Back in the mid-’00s, a group of us in Santa Barbara got some balls rolling toward fiber-ing up the City and/or the County (by the same name), since it was clear that Cox Communications, our monopoly high-speed Internet provider, cared less about our city than the rest of the ones it served. And, when we met with Cox, that’s pretty much what they told us as well: that Santa Barbara was relatively small and far away from the company’s Atlanta headquarters. Our main upside, they said, was that whatever we ended up getting would be already proven elsewhere.
Since then I’ve had a few problems with Cox, but in the last year service has actually been pretty good, as cable Internet goes. I’ve measured as high as 80Mbps down and 18Mbps up. We had a gathering of techies at our house in January, all doing heavy data lifting with their laptops and smart mobiles, without a hitch. And, when I’m elsewhere, I get to watch our Dish Network TV rig over a Slingbox and DishAnywhere, in HD. That means Cox is giving me adequate upstream as well as downstream data traffic capacity. Not bad. (Here is the current set of data plans for Santa Barbara. Not sure which one we have. Note that all have data caps. Far as I know we’ve never hit any.)
But, as they say in bad late night ads, that’s not all. Now comes news that Cox is planning gigabit fiber to homes as well as businesses. In other words, to do for its footprint what Google is doing for Kansas City, Provo and Austin.
So here is an appeal to Cox, on behalf of Santa Barbara: front-burner us this time.
Thanks.
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