Gigablast in Pensacola, FL
I was excited to see that Gigablast was finally available in my area (Pensacola, Florida). I get 300 down or so with the Ultimate package, so I was excited to see what I'd get with Gigablast. I went and bought a new Arris SB8200 modem, headed home, and called Cox to make the change. They wouldn't honor the $99 price I saw online, so I ended upgrading myself online for the special deal that was displayed when I logged in, and then called back to activate the new modem.
Once everything was ready to go, I connected to the Internet and did a Speedtest. 180 down. Wait, what? I got 300 down previously. Just minutes ago. So the Cox rep asked me to power cycle the modem and my networking equipment (my wifi is Eero Pro 802.11ac mesh network and works very well). After doing all that, we got worse results. It was late and I said I'd call back the next day if the issues continued.
Today I went and took back the Arris SB8200 modem to Best Buy and bought a Netgear CM1000 instead - just for giggles to see if it'd work any better. So, I called Cox, had the rep activate the new modem, installed it, restarted everything, ran Speedtest and... 82 down. Are you kidding me?!? The rep actually said to me "Please give the modem a while to work. Sometimes it takes them a while to come online fully." I just started laughing and said I'd call back.
Now, I've supposedly got Gigablast, but I'm getting worse speeds than I got on Ultimate. I've tried 2 different modems, different coax lines, different Cat 6 cable, using wifi and not using wifi, etc. Still sucky speeds. AT&T is coming soon with their stuff and it's looking much more attractive now...