When I called Cox to negotiate a new bundle a few days ago a recorded announcement stated that the sales representative had important information for me about my Cox Internet connection. After we worked out the details of my new bundle the Rep passed along that my Premium internet connection DL speed would be at least doubled before the end of the summer. That sounds good, however...
Over the past couple of months I've noticed a few changes in the Downstream frequencies used for 8x4 channel bonding here in northern CT. Unfortunately, they moved them from the lower end of the 800 MHz spectrum area to the higher end of the 800 MHz range. My SNR instantly dropped from between 37 dB ~ 38 dB to an out-of-spec SNR between 34 dB to 33 dB. All 8 channels now accumulate a steady stream of correctable and uncorrectable errors, but to be honest, the connection is robust enough that I usually have the lowest ping compared to everyone else in the lobbies when playing TitanFall and there is no problem with packet loss.
Unfortunately, there is still a lot of hardline out in the street that was installed back in the early 80's by Continental Cable when they weren't pushing signals higher than around 500 MHz. That stuff took a real beating during storm Alfred back in 2011 and has given the Cox guys who handle street issues quite a battle getting it all to work when they started pushing stuff up closer to 1 GHz. There are a few sections where new hardline bypasses have been installed to replace damaged runs but it's still mostly old stuff out there that sets us up for ingress problems and serious slope issues with the signals from the plant. I'd love to see them roll out new hardline or at least move the DS allocations lower in frequency as a measure to improve reliability and performance.
Given that this is a fairly rural neighborhood I'm guessing Cox will flip the switch for the speed upgrade and then stand back and see what happens. Should be interesting... :huh:
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"The dog days are over... The dog days are done..."
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