Review by wh5916 
UPDATED: 1.8 years ago
member for 2.9 years, 314 visits, last login: 39 days ago
 Newport News,Newport News City,VA
 $41 per month
 about 14 days
 "Very reliable, consistent speeds"
 "None at the time"
 "Very happy with the service"
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(ratings above consensus)
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By 2004, I was so weary of dial-up speeds...but Cox in this area was too expensive for my budget, $49.95 for 4 mbps down and 512 kbps up, for those who didn't subscribe to another Cox service. DSL wasn't an option, providers like Verizon have steadfastly refused to offer it to this neighborhood.
Last January, a visit to the Cox Hampton Roads site uncovered a pleasant surprise--$39.95 a month was now the only rate displayed at the site for the service that I wanted. Once this was confirmed by emailing Cox customer service, installation was quickly arranged, and within two weeks I had high speed internet.
Installation went smoothly, on the day promised. Better still, I must have been first on the list, as the installer arrived before 8:30am that morning. I opted to purchase the modem directly from Cox, a Motorola Surfboard model SB5120.
The initial USB connection provided less than half of the promised 4 mbps down, so within a week I purchased a PCI ethernet card. Upload/download speeds immediately increased, very close to the max promised, and have remained that way throughout the past year.
Yesterday, the speed in this neighborhood was upgraded at no extra charge, now 5 mbps download and 2 mbps upload. Actual speeds, once again, are very close to the max promised.
To date, only one outage has been experienced, with downtime of roughly 90 minutes. That aside, I couldn't be much happier. The connection is always there, reliability is consistently good, and I'm still amazed at the speed of downloads, one year after being initially connected...just cannot block those dialup speeds of 4.8 kbps out of my mind completely. : )
AT&T CallVantage VOIP service was subscribed to within two weeks of getting the Cox hookup--this helped pay for the move to broadband, as my phone bill dropped from $38.00 a month down to $23.80 with CallVantage.
3/21/2007. Still very pleased. There was a rocky period last year, around this time, when upload speeds would plummet horribly, and there would be a ton of (if I remember correctly, this has been awhile) T3 timeout errors in the modem log during those times. My connection would also flunk some tests available at this site during those periods.
A call to Cox brought out a tech, who even remove a filter on the pole that would normally block out analog cable, which I don't subscribe to, to see if that would help things. It didn't, but several weeks later the condition eventually went away.
Since then, speed and reliability have been back to excellent.
There was a $2.00 rate increase a few months back, but the level of service I'm getting at this point is certainly worth that much of an increase. I just hope things stay this way, as I'm very happy.
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