want to live in a country where that's okay.

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors with the legal system and I for one don't think enough people are upset. Apathy isn't working.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#106

Post by userbinator »

willcipriano wrote: post #98
lostlogin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t my recollection. We had dial up which had a data use cap. We had to stay under the cap or got stung. Later on ‘unlimited’ dial up became a thing.

NetZero and AOL both advertised as unlimited. If you had a extra phone line you could connect and download for as long as you'd like.

A 56kbps dialup connection saturated 24/7 will get you ~18GB per month.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#107

Post by nyjah »

ahnick wrote: post #74
ReverseCold wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate. The FCC should probably require this to be disclosed in some standard location. So many people are mad because “I paid for a gigabit and I can’t use the whole thing”… but like you didn’t pay for a gigabit you paid for a gigabit shared among 100 other people, which means peak-of-sums you should usually get gigabit, but it’s not guaranteed. The internet…

It's pretty obvious isn't it? They don't want anyone to understand how the system really works. They should not be allowed to put the words "Unlimited" anywhere in their advertisement. period. It's all deceptive advertising and they should be raked over the coals for it. If it's shared then say "Shared gigabit internet for only X dollars!" I guess the reason they don't do that is because a lot of people would choose…

I guess the reason they don't do that is because a lot of people would choose competitor services if they were honest

Competitor services? Starlink aside, I have no options but what I have. I think many people at least in USA are in similar situation.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#108

Post by AyyEye »

ct0 wrote: post #39
AyyEye wrote: post #27

Cox advertised gigabit to me. I always wanted it so I took the upsell. After six truckrolls (alternately telling me my signal was too strong -- installing attenuator, then too weak and removing it) for which I had to take a day off work every time, they eventually told me it was a mistake and my neighborhood didn't have gigabit. Then the cherry on top was they wouldn't even put me back on my old plan because it "wasn…

They don't call it Cox for nothing, damn you got hosed on that one. I've always been careful with upsells as there's always a catch, or a Cox.

They made the choice to name themselves after a bunch of dicks.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#109

Post by AyyEye »

createaccount99 wrote: post #32
AyyEye wrote: post #27

Cox advertised gigabit to me. I always wanted it so I took the upsell. After six truckrolls (alternately telling me my signal was too strong -- installing attenuator, then too weak and removing it) for which I had to take a day off work every time, they eventually told me it was a mistake and my neighborhood didn't have gigabit. Then the cherry on top was they wouldn't even put me back on my old plan because it "wasn…

Did you sue? Isn't that false advertising?

Wasn't worth it, I just wanted internet.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#110

Post by daemonologist »

Went and looked at some FCC maps to fantasize about having ISP competition after reading, and it turns out North Dakota has the best fiber coverage in the US, followed by South Dakota. I assume it's a combination of government subsidies and the prevalence of telephone co-ops out there, but very interesting nonetheless.

FCC Map - https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary/fixed?version=...

Vice article - https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-north-dakota-has-the-bes...

New America article - https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/united-states-broadba...

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