Cutting the COX Cable cord.....

[Urban Pioneer]

Our company has started doing Smart Home Systems in SOSA and other areas. My own home has turned into something of a sponsored guinea pig for technology so that we can beta test equipment before installing it in client's homes. Obviously audio/visual is a big part of what people want in a Smart Home and Internet is a major backbone in remotely controlling devices if not streaming the actual content.

We have beta tested dish, DirecTV, Cox, and AT&T Uverse for cable and/or Internet.

After all of these tests in OKC, I can confidently say that if you live in a neighborhood that has Uverse with fiber optic "wire", that is the route to go. AT&T is desperate to reclaim market share and offset their losses of home telephone. Many new neighborhoods have fiber run down every street as a result. In our case, the salespeople were clueless about our neighborhood. I learned about the presence of fiber by talking to a AT&T guy working on the local junction up the street. It took four months of visiting the AT&T store before our neighborhood was "green lighted". Once it was, they came out and literally trenched and buried fiber optic cabling up to the house and installed an exterior demarc panel. CAT 5 carries the signal into the house to a modem and router. The DVR is tethered by CAT5. It then wirelessly communicates to the aux units in other rooms. I can manipulate all of the TV's, DVR, and transfer programs between rooms all of my iPhone. I actually use the phone more as the remote to this system than the actual remotes that came with the system.

BEWARE! "Uverse" is a catch all term used by AT&T. There is a distinct difference in copper based DSL service and the speeds and television capability that a fiber optic glass cable all the way to the house can provide.

The other benefit to this system is that much of AT&T's infrastructure is buried. You won't have the blackouts and other problems that many other providers have during inclement weather. It is important to put a Uninterrupted Power Supply on your modem and router though. The demarc panel actually has one to keep connectivity up to the house.

Also, since this service is new, HBO, Showtime, and other channels are free in HD with the mid level package.

I would rate DirecTV second best. They were purchased by AT&T and much of the technology is the same between the fiber based Uverse system and the DirecTv dish based system. They are both very sophisticated and discrete. Our DirecTV system was notorious for cutting out during storms. Be sure to ask for the DVR with "mini genies" for each room that are "Apple compatible" to receive the latest technology from them. Particularly if you want to remotely manipulate their system with an iPhone or iPad.

Dish is OK.

Cox sucks but still has the highest speed internet available. They still require a big cable box at every television. I refuse to use them for television service in a smart home but am glad they are around for Internet service in most neighborhoods.

BEWARE! Do not use Cox's Internet modem. Go buy one for yourself such as a Motorolla surfboard or CISCO router. Put it on an Uninterrupted Power Supply. Their modems suck! They use the cheapest modems that cannot handle the bandwidth that you are often actually usually paying for. Spend an extra $80.00 to $120.00 and get a cable modem that isn't theirs. I have often wondered if the modems they provide are intentionally manipulated.

Hope this helps some folks- Jeff with Vox Public Audio

[Pete]

Thanks for that! Awesome write-up.

And yes, as a DirecTV subscriber for about 10 years, had bad problems with the signals cutting out during storms -- and that was in California. Also, you have to make sure trees are well clear of the dish. And of course, you have to have a dish on your roof. It's small, but I really don't like the look.

As I mentioned, I have FIOS and they literally ran fiber optic in the streets then up to each house that wanted it installed. It's been fantastic; never, ever down in 5 years, many levels of Internet and even the lower ends are very fast, and this comes from someone that pushes tons of data all the time.

I think Uverse fiber optic and FIOS are very similar.

[Pete]

BTW, for fast Internet, basic HD TV and unlimited phone I pay $105 a month (all in, including taxes) and that's off contract.

[zookeeper]

I thought AT&T's fiber optics network in OKC is Fiber-To-The-Node (FTTN)???? I don't think they have actual fiber to the premises in the way FIOS does it. That's why their speeds are way slower. Cable blows away AT&T U-verse in Oklahoma City. Their fiber network runs to nodes and then they use older copper lines to the actual premises. They call it Fiber-To-The-Premises, but it's not. They may have it some places, but Jeff, true FTTP is not an option in Oklahoma City (as far as I know and I just double-checked AT&T info). You would see FIOS speeds if they did. But he is absolutely right that they use the U-verse name in some kind of umbrella fashion. Also, the AT&T acquisition of DirecTV is still awaiting approval. They have had a partnership arrangement for awhile with AT&T as a reseller, but AT&T doesn't own DirecTV - yet.

edit - Maybe they do in brand new, very tight, urban areas - like DD? Jeff's post was excellent - but confusing, because I didn't think they had true FTTP in Oklahoma City. Can someone - maybe from AT&T - explain? Otherwise, we'd be seeing blazing speeds with U-Verse, and nobody (even Jeff in his post) is seeing it.

[Urban Pioneer]

I live in Ward 8 now because my wife owned a house before we got married. The house is in a development by Ideal Homes called Valencia. The AT&T technician working on the neighborhood node explained to me that theirs was fiber all the way from the neighborhood node back to the main switch at 4th and Robinson. That is more than 184 blocks! It was installed along every sidewalk to each street splice. They then trenched from the sidewalk to the house to install fiber right up to the demarc. I will take some pics right now and send them to Pete for kicks.

[Pete]

Yes, when FIOS came to my community they actually tore up all the streets, then repaved them!

And then they ran fiber right to my house.

[Urban Pioneer]

Ha HA! They left the neighborhood node unlocked!

[Urban Pioneer]

My house has the Mustang in front of it for reference.

[zookeeper]

Okay.....it's apparently for a future (year+) rollout. The FTTH service is available nowhere in Oklahoma City, though they do lay the infrastructure in some newer areas. But you don't actually get the full experience of FTTH....here's where it's available
http://www.att.com/att/gigapowercities/
https://www.att.com/shop/u-verse/gigapower.html
The Gigapower Fiber-To-The-Home will deliver gigabit speeds.

[Urban Pioneer]

True! I'm just stoked that we happen to have a house wired for it when it does come. One of the few benefits of living in a newer neighborhood. The irony is that we are getting high def 1080P television signal over this fiber optic cable whereas the Internet provided is only 18 up and down. AT&T still wants to play these ridiculous games with speed although the capability to do much more is there.

Cox, by contrast, will often provide up to 150 or more up and down but has terrible, antiquated cable and the aforementioned cheap cable modems. I have a client paying for the 150 with a static IP. Cox's cheap modem was allowing only 72 to get through.

None of these companies care to provide their customers with competitive service and all seem to want to trap people into bundle games with less than adequate service.

To me, these experiments at home revolve around overall reliability and the prowess in ease of actually operating the equipment. Gigabytes sure would be nice though.

[BBatesokc]

...BEWARE! Do not use Cox's Internet modem. Go buy one for yourself such as a Motorolla surfboard or CISCO router. Put it on an Uninterrupted Power Supply. Their modems suck! They use the cheapest modems that cannot handle the bandwidth that you are often actually usually paying for. Spend an extra $80.00 to $120.00 and get a cable modem that isn't theirs. I have often wondered if the modems they provide are intentionally manipulated....

Good to know. I was gullible enough to have rented their router for awhile - but only so they'd have to service it. It seemed every time I'd call with an Internet complaint, they'd blame it on my personally purchased router.

I returned it the other day for a NetGear R6300.

Since your post, now I'm considering purchasing my own modem. New Egg, Best Buy, Sam's?????

[Urban Pioneer]

I saw a Motorola surfboard at Sam's the other day. We usually order the SB141 and pair it with an Apple Airport Express or AirPort Extreme. Both are usually plugged into an APC Uninterruptible Power Supply.

The SB141 can easily be found on ebay for $80.00 to $100.00

I went to Best Buy and the salesperson couldn't tell me if they sold them in the store or where they might be so I left.

There are probably others. Many businesses use CISCO units. I just read Consumer Reports to settle on Motorolla for our homeowner clients.

Another note to folks who have old modems and routers. These units do get "dirty" digitally speaking. If you constantly have to reset your unit by turning it off and on or unplugging it, go buy yourself a new cable modem and router if you have the cash. A UPS is a nice option as well. In Oklahoma, with the severe weather here, it is a worthwhile investment and will help protect your equipment and keep you from being frustrated by preventing it from going down.

An APC Back-UPS 550 is $69.99 on APC's website and will keep a router and modem up and running for about 80 minutes and prevent brown outs and other fluctuations from messing with your service that much. There are cheaper units although that one has good reviews and is a pretty good lower-end compromise. Larger units will give you longer run time or allow more power for more devices.

[BBatesokc]

I saw a Motorola surfboard at Sam's the other day. .... A UPS is a nice option as well. In Oklahoma, with the severe weather here, it is a worthwhile investment and will help protect your equipment and keep you from being frustrated by preventing it from going down. ...

I will check at Sam's today. That is where we get our battery backups as well. I have large ones for my computers, modem and router and our 16-camera security system and iris home automation. They were coming on last night with all that wind. We have a ton of trees and they constantly hit the lines during storms.

[onthestrip]

Whats the reason for the back ups? Just to have use of the internet in case of a power outage? Does it really matter to have one with brown outs? Its not like we have those around here.

[Urban Pioneer]

Several reasons. First, a UPS often contains power conditioning filters. Power generating plants strive to produce 60 cycles per second but often there are imperceptible fluctuations to the consumer. These fluctuations are detrimental to sensitive equipment and are often the cause of power transformers "wall warts" to go out.

Older parts of OKC do have brown outs. In Midtown, power problems have been a big issue as construction projects have disrupted power.

Weather disruptions are a big problem here. Often when you need the information regarding storms the most, the power goes out.

Finally, the biggest reason to put your cable modem and router on a UPS is simply to keep them syncronized together. Often times they reboot at different speeds during a power glitch and many units do not always marry back up. Sometimes you have to stagger bringing the cable modem back online and then the router.

Anyways, a UPS can simply make your equipment last longer and reduce the nussiance of dealing with the units.

[tfvc.org]

If you decide to purchase a modem, buy a Zyxel. That is what the company I worked for in Fl used for their business class customers who didn't require fiber. They are a lot more stable and have better features. Be sure that the modem is Docsys 3.

[BBatesokc]

Whats the reason for the back ups? Just to have use of the internet in case of a power outage? Does it really matter to have one with brown outs? Its not like we have those around here.

What UP said.

When we lived near TAFB we had brown outs constantly.

Additionally, the backups make sure I don't lose any work I may be doing on my computer at the time the power goes out or simply flickers. They also keep me from having to reconfigure my router settings with my security cameras (a requirement after a power outage). Lastly, my home alarm and automation needs to continue monitoring its status and a loss of power causes security issues for us.

We even had a smaller backup recessed into our wall behind our tv so as to protect it from surges and outages. They are a great investment.

[kelroy55]

You can get HBO with Sling.

Sling TV Gets HBO Ahead of 'Game of Thrones' Premiere - NBC News

[MagzOK]

We cut out cable TV about three years ago. One day I was paying bills and my cox bill was $201 that month, which had been steadily increasing after we selected a 'bundle' a couple years earlier. We had not once used our Cox Telephone that is in the bundle. I thought NO MORE! I didn't even realize we were being charged $9/month to RENT a crappy modem from Cox! So we cut it. We had been thinking about it for a few years since we had young kids and weren't watching much anyway -- only football/ESPN was keeping us on board. So we cut the cable and over the last two years have been tweaking our habits. Finally we have pretty much everything we wanted and were keeping cable for, but without having it! We kept Cox HS internet and we're rocking usually over 50MBPS constantly. I did buy my own Motorola Surfboard modem for $80. For TV, I installed a Mohu Sky antenna in our attic. It is more than what I need, however we had started out with individual antennas on each of our two TVs climbing up the walls. So I installed the Sky in the attic and so now each of our TVs pick up free, over-the-air HD broadcasts from the local networks. We have a ROKU and Apple TV, and with both of those we stream our Netflix, Vudu, Amazon, all that stuff via the internet. We also have a subscription to SLING TV. This is not that Slingbox stuff that DishTV had. SlingTV -- finally the ala carte we'd been looking for forever! For $35/month we get ESPN/ESPN2, AMC, Food Network, A&E, History/II, TNT, TBS, HGTV, Travel, CNN, Lifetime, HBO, Disney, and some others. So my monthly television/related bills are $65 (cox internet), $35 for SlingTV, and $8 for Netflix i'm paying $108/month for everything I want. Yes if you dug all into it for such and such more this and such and such more that I can have cable and a DVR, etc., but the point is I'm getting what I want, not some dumb package the Cox is making me select! It feels very freeing. But really that's how Cox gets ya, this extra and that extra, then boom our spending a ton of money for crap you don't need.

[okatty]

That's an excellent post and great info. Thanks. I'd be curious on what you feel you are missing if anything. For example...Thunder games on Fox Sw?

[MagzOK]

That's an excellent post and great info. Thanks. I'd be curious on what you feel you are missing if anything. For example...Thunder games on Fox Sw?

You know, we really don't miss much. We go to a handful of Thunder games each season and there may be another handful of games we would otherwise actually sit down and watch on TV, but we really don't miss it. I mean we keep up with them and everything, but we didn't watch every game even before when we had cable. Also many of their games are super late at night on the west coast anyway and we're the early-to-bed type. Anyhow, they play on major networks about a quarter of the time (ESPN/TNT--both of which are on Sling) and ABC. We go to most OU home games and there are a handful of games on Fox Sports (which you must have cable to subscribe to that) but we have various friends who do small watch parties at their homes. We've also gone to a local restaurant and set up shop to watch a game. For a little while I missed our DVR, but I quickly learned that instead of going to the DVR, I went to Amazon or something like that to watch it alacarte. NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox run their shows off their websites for free the day after they air. What I do is if it's not free on Amazon or Netflix, I log into the station's website on my iMac and then shoot the screen over to my TV via the Apple Mirror Play feature that connects to the TV over my wifi network through my AppleTV. It kind of sounds complicated, but it really isn't. My wife who is technologically challenged navigates the Roku/AppleTV/Mirrorplay just fine, as does our seven year old.

[OkiePoke]

I finally got rid of Cox last week...


but got U-Verse. ha. The only reason was because I get everything half off. Way more channels I could ever watch with all the movies and decent internet for $80 is hard to beat.

[bombermwc]

Whats the reason for the back ups? Just to have use of the internet in case of a power outage? Does it really matter to have one with brown outs? Its not like we have those around here.

Here's an interesting bit of niceness that came with us tossing Cox cable, and having a newer LED TV on a UPS. When the storms roll through in the spring, and the power flickers or even goes out (you know in the worst possible time as the real nasty stuff is just getting near you), our small BE550G APC UPS can keep our TV running off the "airwaves" for 30-40 minutes!!!!! it's a bit weird feeling knowing the rest of the house is dead, but there's that TV and the weathermen, still going at it

[kelroy55]

I cut the cord about 6 months ago and after an brief withdrawal period I don't miss it at all. I have the network stations and also Roku so I'm all good, and have an extra $75+ a month.

[jerrywall]

I picked up a TVIO Roamio OTA for $50 at best buy this weekend, which was the final nail for me cutting the cable cord. I can now pause and record antenna tv. Plus the tivo supports netflix and hulu, plus has a plex app that connects to my home media server. Even paying for the tivo, netflix, and hulu service, I'm saving about $80 a month. Pretty quick ROI.