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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)

#71

Post by Dylan16807 »

somethoughts wrote: post #28
Mistletoe wrote: post #7

I remember when we got Cox “Fiber” that wasn’t fiber at all. This company is absolute trash. https://www.lightreading.com/cable-technology/cox-called-out... https://www.cox.com/residential/internet.html

I think if the company could offer Fiber To The Curb and then the last 10-20 feet between the curb and the house's router was either DSL or Cable or 5G, that would ba huge win. FTTC would avoid this scenario at least where a heavy user brings down the whole neighborhood. But perhaps the bandwidth through the last 10 feet of DSL/cable/5G isn't enough to upsell customers to convince them the switch or modem equipment i…

Coax can certainly handle a short dedicated link. Or you could run an Ethernet cable into the house. Phone wiring I'd doubt the capacity, and wireless would cost the most and work badly.

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

#72

Post by throwup238 »

sneak wrote: post #62
createaccount99 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you sue? Isn't that false advertising?

It costs many thousands of dollars to bring a lawsuit in the US, and you will almost certainly lose against a huge corporation with their own legal team. They can simply outspend you until you give up.

Not if the amounts are small enough for small claims court. The laws vary state by state but here in California, the max for small claims is $10,000 and the company can’t just hire a legal firm to defend it, they have to send a corporate representative. They can send a lawyer if they have general counsel employed by the company, but few companies are big enough to have that and those that are generally won’t send them out for small claims. Many times they won’t bother at all and it results in a default judgement.

The filling fees are in the hundreds of dollars and the judge are used to working with the general public as opposed to well represented plaintiffs with expensive lawyers.

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

#73

Post by kristopolous »

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.

A number of years ago one of the isps, might have been att dsl, argued that "unlimited" was a branding name for a tier. They had meant an affectation of limitless possibilities as a marketing term similar to "plus", "extreme" or "pro" and not that there was no cap on the data. I always ignore that word now and look for the actual terms

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

#74

Post by ahnick »

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…

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 competitor services if they were honest. Cable companies are soul sucking monopolies/duopolies and deserve no quarter.

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

#75

Post by kstrauser »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #68
kstrauser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than being 6x the price though.

I wonder if it’s because EBP is a utility and so has a mandate to run fiber to all homes in its area, as opposed to private ISPs that can pick and choose.

That could be. Sonic has pretty good coverage local from leasing fiber from AT&T. Even then there are still dead spots in my city where people are stuck with Comcast et al. They only recently rolled out their own fiber several months ago where I live. That day my speed went up 10x and the cost cut in half.

It's a no-brainer for people who live in their coverage area, yet as you say, their coverage isn't complete.

But it's still $50 for 10Gb where offered.

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

#76

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

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.

And this is a gigabit customer using 4% of their maximum. What the heck?

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

#77

Post by walrus01 »

zamadatix wrote: post #23
walrus01 wrote: post #2

The root cause of the problem is that copper coaxial cable tv based (DOCSIS3.0, DOCSIS3.1, etc) last mile internet infrastructure is a shared/contended access medium for many modems connected to it. It's built on a limited number of RF channels in a certain segment that have many modems all going to a single "port" on a DOCSIS CMTS (cablemodem termination system). There is a great deal of absurdity in their claims to…

The FTTH offerings from Ziply, Cox, Comcast, Google, ATT, Centurylink etc are all the same "shared media with high oversubscription" design too. Among them the typical ratio is ~32 PON users for the given "base rate" PON standard, similar to a typical ~20-50 for coax at a given DOCSIS standard. Both have better/worse examples (particularly early gigabit PON deployments were 64) but FTTH has rarely been about getting…

> The FTTH offerings from Ziply, Cox, Comcast, Google, ATT, Centurylink etc are all the same "shared media with high oversubscription" design too.

No, they're really not, you can't compare single strand FTTH XGSPON on singlemode fiber (16:1 or 32:1 contention ratio), something that is built on 10G XGSPON tech, to something that is built on bonded RF channels on coax copper. The aggregate capacity per oversubscribed network segment is radically different.

Now, all of these cable operators also ARE building actual FTTH networks in certain areas because they see the writing on the wall for the longevity of how much more they can squeeze out of the copper. So in some very specific places the Comcast 1 Gbps last mile product is functionally equivalent to the local Verizon, or Ziply, or Lumen (Centurylink, now branded as Quantum Fiber) FTTH product.

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

#78

Post by wmf »

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…

Oversubscription ratios vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Perhaps ISPs could advertise the worst case but that would make their service look worse than it is. And of course no ISP will be the first to disclose.

BTW the FCC recently introduced "nutrition labels" for ISPs. https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels

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

#79

Post by Dylan16807 »

dboreham wrote: post #26
throwaway48476 wrote: post #16

"Heavy" use is just using what they pay for. If they can't guarantee that they should sell a lesser tier of service. Otherwise this is just fraud.

They paid for committed bandwidth? So they'd be paying $1000+/mo. But they're not.

For a thousand dollars of dedicated bandwidth I'd expect more like 10Gbps.

And a residential ISP would still be able to massively overcommit despite such a guarantee.

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

#80

Post by kstrauser »

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.

Put another way, if they're saying 12TB is their unadvertised effective data cap, he's only allowed to use his connection for 1 day a month.

My ISP lets me use the service all of the days of the month, not just one. His ludicrously low limit is unfathomable.

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