I was loosely aware that we have a data cap of some sort. I am on the Ultimate tier and wasn't really worried about it until now.
I noticed that Cox is offering an upgraded speed to the Ultimate tier. However I notice that the speed is doubling (download only) but the data cap is being cut in half from 2TB to 1TB. Wow! Twice the speed, half the data cap, same price! I'm not sure if I will have to opt into this or be forced into it, customer support wasn't very good. Either way, it looks like I can't ignore the data caps anymore as apparently Cox is charging a whopping $10 for a measly 50GB ($1-2 per 50GB would be more reasonable, but then again NO CAP is reasonable). This prices the extra 1TB of data at $200 a month, or double the cost of the service itself!!!
I understand that this just "is what it is". Cox is trying to generate more revenue. Sadly this is just a cash grab and I sincerely hope customers drop Cox in droves in the Cleveland area. Yea I know it is a pipe dream... We have no options / alternatives! I live in a city which does not allow TWC or WOW to provide competing service. AT&T can only muster up 45mbps speeds on paper (only can deliver 18 or 24mbps in actuality). In effect Cox has a monopoly and is now going to cash in. Kudos to the execs lining their pockets on this one! Hope you can afford the 60 foot boat now instead of the measly 50 foot boat.
I'm halfway through my billing cycle (8/26/16 - 9/25/16) with 14 days left. Data plan is 2000.00 GB and I am at 461.31GB used with 1538.69 GB left, 23%. Our family was out of town for 3 days during this billing cycle (no usage). Under the current 2TB limit, I'm not worried. Halfway through the month, 25% usage. But if it gets cut to 1TB, I can count on being on the wrong side of 1TB more often than not. After all I will be streaming more football / TV going forward and when the fall/winter influx of games hit Steam / XboxLive it will be fun downloading the 50gb+ games knowing each one has an additional $10 Cox pocket lining tax added to each. Can't wait for more streaming 4k content to chew up my cap that much quicker!!!
Looking forward to the next upgrade in speed and downgrade in data cap....
***UPDATE***
A little update...Into second month and my speeds remain at the old Ultimate speeds and my cap remains at the old 2TB cap. So far this month, I have 14 days left and have used 64% of the 2TB cap. This also doesn't count yesterday, which I know for a fact I downloaded around 50GB of data. So I will have between 650gb and 750gb to "ration" for the next 14 days.
I stream, 4k even, but the real kicker is video games. I believe I can download Battlefield 1 early tomorrow and was looking at getting Gears of War 4. Both of these games will quickly add another 100+GB of usage on the month. I have a feeling I am going to go over the cap this month and get dinged. Problem is, Gears of War 4 for example could cost me $20 in data cap if I download it to both my PC and Xbox 1 as the game is around 55GB to download. Awesome.
My feeling right now is that I am going to refuse to pay the data overages and look for service elsewhere. Cox also increased all the sub-Ultimate tiers to 1TB. This is not enough data and $10 for 50GB is too much for too little. I am seriously going to look for another provider and accept slower speeds for unlimited data. At this point the amount of data is more important than the speed, which I find sad.
Here are amicable solutions Cox should consider if they value their customers even just a teeny tiny bit:
1.) Remove the data cap on Ultimate or higher tiers. I have paid $99 a month forever just for internet, leave me alone! Does Cox understand their Ultimate tier demographic? Do they think we want to underutilize our connection? Grandma doesn't buy the Ultimate tier. Grandma won't get gigablast when it comes out. I pay for Ultimate tier because I want a 50-60GB video game download to take under an hour and not 4-8 hours. I download enough stuff that is this large to justify paying double what the average person pays for internet! Data caps punish me extra for being a heavy user. I bought the highest tier of bandwidth because I am a heavy user. Non-heavy users don't waste money on faster speeds that they do not need.
2.) Flat rate of no more than $25 a month on top of my $99 a month for unlimited data cap. If you can't do math, you petty Cox execs, you effectively raised the rate of my service by 25% if you did this. TWENTY FIVE PERCENT!!!! And you didn't have to give me anything other than what I had before! LOL on you way to the bank, but at least I don't have to check my usage daily and worry about this garbage. Peace of mind to not worry about a random $500 internet bill. If the choice is between Sucks and Sucks More I will take Sucks.
3.) Charge $10 per 500GB or preferably $10 per 1TB. Data is cheap. So cheap it doesn't cost you anything =P. The price should be cheaper the more you use, bulk discount. For reference, a physical hard drive that is 4TB in size can be had for under $110.00. This works out to less than .03 cents per GB. An expensive high end SSD 1TB can be had for under $425.00. This works out to 42.5 cents per GB. Your $10 for 50GB of bandwidth works out to .20 cents a GB. WTF? I know you shouldn't compare physical storage capacity to bandwidth moving through a network, but your price is FUBARD. This is why caps are so silly on broadband internet. Ditch the caps and just charge more for the service if you really need to bend us over and extract more money. Fixed rate is king!
4.) Go cell phone plan, let me choose a speed and pay for it and let me choose a data bucket and pay for it. Buckets should be 1-2TB low end. 5TB low-mid. 10TB high. 20TB ultimate / extreme. I would probably buy a 5TB bucket and whatever speed to get back to $99 a month.
5.) If you can't do any of this, here is another cell phone plan idea: Roll Over Data. I didn't use all 2 TB last month. I didn't even go over 1TB. But this month I will likely be going over 2TB. If last months data rolled over, I wouldn't have to worry about it this month.
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