Cox Internet Issues?

I live in east San Roque area. Frontier has been installing fiber optic cable here. I'm hoping for an alternative, and less expensive choice for internet in the near future.

My service from COX has generally been good. Expensive - yes. but OK. I was recently annoyed when trying to watch a program that says High Def required. I called COX and they said that I had subscribed, and paid extra for High Def service. But it will not work unless you get a COX router and that is an additional monthly charge. I don't understand the technical stuff but it seems that I pay for something that isn't there.

I don't like to complain, because we have it pretty good here. But it's also important to live in reality and reject mediocrity. Cox service is mediocre relative to other developed countries and even areas of the US. Romania, Hungary, Thailand, Spain, China, Poland, Panama, Latvia, and dozens of other countries have faster Internet on average than the expensive Cox "High Speed Internet." Cox is a failing monopoly, the only reason they and other garbage providers haven't gone under is because they hold a monopoly on service.

Down here on the Mesa since 2:00am, Cox has a service outage message for this area. Originally said to be fixed by 8:00am, still down now at 11:00

There seems to be “glass half full” attitude many places, including some who post on Nextdoor, as well as some who post here. I visit Nextdoor occasionally. It’s easy to miss the many “likes” on a lot of the positive comments. Personally, I’m much happier when I address my attention to what’s right and try to focus on positive, kind solutions to what needs improvement. I wish more folks would take that approach.

My issue with Cox is that their rates increase like clockwork. Plus a couple of years ago Cox eliminated unlimited Internet and now I bump into the 1TB monthly limit often. Looking forward to 5G-to-wifi converters finally bringing some healthy competition for home Internet.

I hope this does not become like a NextDoor Cox complaint fest. Yes, in some neighborhoods Cox service isn't the best and occasionally goes down for a few minutes, sometimes for a couple of hours, perhaps longer. At my house, I think the service "failed" maybe a half dozen times over a decade or two, hardly ever more than a few hours, mostly just a few minutes. So what? The two times we required a service tech they did the job just fine. Their "sneaky" business/billing practices? Well, they're surely not alone doing that stuff.

Did you know that Cox hosts a public wireless service in many parts of SB/Goleta, free to use for subscribers? So you can use that while your neighborhood node is off-line. Or you can use the "hot spot" wireless from your phone, or at your coffee shop. In case you honestly feel you can't live without the internet for an hour.

Also note that Cox is busy doing some serious system upgrades all over town. We received a communication that our neighborhood is going to be off-line for part of the day soon. They said we would be notified the week before, reminded the day before and they will place a door hanger on the front door that morning. I think that's great!

So I'm not complaining. But waiting for Frontier Fiber (or Verizon, T-Mobile or ATT Home Interest) to make me an offer.

Next-door is full of crying babies

No issues where I’m at. Next Door is a great place for this type of question, you may get relevant feedback from people in your area. I see conversations about Cox outages and issues regularly on my neighborhoods NextDoor group (Hope/Foothill area)