On May 1st CenturyLink let us know that they were rolling out gigabit internet to West Omaha (story here). These plans are scheduled to be finalized by October of this year. The initial fiber area is expected to be something along the lines of this:
http://www1.pcmag.com/media/images/384161-centurylink-gigabit-fiber-optic-internet-omaha.jpg?thumb=y
This service is expected to cost $79.95/mo if you bundle it with other CL services. If you don't bundle it, it will cost a whopping $149.95/mo -- that sounds like a lot, but remember we are talking about gigabit internet service here.
What does this mean for Cox users? If the West Omaha area becomes a success and we begin to see a wider area rollout, Cox is going to feel pressured. This pressure could either be good or it could be bad for us. Cox will likely lose valuable customers pressuring them into spending more on advertisements. Cox might even start to offer higher speeds because of this, but at what expense to us?
If you've been a Cox customer for a while you know about the constant increase in rates. Despite the recent speed increase, we haven't really seen a justification for the price hikes. If Cox starts losing customers to CL's gigabit service they could very well offset their losses by increasing rates even further. Lets hope Cox responds positively to the competition, though.
"Gigabit" Internet?
Gigabit internet is exactly as it sounds: gigabit speeds. Technically you should be able to achieve around 1000Mbps download and 1000Mbps upload. You heard that right. One-thousand megabits per second. Here's a speedtest with Google Fiber:
[att=1]
To put that into contrast: Cox's Ultimate plan is 150Mbps down and 20Mbps upload. Gigabit internet is roughly 6-7x faster than Cox's best offer for download speeds and a whopping 50x faster than the best upload speed Cox has to offer! CenturyLink's gigabit internet plan is also $20 cheaper than Cox's best plan if you bundle. However, if you don't bundle, CL's gigabit offering is only $50 more than Cox's plan -- 6-7x the download and 50x the upload for only $50 more!
What It Comes Down To
- Data Cap
Even if CL imposes a low bandwidth cap on the service there's no way that cap is going to be worse than Cox's already pathetic cap. Now Cox seems to be pretty lenient about the data usage cap -- users have reported getting to 900+ GB without notice from Cox. If CL imposes a small cap and enforces it strictly I will probably have to stay with Cox.
- Reliability
No service is perfect. I've had more downtime on Cox than I would like, but alas their services are superior to CL as it is right now. This downtime has also only really occurred during their maintenance periods.. which is understandable, but too frequent and inconvenient in my case.
If CL can at least match the reliability of Cox, they are golden. If not.. well, it depends on if you can live with unreliable internet but extremely high speeds when it is working.
If you came into this thread with your fanboy pants on, please take them off (giggity)! If you're in an area where CL's gigabit service is being offered you are a fool to not try the service out. I for one would love to see some initial results of their gigabit service.
What About You?
- Will you be jumping ship if this service is offered in your area?
- If not, what is deterring you?
- How do you think Cox should respond to this pressure?
- If Cox were to raise their rates by $10 because of the pressure, with no plan upgrades, would you still stick with them?
- If Cox were to introduce gigabit internet for $10 more a month, would use Cox just because of brand loyalty?
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Hopefully the mods will allow discussion about rivalry :)
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