It's Official COX San Diego phasing out Tivo support

A little north of you in Orange County I was fed a very similar story. I was paying over $200/month for triple play (TV, Internet, Phone) and was told that my TV costs could go way down if I dropped Cable Cards which are considered "legacy" service and not eligible for any bundle discounts or any of the new TV plans. After a lot of haggling and threats to cancel I did manage to get a discount which took me down to $180/month for triple play, but I still found that exorbitant and I was tired of having to call Cox all the time to try and get prices lowered. So I just dropped TV and phone a few months back and went with YouTube TV for TV service instead and only kept Cox "Preferred Internet" service (still a rip off around $84/month) from Cox. I still miss TiVo recording playback and trick play, but not enough to go back to Cox.

If there was a decent non-DSL Internet provider for my area I would be willing to ditch Cox altogether, but they basically have a monopoly for decent internet service for my area as I don't believe there are any competitive FTTH providers for my area and I don't consider DSL over copper a decent replacement.

 

Cox is my only cable TV or internet option. I do the annual new contract dance in a Cox store. This go-around, I was forced to take a Contour box, even if I'll never plug it in. It took quite a while for the rep to figure out how to keep the CableCard and find a package that supported cable cards.

Even if TiVo were aware and cared, there isn't much they can do. The CableCARD mandate is dead (https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/0904136726879/FCC-20-124A1.pdf). Not to get political, but the last administration's FCC dismantled many consumer-friendly regulations including this one.

Sure, the writing was on the wall for CableCARD, but Ajit Pai made sure there would be no successor. Cable companies even had the audacity to claim that they've delivered "apps" for streaming devices and that's a good enough replacement. In reality, not all companies developed apps, device support is scattershot, and they all have odd restrictions.

 

Think twice before you jump into the Spectrum swamp. They have a terrible record of supporting TiVo, especially Tuning Adapters, which you would probably need with Spectrum.

@moyekj before you feel too bad about your internet cost, Spectrum provides the only true HSI at my location and I pay $75 for 100/10. Metronet FTTH is building out here and will offer better deals, based on their promotional rates (but for how long?)

 

Advertisements

Man I am soooo glad I left Cox TV a few years ago. Still use them for internet, but they'll never get another dime of my TV money.

 

I left Cox TV a year and half ago. I’ve been perfectly happy with Philo and occasionally YouTubeTV. Keeping my TiVo for OTA.

Unfortunately like many, Cox is the only high speed internet option I have without moving to a new build neighborhood that has fiber. Windstream only offers 4Mbps DSL to my address.

I do see T-Mobile’s home internet is now available to my address. I’m thinking about trying it now, especially since Cox just bumped my 150/10 internet to $84 this month, without any notice. I already push the 1.2TB data cap. I recently got a Calyx hotspot for when traveling in the RV. It’s unlimited and Ive been getting 15/5 in my living room on it, so I’m not sure the T-Mobile home internet will improve on that much. I’ve been using the hot spot to stream this month instead of Cox. If t-mobile home internet can give me a reliable 50/10 for $50 a month no cap, I’ll be happy enough.

 

I'm very skeptical about the T-Mobile home internet option or any wireless solution. The latency will likely be much higher than a wired solution, not to mention reliability concern. However I do appreciate there being someone out there offering some competition to these cable monopolies.

 

For a few years I used to switch back and forth between Comcast and AT&T Uverse (fiber-to-the-node DSL, now just branded as AT&T Internet) in order to get new customer promo rates. Honestly, Uverse was perfectly fine for streaming HD and even 4K video, along with all the less demanding stuff I do online.

Although with FTTN DSL, your speed very much depends on how close you are to the junction box where the network switches over from fiber to copper. The box here is about 2,000 ft up the street from my house and I got about 50 Mbps the last time I had the service. (Since then I switched back to Comcast and then to AT&T Fiber after AT&T upgraded my neighborhood over a year ago.) At the time, it had the same 1 TB data cap as Comcast had here (a limit I never came close to on either provider).

Do you have FTTN DSL there or is it just regular all-copper DSL?

 

Hmm, hard to know given that Calyx has a contract in place to use the Sprint 4G network. I know that regular postpaid Sprint cellular phones can roam onto the T-Mo network but even those devices may prefer Sprint towers if available. The Calyx hotspots may not be able to connect to T-Mo towers at all. And if that's the case, then who knows what kind of speeds you might get from T-Mo home internet at your particular location.

I wonder too if T-Mo has started sending their home internet customers 5G-capable receivers yet. (I know that they plan to.) T-Mo just reported that their long-range 5G network is nearly twice as fast as their 4G network on the same frequencies (e.g. 600 MHz).

 

Contact the FCC. With the change in administrations, maybe the cablecard mandate can be revived?

 

The Calyx hotspot will currently default to a Sprint tower but will now go to a T-Mobile tower if a Sprint tower isn't present.

T-Mobile only ships the new Nokia 5G Home Modem now, although it is now backordered several weeks. The T-Mobile ISP reddit is pretty active with users on the new home modem

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobileisp/new/

 

ATT has FTTN (Fiber to the node) DSL. My neighbor had U-Verse and said he got around 30 Mbps, so with TV service + internet that just didn't cut it. He has since switched to Cox for internet and complains about cost (like me) even though the service is fine (and reliable). I don't know of anyone on my street with FTTH and this doesn't show any available:
Mission Viejo, CA Internet Providers (1,000 Mbps)

 

I've had metronet for 4 years now and their prices have stayed very consistent and it's easy to change service for when the promotion runs out. I have symmetrical gigabit service with a static ip (it's 10 a month) all for 89.95, including free phone service.

When I first signed up, the max upload was 250 which was still great but I just called in and switched to the symmetrical for the same price... 5 Mins and a reboot later the new speeds were there. I've been very happy with their service.

 

The next-to-last time I had Uverse, I think my speed was something like 30 Mbps. But the final time I had it installed, the installer was able to do something at the utility pole and upgrade my address's provisioned speed profile, bumping me up to 50 Mbps. If you really want to spend less on internet than the $84/mo you give Cox (which is awful, IMO), you might try checking with AT&T and see what speed you qualify for now and what the price would be. (Probably $40-50/mo with gateway included.)

I don't know how many folks/devices you typically have concurrently using the internet at your house but a lot of folks, I think, tend to overestimate the level of download speed they need. Streaming video is the most bandwidth-intensive thing most people do, and as a general rule, you're looking at per-stream bandwidth needs of about 5 Mbps for 720p, 10 Mbps for 1080p and 20 Mbps for 4K HDR. (Those are a bit on the high side to be safe.) A VOIP phone call using Ooma only needs less than 0.1 Mbps. Premium-quality music streams from Spotify need 0.32 Mbps.

 

OK thanks. There are 4 of us. No 4K streaming needed. However I also work from home now and require good low-latency internet for remote display from work servers to home. Anything north of 30ms latency for remote display gets really annoying for work. I'm usually in the 15-20ms latency range with Cox connecting via VPN to work servers about 20 miles away. Not sure if ATT would be better than that, but doubt it since probably just the copper phone line link from node to home will add more than that versus coax (plus fiber beyond the node) which is a better distribution medium.

The low latency requirement also likely rules out T-mobile or any wireless provider. Maybe one day 5G home service may make it competitive with wired latency.

 

Hmm. Yeah, I suspect your pings would be about 10ms or so higher on Uverse than what you have now (so maybe not prohibitively high), although you might want to research the question further if it's an option you end up seriously considering.

T-Mobile is very much rolling out 5G home service now. If they have a 2.5 GHz 5G tower anywhere near you, that might be an option for you.

 

Does the $89.95 include the static IP charge and taxes and fees and “Technology Service Charge”? I just got a price on the Metronet web site for 1 Gbps and phone service with no WiFi, no static IP, in my area. It is $85/55. This is a promotional rate and includes promotional credits of $30 for internet, $5 for phone and $0.62 for taxes and fees. Without the promotional credits that’s going to go up to a whopping $120+. So apparently Metronet plays negotiating games just like the other ISP’s, or you wouldn’t be getting the rate you have, which is sad IMHO.

 

While it great you were able to easily switch to a competitor, the thing that blows my mind, is the fact you actually have TWO overlapping CATV providers in your area, that are both large MSO's - which does NOT include the incumbent telco like AT&T, which I understand also serves San Diego in some fashion.
Just curious...how large an area there, does COX & Spectrum overlap???