Question: Cox or U-Verse Internet?

After we sell our boat, we're going to get high-speed internet at our P'cola house. Right now, we have the slowest DSL you can get.

The way I see it, my valid choices are Cox Cable or AT&T U-Verse.

We have U-Verse here in Hoover (supposedly 25mbps) and get great service out of it speed-wise and we're a mile away from the hub with fiber optic. Our Pensacola house is much closer to fiber optic.

AT&T in P'cola offers 18mbps U-Verse as their top tier and Cox offers 30mbps as their next-to-highest speed. They don't even say what their highest speed is... and that makes me leery of paying a lot for questionable gains.

Cox packages for TV and Internet are higher-priced than U-Verse. Is it worth it?

I was flabbergasted when speed tests for my U-Verse up here showed greater than 90mbps... on more than one occasion... but, it is usually somewhere between 10 and 20mbps.

When Napster was in it's heyday, I had both a cable modem (Comcast) and AT&T DSL. After making detailed speed comparisons, I concluded that the DSL was comparable speed-wise and more consistent. (When kids got home from school, the Cable modem would slow to dial-up speeds.) That was in the year 2001, so things may have changed, I dunno.

What are y'all's experiences?

My experience with Cox has been great. I have not had any majot issues since getting them. I created one problem by cutting the cable with a lawnmower. I called Cox and they were out to repair it within 2 hours. After splicing the cable he tested it and found the cable was not up to par and he replaced it all the way from the box to the termination point inside the house.

Ugh, Eric. I wouldn't know how to advise you.

Cox is Mediacom. right?I've had Mediacom here weekly since the day I moved in.

They are unbelievably bad.

I read a few pages of links and couldn't see where Mediacom is Cox. I saw several posts where the writers hoped that Cox would buy Mediacom in Santa Rosa County.

Everybody seems to hate Mediacom.

stormwatch89 wrote:

Ugh, Eric. I wouldn't know how to advise you.

Cox is Mediacom. right?I've had Mediacom here weekly since the day I moved in.

They are unbelievably bad.

Stormy, Cox is not Mediacom. Cox serves the Pensacola area and MediaCom serves Santa Rosa County and well as Navy Housing. Bright House Communications(a subsidiary of Time Warner Cable) serves the northern part of Escambia County.

2 completely different companies.

Cox's internet service is super, but I would switch carriers in a second if another decent cable carrier came to town.

Our Cox bill, including expanded TV, internet and OnDemand, was over $200.00 a month two years ago. We switched to basic TV, Netflix and internet, and our bill is still rather high at $80.00 a month (over half of that is internet), but it beats the former price.

We had a major problem with Cox's InDemand movie service. Many of the movies tiled during display. After two home visits from Cox, we were told it was our TV. It wasn't, obviously, since we've never had tiling with Netflix. We were never able to get credit from Cox for the tiled movies, either.

I've often thought of switching to UVerse, but if I recall BobW had a problem with it. His posts were enough to make me change my mind.

Cox drove me away with the prices of everything b undled, so I went to U-Verse which is just as bad after the introductory time.. Right now I have TV with Direct and puter, phone, and cell with AT&T.. I'll give it a few months before I pass judgement, but I did lose TV for a few minutes during a storm a few weeks ago...

Melissa B wrote:

Cox's internet service is super, but I would switch carriers in a second if another decent cable carrier came to town.

Our Cox bill, including expanded TV, internet and OnDemand, was over $200.00 a month two years ago. We switched to basic TV, Netflix and internet, and our bill is still rather high at $80.00 a month (over half of that is internet), but it beats the former price.

We had a major problem with Cox's InDemand movie service. Many of the movies tiled during display. After two home visits from Cox, we were told it was our TV. It wasn't, obviously, since we've never had tiling with Netflix. We were never able to get credit from Cox for the tiled movies, either.

I've often thought of switching to UVerse, but if I recall BobW had a problem with it. His posts were enough to make me change my mind.

Melissa, my Cox bill is $230.00 per month. As far as I am concerned that is a small price to pay for the service and entertainment I receive. I have their complete service, internet, cable and phone.

The bill wouldn't have been so bad if their service had worked consistently. It was the problem with tiling of InDemand movies combined with their insisting that the problem was our TV that finally prompted us to drop the expanded TV service.

There are a few TV stations we miss, but not many. Netflix streaming more than makes up for the lost channels.

We do dread the day that Cox starts charging for TV streaming from sources other than Cox. They've already tried to get to us by sending us warning emails that we are using "too much bandwidth." One time, a little over a year ago, they actually cut off our service. When I talked with tech support, the fellow told me Cox "just wanted to get our attention" with regard to our bandwidth use. He was very polite about it, and sounded a bit sheepish. He turned our service back on immediately. Ever since I wrote to Cox about that specific incident, the emails and harassment have stopped.

I can't prove it, but I have to wonder if that harassment occurred because of my participation in Cox's Town Hall panel. I let them know right up front that we ditched expanded service in favor of Netflix over the movie-tiling issue as well as the price of service.

Melissa B wrote:

I can't prove it, but I have to wonder if that harassment occurred because of my participation in Cox's Town Hall panel. I let them know right up front that we ditched expanded service in favor of Netflix over the movie-tiling issue as well as the price of service.

Are you aware that you can monitor you data usage with Cox? I monitored mine for a few months and discovered that I was using only about 10% of my allotted bandwidth. Here is a screen capture of my usage through today.

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.


Oops. I edited this post, but I think I put it back like it was... Eric.

Melissa B wrote:

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.

But if you are streaming Netflix isn't that using your Cox internet connection to bring the movie to your TV?

Melissa here is some information that I found in regard to Netflix bandwidth.

Netflix Movies (HD): These guys are around 3.8Mbit, which means it's about 3600MB for a 2 hour HD movie.
Netflix Movies (SD): Each of these movies are around 500-700MB each, depending on the length of the movie.
Netflix TV Shows (HD): A 30-minute TV show will be about 1500MB.
Netflix TV Shows (SD): A 30-minute TV show will be about 400MB.

Melissa B wrote:

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.

Melissa, when you stream a Netflix program over the Cox Internet service, you are using Internet bandwidth. If you have been watching more Netflix programs, you are using more bandwidth...

When you watch a Cox TV program, the bandwidth you use is classified as used by Cox Cable TV and shouldn't be counted as Internet bandwidth usage.

Eric wrote:

Melissa B wrote:

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.

Melissa, when you stream a Netflix program over the Cox Internet service, you are using Internet bandwidth. If you have been watching more Netflix programs, you are using more bandwidth...

When you watch a Cox TV program, the bandwidth you use is classified as used by Cox Cable TV and shouldn't be counted as Internet bandwidth usage.

Eric is that regular TV programming or In-Demand/On-Demand Movies?

Actually the Premier from Cox is 36Mbps. The Premier is next to the fastest speed that Cox has to offer.

They do have something called Ultimate but every time I check it out on the Cox home page it says NOT available for my area.

Having the Premier and buying a new router the speed seems plenty fast for the wife and I.

Wife works from home and codes medical records and since switching to the Premier we noticed a big difference. We used to have the Preferred plan from Cox but that is only 18Mbps.

I like Cox and they just sent us a letter to get $20.00 off per month for 2 years if we would sign a contract. I don't like contracts so I didn't take advantage of it.

What makes me mad about Cox is that 6 months ago they raised the phone, internet, and cable by about $20.00 per month. We have all three.

Then they send you a letter to save $20.00 per month with a contract.

Not too smart on their part.

Ghost_Rider1949 wrote:

Eric wrote:

Melissa B wrote:

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.

Melissa, when you stream a Netflix program over the Cox Internet service, you are using Internet bandwidth. If you have been watching more Netflix programs, you are using more bandwidth...

When you watch a Cox TV program, the bandwidth you use is classified as used by Cox Cable TV and shouldn't be counted as Internet bandwidth usage.

Eric is that regular TV programming or In-Demand/On-Demand Movies?

You got me on that one. I suspect that it is regular TV programming.

Today is not a great day for my U-Verse speed. I just ran three speed tests and get about 10megabits per second. (I pay for more than double that speed.)

But, as most Internet subscribers know, it is "up to"... (as I said earlier, I have seen 90mbps! out of U-Verse).

How about upload speed? U-Verse chokes my upload speed at 1.44 mbps. It is very consistent whenever I do a test. What do y'all get from Cox?

The reason I am asking about upload speed is because I have ordered a new router that is capable of Network Attached Storage and it has connectors so I can attach my 2-TB stand-alone hard drive via USB. I should be able to stream content to the web... or at least be able to serve up files (mostly pics or video) to the internet.

If y'all can go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and run a test and tell me what you are getting for download and MOST importantly... upload speed, I would most appreciate it.

I still have the capability to upload to the internet via my Pogoplug adapter, but, quite frankly it sucks...

We had MediaCom when I lived there because it was the only service available in our area and it was AWFUL... if we could have switched we would have. The service went out or something went wrong pretty much every day.

riceme wrote:

We had MediaCom when I lived there because it was the only service available in our area and it was AWFUL... if we could have switched we would have. The service went out or something went wrong pretty much every day.

Haha. Yep, I have read where Mediacom had a 96% dissatisfaction rating! That's incredible.

I sent you a PM, Ricey.

Eric wrote:

Today is not a great day for my U-Verse speed. I just ran three speed tests and get about 10megabits per second. (I pay for more than double that speed.)

But, as most Internet subscribers know, it is "up to"... (as I said earlier, I have seen 90mbps! out of U-Verse).

How about upload speed? U-Verse chokes my upload speed at 1.44 mbps. It is very consistent whenever I do a test. What do y'all get from Cox?

On my 5 year old Gateway Laptop with 1.00 GB of RAM- Download is 1.26 Mbps, Upload is 3.38 Mbps.

My new Dell with 6 GB of RAM and 1 TB HD- Download is 47.04Mbps and Upload is 4.77 Mbps.

My old Gateway has Windows Vista. My Dell has Windows 8

Vettecor wrote:

On my 5 year old Gateway Laptop with 1.00 GB of RAM- Download is 1.26 Mbps, Upload is 3.38 Mbps.

My new Dell with 6 GB of RAM and 1 TB HD- Download is 47.04Mbps and Upload is 4.77 Mbps.

Thanks. That may have made my decision for me...

Any disruptions in service????