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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)

#111

Post by internet101010 »

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…

There usually are no competitors.

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

#112

Post by datahack »

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.

How is this nonsense still legal? It’s straight up nothing but deceptive advertising.

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

#113

Post by cyberax »

fn-mote wrote: post #45
createaccount99 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you sue? Isn't that false advertising?

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?

FCC can be surprisingly effective. My friend had a problem with his ISP randomly dropping routes to some of the ASs, and the support was useless, because all the speed test sites were fine

An FCC complaint got that fixed in two weeks.

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

#114

Post by pixelatedindex »

userbinator wrote: post #106
willcipriano wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was a ton back then! I suppose 300TB/month is a lot too but it doesn’t feel that big anymore

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

#115

Post by zie »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #92
userbinator wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two (interrelated) values here --- speed ("flow rate") and volume. "Unlimited data" refers to volume. Gigabit refers to speed. This customer presumably isn't too worried about the speed, but is rightly under the impression that he isn't being charged on volume and can thus use as much as the speed allows.

When it first started back in the Before Times, "Unlimited" internet was in contrast to dial-up connections which weren't always on. It's unlimited in time (as long as you're subscribed), not necessarily guaranteed to keep the max speed for the entire time. That contrast is now gone, so it's become deceptive IMO.

When I ran an ISP or two back in the dialup days, we advertised unlimited, but we didn't mean anything with that word, it was just what every other ISP also used in their marketing, we were just following along. The same is true today with Cellphones and ISP's, they ALL offer "unlimited", but they all have different interpretations of that word. As far as I can tell, none of the employees understand what "unlimited" means either.

Technically what we offered was shared dialup access to a T1 or a T3 upstream. They just looked for the word "unlimited". Customers didn't know what it meant either, except it was "better".

If you were doing anything we thought of as "abusive" we would hang up on you. You could immediately call back in, and we were fine with that.

Normally after the 2nd or 3rd time we caught you being "abusive", we would call you and have a chat: try to figure out what the heck you were doing and why. Most of the time we would just run their data on one of our machines and save the dialup space. They could telnet in and do what they needed doing on occasion. Dialup lines were expensive compared to process space.

Of course we were also one of the few weirdos that had a "community" linux box with the root password in the login banner, so everyone could create their own account and help maintain the community box. It worked really well for several years, until some meanies found it and ruined it. After that we put the root password in /etc/motd, so every logged in user could do root things if needed. That also worked really well for many years.

Different times for sure!

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

#116

Post by userbinator »

tzs wrote: post #101
mindslight wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would suggest that a 5 Mb/s DSL connection with no data limit

That turns out to be a ~1.6TB/month limit.

Hence why I think both speed and volume limits should be advertised prominently. "Up to 5Mbps (1.6TB/month)" or "Up to 500Mbps (or 1TB/month, whichever comes first)" gives users a clear idea of what their service is.

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

#117

Post by Loughla »

jhenkens wrote: post #34
Loughla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During covid my local ISP got a grant to run rural fiber. We went from satellite to a full gig fiber connection. It has literally changed my home life.

Any more context on this? We've got copper AT&T DSL as our only option, besides Starlink. Have been trying to work with the county, look for grants, etc to present to a local ISP who's mentioned interest.

So I know part of the money was through the state. It was matching funds for federal dollars. I think it was through rural development, which is closed, but I'm not absolutely sure. I'll check with my neighbor (works for ISP) tomorrow to see if he knows.

To be honest, we approached the ISP, who was offering fiber in a town 45 minutes away. They said if we could get sign ups at least every half mile, on average, they would make it happen. We had the signatures when they got the grant, so it was sort of a wasted effort on our part.

I'll message here tomorrow if I figure it out though.

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

#118

Post by brewdad »

internet101010 wrote: post #111
ahnick wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There usually are no competitors.

Most people should have at least two choices. Their cable company and their phone company. These choices may be comparable in price and service level or wildly divergent depending on your specific location however.

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

#119

Post by sqeaky »

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 have paid for two gigabit connections and I sometimes saturate them for days at time. Doesn't cost that much.

If I am not to use it like that then it should say clearly on the paperwork that I have data limits, and I don't have any such notifications.

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

#120

Post by brewdad »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #52
xyst wrote: post #42

Story was reported on in 2020, during the peak of the lockdowns as well. We truly fucked ourselves by giving these national ISPs so much power. In return, they abuse us, they collude to make sure other ISPs do not compete against each other to justify high prices and low bandwidth, and hire lobbyists to implement/push stupid laws in various states to prevent municipal ISPs (eg, Texas).

Voters should be demanding their local governments roll out fiber as a utility like Chattanooga, TN.

I have a solid fiber service from a private company but my town is also building out a municipal fiber network. I’m bummed because the latest expansion zone stopped about 100 yards from my house and they won’t be doing the rest of my street until 2027. Like I said, I already have a pretty good service but muni fiber would save me almost $400 a year for the same speeds and reportedly the same or better reliability.
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