Well, I unbundled from phone and cable tv as I don’t use them much. I use cox business internet here with guaranteed bandwidth (according to contract). At $86 monthly, it gives me access to anything else I might need (like streaming services, voice over IP, etc).
For the cost of cable tv, I can have 3x the channels with chromecast from google at about 1/2 the cost. As far as phone goes, magic jack still works and it’s interface is easy for us blind hackers. Oh, and I don’t have caps on downloading or bandwidth usage on business class either. -Eric From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Business services dept. > On Feb 2, 2021, at 1:07 PM, George Toft via PLUG-discuss > <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > > I've had CenturyLink and now have Cox. I would still have CenturyLink if > they would have given me a discount when my promotion was up - they refused, > so I switched to cox. When I called up to cancel the service and return > equipment, they suddenly found a 50% off for 2 years discount code. Too late > - that ship sailed. > > Cox has me so bundled up that to split the video from the Internet from the > phone and just go with Cox video and CL internet will cost me more than what > I'm paying now, and the Cox video features were better than CL at the time I > switched. It was literally like stepping from the 20th century with CL into > the 21st Century with Cox. > > In the end, in my opinion, bandwidth is good, but latency is king, but QoS > trumps everything. I have a co-worker who has been having problems with his > provider in Prescott Valley. They implemented "a fix" that drops him offline > for 23 seconds at 10:00am every day (sounds like rebooting a router). I also > know Cox' service seems to vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, and I got > lucky as I have had no problems, except bandwidth from my gamer kids who have > to download 25-100GB of games every week. > > Regards, > > George Toft > On 1/26/2021 6:16 PM, Stephen Partington via PLUG-discuss wrote: >> Streaming media is indeed a set bandwidth, but the headroom that a faster >> connection gives will hel offset the more bursty downloads without stalling >> or impacting the streaming content. >> >> Having had cox and century link gig fiber century link has been the better >> experience so far. And for concurrent streams fiber has been far more >> graceful and I think that the latency was a portion of it. >> >> On Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:54 PM AZ Pete via PLUG-discuss >> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> >> wrote: >> I would think hard about upgrading to a "faster" plan. >> The Wall St. Journal did a study that basically said you gain no advantage >> for streaming media by upgrading to a faster plan. >> The WSJ article is behind a pay wall, but this article summarizes the >> results. >> https://medium.com/gowander/quick-take-wsj-the-truth-about-faster-internet-its-not-worth-it-c73d79a616b9 >> >> <https://medium.com/gowander/quick-take-wsj-the-truth-about-faster-internet-its-not-worth-it-c73d79a616b9> >> >> I've been working from home since last March when Covid started. I have two >> kids. One is in high school who is on Zoom all day for school. The other is >> streaming Pluralsight/Youtube/Coursera all day doing self-learning to become >> a software dev. I'm a DBA and am on all kinds of video calls/meetings >> throughout the day as well as transferring large files to/from my local >> network. My wife works remotely as well (altho not very many video >> meetings). In the evening the kids are streaming movies/Youtube/video >> games/Discord/etc. With all this streaming going on I've never experienced >> any noticeable lag/dropouts in streaming or video conference calls. However, >> we consistently *almost* reach our 1.25TB cap each month. I have the Cox >> "Internet Preferred" plan (100Mb down/10 up). Since we are using a lot more >> data I'm considering upgrading our data cap (but not the speed). >> >> As far as the redundant ISP idea, I too worry about this. But my plan in the >> event of an ISP outage is to use my mobile phone as a hot spot. It'll work >> in a pinch to get me by until the outage is resolved. I've only ever >> experienced short outages with Cox, so having a backup ISP seems like a lot >> of wasted money in my opinion. But, you have to assess you're own situation >> and make the decisions that work for you. >> >> Something to consider.... >> Peter >> >> >> >> On 1/26/2021 3:49 PM, der.hans via PLUG-discuss wrote: >>> Am 26. Jan, 2021 schwätzte Mike Schwartz so: >>> >>> moin moin Mike, >>> >>>> OT: Off topic ... Hi from an old timer ... plus, a Question >>>> >>>> Please forgive me if I have been "out of radio contact" for too long. >>> >>> Yeah, it's been a while :). >>> >>> I believe both CenturyLink and Cox are offering Gigabit if you're in the >>> right part of town. At least Cox puts a data maximum on it. I believe >>> someone pointed out that a true gigabit connection can hit the monthly >>> maximum in a few hours. >>> >>> I was switching ISPs about the time that the pandemic started, so just >>> kept the old connection. I'm on one connection for dayjob and the family >>> uses the other. >>> >>> Since the pandemic has started both ISPs have had multi-hour outages, so >>> it's been handy to have a spare. Paying for two connections is a lot >>> cheaper than not getting paid due to overloaded bandwidth :). >>> >>> ciao, >>> >>> der.hans >>> >>>> (as in ... the "Wolf Brand chili" slogan) >>>> (see, e.g., >>>> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Wolf+Brand+chili%22+slogan&t=h_&ia=web >>>> <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Wolf+Brand+chili%22+slogan&t=h_&ia=web> >>>> OR ... just click over to the "[[Slogan]]" *section* of the Wikipedia >>>> article about "Wolf Brand chili" ... at >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Brand_Chili#Slogan >>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Brand_Chili#Slogan> >>>> >>>> >>>> * * * Question: * * * >>>> We upgraded our ISP service (at home) when my wife started working from >>>> home ... around the beginning of the pandemic. It is still "DSL", -- >>>> through "CenturyLink" -- but supposedly it is now FOUR times faster than >>>> it >>>> used to be, (it "had been" ... for * * * *years. ** * *) >>>> >>>> I think we need something faster now. (We have 3 adults ... and make use >>>> of >>>> [either Zoom or "Google Meet" or something similar] a lot lately. >>>> >>>> Any advice? >>>> (including, whether or not we should have more than one ISP, just to be on >>>> the safe side?) >>>> >>>> Thanks in advance, ... >>>> >>>> Mike Schwartz >>>> [elderly] timer >>>> I may be in the Plug-Discuss archives ... if they [still] go "WABAC" >>>> ... >>>> Glendale AZ >>>> schwa...@acm.org <mailto:schwa...@acm.org> >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> --------------------------------------------------- >>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >>> <mailto:PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> >>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >>> <https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >> <mailto:PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> <https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss> >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >> <mailto:PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> <https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss>--------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
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