Cox Expands 1TB Data Cap to More Territories

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
Starting next month, Cox customers in Arizona, Las Vegas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma will be subject to a 1TB data cap: they’ll have to pay $10 for every 50GB of data they consume over this limit. The data cap is already effective in Cleveland, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; Sun Valley, Idaho; Florida, and Georgia.

...the company says that a terabyte of data -- which it claims allows you to watch 140 2-hour HD movies -- is sufficient for the overwhelming majority of customers (98 percent to be precise). Customers signed up to its faster Gigablast plan (available in select regions) will be capped at 2TB of data. Cox customers can manually track their usage using the data usage meter online or via the Cox Connect mobile app. US internet providers are increasingly adopting 1TB caps.
 
Hope Spectrum never implements caps...

upload_2017-6-29_8-22-47.png
 
Do they offer tv service?


Yes. When Spectrum bought TWC, they advertised very strongly there would be no data caps. I have 60/5 for 44.95/mo after taxes, and no modem rental fee. Extremely happy with the service since change over. I was paying 10/mo for modem, and then another 75/mo plus taxes for 30/3.
We have DirecTV for the other side. Good little discount with the cell phones.
 
No business would set a policy in place to earn more money from their customers if it only affected 2% of their customer base (unless 2% is a massive number). I'm sadly one of the people getting the 1 TB cap in July.

Hopefully they'll just upgrade everyone to the non-existent Gigablast if they are going to treat data like wireless providers (since they don't specify an actual speed)...
 
No business would set a policy in place to earn more money from their customers if it only affected 2% of their customer base (unless 2% is a massive number). I'm sadly one of the people getting the 1 TB cap in July.

Hopefully they'll just upgrade everyone to the non-existent Gigablast if they are going to treat data like wireless providers (since they don't specify an actual speed)...
You planning a switch to a different carrier?
 
Let's play the devil's advocate...

What I see here is an "unlimited" 3.2Mbps connection, I would use it as such anyway (I'd cap my speed at the router). Obviously it's unfortunate the ISP's are deciding to go this route but consider the fact that today roughly 9.4 million Americans (3%) are still using 56k dial-up! These people effectively have a 16GB monthy cap, so your situation could certainly be worse.
 
Let's play the devil's advocate...

What I see here is an "unlimited" 3.2Mbps connection, I would use it as such anyway (I'd cap my speed at the router). Obviously it's unfortunate the ISP's are deciding to go this route but consider the fact that today roughly 9.4 million Americans (3%) are still using 56k dial-up! These people effectively have a 16GB monthy cap, so your situation could certainly be worse.


Capping your speed does nothing to prevent hitting the cap. Streaming video is the only thing that would be affected by doing that. That 59GB Steam download is the same size at 1Gbps or 3.2Mbps.
 
Capping your speed does nothing to prevent hitting the cap. Streaming video is the only thing that would be affected by doing that. That 59GB Steam download is the same size at 1Gbps or 3.2Mbps.

I think what he is getting at is capping the speed to prevent that cap in a month, but personally I would rather just put a throttle on my router at say 90% and text or email me a notification.

ie. 3.2Mbps running full throttle cant hit 1TB in a months time
 
Capping your speed does nothing to prevent hitting the cap. Streaming video is the only thing that would be affected by doing that. That 59GB Steam download is the same size at 1Gbps or 3.2Mbps.

Is the cap not enforced on a monthly basis? From what I've heard about these mobile and broadband useage caps, they are all monthly, in other words your stats get nulled at at the beginning of each month. If this is the case, then even if you use your internet 24/7 at the speed of 3.2Mbps you will never be hitting the 1TB cap.
 
They all do the same thing because as soon as one of them pushes the "Fuck the Customer" line forward a bit and doesn't get called out by regulators, everyone else jumps on the bandwagon and claims that it's "industry standards." Pay no attention to the fact that data delivery gets cheaper every year for us, we must raise prices and reduce your allocation every year because....um....because....it's good for the customer!
 
I could understand 20TB... but 1TB is nuts. "only effects 2% ..." that is insane amount of customers to tick off.

I betcha dollars to donuts there is a plan they can upgrade to that isn't obscene for that small % of customers.
 
Is the cap not enforced on a monthly basis? From what I've heard about these mobile and broadband useage caps, they are all monthly, in other words your stats get nulled at at the beginning of each month. If this is the case, then even if you use your internet 24/7 at the speed of 3.2Mbps you will never be hitting the 1TB cap.


Yes, it starts over every month. What I'm saying is that the only thing that would prevent you from hitting your cap if you used that allotment anyway is changing your usage habits.
 
As more and more of us watch content online via our data connections. Big TV loses more and more revenue. Therefore the HSD prices go up. It's just a shell game and it sucks for the consumer. Keep switching ISPs ever year or two to get better deals and hope for competition in your area. I have two choices which is actually better than a lot of folks.
 
Its totally a competitive industry, everyone is just independently settling on the same caps and overage pricing, no collusion going on at all....

Cities have allowed this and are the cause of this. The reasoning of ROW regulation was that ISP/telco would buy up all of the access land and refuse to let others buy it or lay line in it, which is exactly what the government does now with ROW restrictions, and is what Google fiber had the most trouble with, once an ISP gets into a city, they get almost exclusive access to that land, most cities get free internet/phone/TV services and other kick backs for this. That is why Google bought that wireless internet company a while back, so rather than having to fight to get land access for last mile/to home, they could setup transmitters and skip having to install fiber on that land. They are still trying to fight them even on this.

We saw this same regulator capture with POTS, it is now showing it's head again with ISPs.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
As more and more of us watch content online via our data connections. Big TV loses more and more revenue. Therefore the HSD prices go up. It's just a shell game and it sucks for the consumer. Keep switching ISPs ever year or two to get better deals and hope for competition in your area. I have two choices which is actually better than a lot of folks.
I also have two "choices:" 75 Mbps cable or 10 Mbps DSL. Oh, yes, the competitive market sure is booming.

EDIT: Scratch that. I am in an area where I can get 2 Gbps from Comcast. Still has the 1 TB cap, though, and fuck if I'm paying $300/month and $1,000 in setup fees just to pay an extra $50 a month to get rid of the cap.
 
Last edited:
Yes, it starts over every month. What I'm saying is that the only thing that would prevent you from hitting your cap if you used that allotment anyway is changing your usage habits.

Math this with please (assume 30 day month)

1TB / month = 33.3GB / day

33.3GB / day = 1.38GB / Hour

1.38GB / Hour = 23MB / Minute = 383KB / second

383KB/s = 3.06Mbps

Numbers are rough because Im at work, but this is the point. You effectively only have a 3Mbit unlimited connection with a 1TB monthly cap when looking at it from that perspective. Otherwise you have to like you said change your habits and monitor usage or have your router control you at the end of the month.
 
Yes, it starts over every month. What I'm saying is that the only thing that would prevent you from hitting your cap if you used that allotment anyway is changing your usage habits.

That indeed depends on whether your current habits can accomodate the switch to a lower speed internet. In reality 3.2Mbps is still an adequate speed, eg. you can stream youtube's 720p videos in realtime. And I think there is 2 kinds of people in the world: those who know what "VCR" and "VCD" stands for; and those who don't. I personally belong to the former group so I would assume I'd have no trouble in this situation.

If you're having trouble understanding the math behind the 3 Mbps figure, Darunion above kindly posted the calculations I made.
 
cox suckers, 1tb melts away in what a couple of days on steam alone?
 
1TB is nothing. Sure if ALL you did was streaming netflix you would have to watch 11 hrs of TV/day to hit that. But lets be realistic we do more than just TV....if I wanted a metered connection I would also expect to pay LESS for it.

Dont advertise to me that I can download all this shit for X dollars and then say "oh but if you do ALL of that its actually 200/month more."
 
cox suckers, 1tb melts away in what a couple of days on steam alone?
If you're downloading games constantly, yes. I've gotten it down pretty well to where I'm using around 800 GB a month between streaming, downloading, and playing online.
 
1TB is nothing. Sure if ALL you did was streaming netflix you would have to watch 11 hrs of TV/day to hit that. But lets be realistic we do more than just TV....if I wanted a metered connection I would also expect to pay LESS for it.

Dont advertise to me that I can download all this shit for X dollars and then say "oh but if you do ALL of that its actually 200/month more."

Agreed. PC's and consoles update their software/games on their own, same with phones and tablets. It sucks that we have to micromanage all our devices so they don't use too much data, I am fortunate to have spectrum and no cap (although they like to tell me when I use a lot).
 
I also have two "choices:" 75 Mbps cable or 10 Mbps DSL. Oh, yes, the competitive market sure is booming.
I've got the choice of "up to" gig cable with a 1.1TB data cap for $180 (that's really only 500 to 600mbps), the same cable provider does offer lower tiers with much smaller data caps, or for ~$35 i can get a no data cap "7" mbps DSL (really 4 to 5).

The choices are endless!
 
Back
Top