We recently got an interesting question about Cox’s Gigablast from a resident in Las Vegas who wanted to keep their identity confidential. Their question was as follows:
Question: “I recently moved to Las Vegas where the cable provider is Cox Communications. It shows I can upgrade to GIGABLAST! It seems to be pretty fast, but it is also a bit expensive. Is it worth biting the bullet for the higher speed, or should we go for their Ultimate plan? We game, we stream, we geek. As a note, I do have a DOCSIS 3.1 modem.”
Answer: I would have to say no. At this very moment in time, it is not worth it. I find it quite difficult to recommend the upgrade due to the fact that Cox Communications is currently capping their monthly bandwidth at 1.25TB for all of their accounts, and the Gigablast option comes with no exceptions. You would think that with the kind of speed it has to offer, you would see a boost in your monthly cap, but it seems that Cox is hell-bent on milking their accounts for everything they can get.
All you are paying for is a massive increase to your download speed, but everything else remains the same. It’s like being given a car and being told you can only drive within a confined bit of space. However, they offer you a crazy fast model for a lot more, but tell you that you are restricted to the same space. This only quickens how long it takes to run into a barrier. It kind of defeats the purpose because you want to just jump in and take off and go wherever life takes you with that kind of speed.
Also, their upload for Gigablast is still mostly limited, with their max being around 100mbps. Their copper infrastructure in Las Vegas simply can’t handle a gigabit in both directions (this would be different if you had fiber, but Cox is taking their sweet time rolling fiber out around the city). At times, they have claimed that this is a limitation of DOCSIS 3.1 (current generation of cable networks), trying to redirect the blame for slow upload speeds at modems. However, DOCSIS 3.1 is spec’d to handle up to 10Gbps down and 1Gbps up. Although modem specs are almost always theoretical, claiming they are only capable of 10% of that promise is quite the stretch. Especially, when there are other providers out there who do offer faster upload speeds over copper.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you aren’t actually getting a gigabit. You’re getting 940mbps. Why it’s capped off there likely has something to do with math somewhere, but I couldn’t find a direct answer from anyone. At first, I thought this was a play on decimal value vs binary like you find with hard drives, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Given, 940 vs 1,000 doesn’t leave a huge gap. It’s just a matter of honest marketing vs play-on-words (not always so honest) marketing. [Update: The missing bandwidth is reserved for additional overhead data required to maintain the connection, so technically, this part is normal]
Now, to be fair to Cox, I would say that the average user isn’t going to use this kind of bandwidth anyway. I doubt the stats that Cox gives its customers is 100% as I have seen them claim that 98% or more of their customers never come close to the current cap. However, I know a handful of people who can take on a TB of bandwidth every month without giving it much thought. My house mostly streams music/movies and games, and we hit 80%+ all the time ourselves. However, there are still a large number of consumers that haven’t adopted these practices just yet. Of course, this will change quickly as we move further toward 4K and 8K streaming becoming more of a norm than a luxury. Not to mention advancements in VR and AI. By then, a 1.25TB limit is going to be quite a joke.
For now, stick with going for their “Ultimate” plan as you mentioned. It will still give you more than enough speed for what you say you are doing at home. Once the whole push for 4K/8K becoming a standard for all content does become a thing, you can re-evaluate this decision as long as Cox has greatly increased their cap or let it go unlimited for everyone. Else 4K streaming will eat your data up pretty quickly either way.
It is nice that you already have a DOCSIS 3.1 modem. This should keep you future-proofed for a bit before you find yourself running into having to buy something new. A modem like that will guarantee that you are riding your connection to its edge every moment of the way. Even if Cox decides to catch up a little. When DOCSIS 4.0 rolls out (likely some time in 2024 or the start of 2025), this is when most providers will be taking multi-gigabit a little more seriously.
One final mention before we go. Cox may taking its time rolling out fiber within the valley, but competition is starting to gather at the front door. Google Fiber being one of the major players looking to get a piece of the action with its multi-gigabit fiber plans. If the company (or any comparable name) makes it into town, you can bet that Cox will step up the speed of its fiber installation efforts quite a bit. While at the same time, if you see Google Fiber become available within your area, we’d highly recommend giving it a shot if the price is comparable as it will still likely be faster than what Cox will offer.
As for everyone else, what do you think? Feel free to share your own thoughts below in the comments.
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Do you have Cox’s Gigablast? Feel free to share your experience and opinions below in the comments.
12 Comments
My fiber where I live now is SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SOOOOOOOO much faster than Cox ever was.
Agreed. Go Fiber! Cox will eventually feel the pressure to catch up to the rest of the world.
It is worth it now that they have dropped the monthly cap. Sadly it took a population wiping virus to flip the switch (and their competition to make the first move). But when you take normal service into consideration, the only reason you should go with gigablast is if you get a really REALLY good deal on it. Beyond that I agree that you should stick with premiere until they do something about the monthly cap and the woopty-freakin-doo upload speeds. “Here spend a bunch of money on our awesome one day deal that you get you to a higher bill quicker”
Yes, they need to work on the whole cap thing. What is the point of running around at 3 times the speed if the room you’re stuck in is the exact same size? They are terrible at making you “want” the upgrade. That’s also like saying hey we will give you an upgrade to a fancy sports car that can go REALLY fast, but you can’t leave the street you live on without getting a ticket. I’m just not having it.
That’s not actually true about uploads at all. In fact I’m getting often around 800 down and 975 up, I’m getting consistently faster upload speeds than download at all times of the day and night I’ve run speed checks. I’m completely with you on how annoying it is to have the data cap (which was just implemented and wasn’t active when you wrote this article — there were no caps for fiber customers until a few weeks ago, Nov 20). Also at present, the data isn’t really capped because their meter hasn’t been working properly since November 25 LOL so mine still says 0 and if they can’t track it, they can’t charge for overages. I think they’re having issues tracking in general with fiber customers. I also have to disagree with your analogy strongly because you fail to consider one extremely, extremely important factor — consistency. Almost every day, there’s a warning from Cox about network outages in our area, and as a night owl, I’m awake and using Internet until 4 a.m. or so. These outages appear to happen between midnight and 6 a.m., but they don’t affect fiber customers whatsoever. I have a Ruckus Unleashed system here with two Access Points so I can track online time very easily and went 31 days without losing Internet connection once, only losing it because I had to cut power to the house for my solar system install. Since that, I’m now above two weeks of uptime again. You never lose your connection with fiber, it’s bulletproof, compared to cable that’s constantly having issues. As a gamer especially, I would NEVER go back to cable. It would be a dealbreaker for me on a new house if it didn’t have a fiber line.
Hello Johnathan. We base our information on the experience local users interviews and that of users that we are close to, and of course our interaction with Cox directly. The last we spoke with Cox, they commented that they were actively enforcing the data caps. There was no mention (by Cox) of any complications to this. As for your upload speeds, I am happy to see that you are riding the wave there. We have seen different results from others sadly, and Cox commented that they had no (current) intentions of raising their listed upload cap (“at this time”). That being said, it wouldn’t surprise us that in certain areas, Cox is finding hiccups in their efforts to control these speeds as they build out. I am sure they will do everything in the power to get control of that as soon as they can. It’s just the corporate way.
Well considering where I live (Arizona) All their packages almost the same… I’d go for the gigedy. Just make sure it’s the symmetrical one not the one that’s curbed of in a funny and sometime pain causing direction giggedy goo
This information is all incorrect. I’ve had Gigablast for 4 years, there is no monthly datacap. They don’t explicitly say that, but it’s true.
There own data page shows I do not have a limit, and thus it isn’t monitored.
My upstream is the same as downstream. I get around 900 Mbps up and down.
Hello Jason. Unfortunately, their website does specify the limit. You can see it here (https://www.cox.com/residential/internet/gigabit.html), where it states at the bottom in the small print “All Cox Internet plans include 1 TB (1024 GB) per month of data usage.” This was also confirmed by Cox when they commented on our questions during a phone interview before the story went live.
While it’s true that the plans do come with 1TB you can upgrade that by 500 increments or pay for I unlimited internet usage for a higher monthly fee
James, once again, that isn’t correct as of your date of post or your article. There wasn’t ANY cap on fiber customers until November 20. The Website could say whatever it wanted to say, but they had NO ability to track fiber customers’ data usage. Many of us called in specifically to ask (in my case when I moved here in August) and they would tell you directly on the phone, no, there is no data cap at this time because your data isn’t tracked, so can’t be capped. That changed on November 20, when they instituted tracking through the Cox app and the Website, but when you responded to this post, you were just wrong.
Again, we base our information on the experience of users we are close to and our interaction with Cox directly. The last we spoke with Cox, they commented that they were actively enforcing the data caps. There was no mention (by Cox) of any complications.