One day in May, Andrew Rosenberg logged into a virtual meeting with scholars from around the world.
The professor of political science at the University of Florida was attending the meeting from his home, and that's the moment when his internet service went out.
Rosenberg had been a customer with Cox Communications for the five years he lived in Gainesville. He chose Cox Communications as his internet provider because it was the only one available on his street with reasonable internet speeds. For the first four years he lived in Gainesville, Rosenberg said, Cox had provided acceptable service.
For the past year, however, Rosenberg has received internet speeds he described as “horrific.” Despite paying more than he previously had for the same plan, Rosenberg reports receiving daily internet speeds significantly lower than those he pays for. Though his plan should provide him with speeds of 500 megabits per second (Mbps), Rosenberg often measures internet speeds of 3 to 10 Mbps.
When Rosenberg calls Cox Communications, he is told to reset his router. He does this on a regular basis, and still receives internet speeds significantly lower than those he pays for. Additionally, his service regularly experiences outages, such as in May.
“It was a pretty terrible experience, and it affected my ability to participate,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg has called Pavlov Media and IQ Fiber, two fiber-optic internet service providers in the Gainesville area, multiple times, intending to switch providers as soon as he is able. Among Cox customers, he's not alone in trying to find other options.
Over the past several years, multiple internet providers have appeared in Gainesville to challenge Cox Communications’ prominence in the area.
Cox Communications has remained the most dominant internet service provider in Gainesville and surrounding areas in Alachua County for decades. According to Cam Johnson, public affairs manager for Cox Communications, the company has been “providing services to Central Florida for more than 50 years.”
Additionally, Johnson stated that the company is “committed to providing customers with the services they need and expect.”
Still, interviews with a handful of current Cox customers point to an uneven experience with those services.
Katherine Green, a veterinary student in Gainesville, lives in an apartment with her husband. Green has lived in Gainesville for three years and has been a Cox customer throughout. According to Green, she had little choice in the matter; one of the mandatory conditions of living in her apartment complex was her subscription to Cox.
For the first year and a half of her time in Gainesville, Green’s internet service only faltered every several months. However, since the beginning of 2024, Green’s apartment has lost internet service on a regular monthly basis. Such outages, according to Green, have lasted as long as a week. Because of her status as a student, Green has been forced to leave her apartment and find other places with Wi-Fi just to complete her schoolwork.
“It’s just overall very annoying,” Green said.
Clayton Dukes is a former customer of Cox Communications who has already switched to IQ Fiber.
As the CEO and founder of Logzilla, a company that provides network management and log analytics, Dukes often finds himself working from home. As such, he said, having reliable and fast internet service is “pretty vital.” His Cox service regularly dropped, leaving him with no way to contact his employees.
Dukes paid approximately $150 monthly for his plan with Cox Communications. Recently, his rate went up $20, though he found out his brother's rate fell the same amount, and they live in the same area.
“They don’t care about their customers at all,” Dukes said.
For the past several weeks, Dukes has been a customer of IQ Fiber. His new monthly plan is $70 a month, and he describes the service they provide as five times faster than Cox.
IQ Fiber is a fiber-optics internet service provider that has operated out of Jacksonville, Florida, since August 2021. The company only began construction in Gainesville in October 2023 and has been providing service to customers since April.
The company constructs lines that run underground and connect hundreds of homes to the same above-ground component, called “cabinets.”
According to Kim Smithers, Chief Marketing Officer of IQ Fiber, the process of providing a neighborhood with access to this type of internet service takes approximately four months, from planning to turning on the network for that area. At that rate, service through IQ Fiber becomes available to a few hundred new homes every couple of weeks.
Though the company has only been providing service in Gainesville for several months, Smithers described the growth of the company’s customer base as “very rapid.” Smithers also said the prices of the company’s plans would remain the same for all customers, unaltered by any additional service fees or taxes.
When asked of IQ Fiber’s role as an alternative service provider to Cox Communications, Smithers said: “We are very happy to provide another choice.”
Other alternative internet service providers have become prominent in Gainesville. AT&T recently launched AT&T Internet Air, a service that allows a customer to self-install wireless service into their home.
T-Mobile, too, has become more available to Gainesville residents. According to Roni Singleton, senior manager of public relations at T-Mobile, 50% of households in the Gainesville area now have access to T-Mobile.
With the rise of new internet providers in the Gainesville area, as well as the services offered by companies like AT&T and T-Mobile, customers like Green, Dukes and Rosenberg are seeing increasing choices in providers.
Johnson, the Cox spokesperson, said the company was “no stranger to competition” and that Cox remains heavily involved in communities where it provides service.
“From bridging the digital divide to addressing social equity and environmental sustainability challenges,” Johnson said, “we’re committed to growing the good in the communities we serve.”