cox buys cableamerica operations

in my neck of the woods, cableamerica is a provider of cable, internet and internet phone services.  it is one of basically three choices.  however, in my opinion, it is the best.

i jumped on board with them early on and they are a relatively small organization not trying to bite off huge bits of the market — early on they resold at&t broadband basically.  their prices are great, their services is superb (read: responsive, technical, helpful), and their technical service offerings are awesome (no ports blocked, static ips, ‘we don’t care what you do’ mentality, great hd service on tv, etc.).  this has helped in past employment as a remote worker (vpn back into home, various client email settings and not having to change them, etc.) and has been a great experience to me.

now i read that cox is buying cableamerica operations that affect me.  this concerns me for several reasons.  first, change generally scares some people.  it does me to — and i don’t know why.  second, my service level changes concern me.  i have nothing against cox as an organization, but others who have dealt with them and their services haven’t had good things to say.  from the internet service standpoint, i’ve heard nothing but complaints: outages, blocked ports, no “home office” offering (must upgrade to higher priced business class—which is not really any more value), and crappy customer service/response times.  i looked at current pricing and based on all my services, if cox were to take over today i’d be paying more money for less services and perceived quality.  i’m not sure what their HDTV offerings are yet, but their site seems to list some offerings for my area — however friends have also questioned this service quality.

i hope the transition will take into consideration the customer.  but often it doesn’t.  we’ll have to wait and see.  my father just started using qwest high speed and likes it — maybe i’ll have to give them another look…