Cox Boosts Speed on its "Most Purchased" Tier to 250 Mbps

With attention on U.S. headline home broadband speeds of 2 Gbps to 5 Gbps, it is easy to overlook the fact that most consumers do not buy services operating at the headline speeds. 

In fact, at Cox Communications, a cable company with customers concentrated in metro areas, the most-popular service tier  had offered speeds up to 150 Mbps. But Cox now has boosted speeds on that tier by 67 percent to 250 Mbps at no extra charge.

That is part of the typical pattern, where speeds for the most-purchased tiers increase, while prices generally remain the same, with inflation increases being the main changes in posted retail prices. 

Cox has committed to boosting its top tier service to 10 Gbps over the next few years. As speeds at the top grow, so will speeds on the other tiers below. 

In the fourth quarter of 2021, for example, roughly 70 percent of U.S. home broadband customers purchased services operating between 100 Mbps and 400 Mbps, generally measured using Wi-Fi-connected devices. 

That of course means the internet service provider connection delivered to the home ran faster than those measured speeds. 

source: Openvault 

Those sorts of tests also are important because end user experience is dictated as much by in-home Wi-Fi performance as it is by what the ISP is actually delivering to the home. User experience also is shaped by the purchasing decisions consumers make.

It is one thing to describe the speeds consumers choose to purchase; it is another thing to describe what speeds they are able to get. The former is consumer behavior; the latter is network performance.