Upgrading to Cox

[Joseph Sinclair]

Cox switches from coax to fiber at their neighborhood headend, the same place their television and internet switch over to fiber.  They use a HFC infrastructure, so it's fiber at some point.  How quickly it switches from coax to fiber depends on where you are and how far their fiber lines are built out for that area.
Cox, connects to QWest at peering points where everything is digital data, they never switch over to POTS in their network.  QWest line issues don't matter, since Cox never uses any QWest lines.
Cox does have a "newer" phone service "option" that is basically carrier-hosted VoIP.  It's the only option they offer in some places (like Tucson), and it's far less reliable (they plug a big box into your household power to transfer your phone lines from analog to VoIP, much the same way Vonage does, except with a bigger box and higher cost).  If that's what they're offering you, skip the phone part unless you have good cell coverage for emergencies, since if power goes out in the neighborhood, you loose your landline pretty quick.  I've heard from one of their staff that they are not going to offer the NTU-based option (what Matrix and others have described) any more because the VoIP infrastructure is "better" (by which they mean less regulated and not subject to NEBS requirements).

==Joseph++

Matrix Mole wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 10:09 AM, farli <farli at deru.com> wrote:
>> First, the website seems to imply that the phone service is over fiber,
>> not copper.  Does that mean that I will no longer have to deal with
>> phone outages because of Qwest copper wire shorts?
> 
> Others have given a good response regarding the connecting to the
> internet service. I'll tell you a bit about the phone service. I had
> an apartment when I used cox telephone so I'm not sure about a few
> things. Basically, what they do is bring the cable from the pole, and
> put it into a box very similar to the phone companies NID. That is the
> box that the phone company comes into on one side, and then the other
> side goes into your house. Cox then ties into your normal internal
> phone wiring. I'm not sure if it's fiber, but it uses whatever Cox
> brings to the pole, and then coax from the pole to your house and then
> standard copper internal phone wiring inside your house. The only way
> qwest copper outages would affect you is if Cox tied into qwest's
> copper service further up the line, I don't know where they switch
> over to a POTS lines, but obviously at some point they'll have to so
> that you can call standard phone numbers.
> 
> Matrix Mole
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>