Kinetic by Windstream vs. Cox

Kinetic by Windstream fiber customers express generally positive feelings about their internet service, noting that they’ve found their connectivity to be fast and reliable.

Peter, an IT administrator in Sugar Land, Texas, noted not having to talk to customer service all that much. “I haven't talked to Windstream customer service in the last 12 months. That says a lot about the quality of their data line,” he says.

Other Kinetic customers were even positive about the installation experience. One customer we spoke to on Reddit says: “My Windstream install tech was great.” According to the customer, when they pushed back about unnecessary equipment, the technician did some quick research and agreed that the equipment wasn’t needed—instead of insisting he was right.

Most of the customers we spoke to that have had negative experiences with Windstream had these experiences as customers of its DSL service—not the fiber service we discuss in this piece. “They lie about their service, their speeds, their price,” says one DSL customer, Mikayla, a small business owner in Bent, New Mexico. “We were told in 2016 we would have fiber within the year. We still don't have it today and later found out that Windstream never had any plans to bring fiber to our neighborhood.”

We spoke to Cox customers around the country, and found that they had generally positive experiences with Cox. This is somewhat surprising given the fact that Cox largely relies on cable connections rather than fiber-to-the-home connections.

Isaac Chandler is an e-sports lounge manager in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who notes that he doesn’t love Cox service. Chandler thinks the price of his service is too high, and notes that he’s experienced outages relatively frequently. Despite these issues, he still seems largely positive about the service.

"It's pretty easy to set up and doesn’t require any weird cabling,” he says. He’s also had positive experiences with customer service reps: “They solve my problems pretty quickly.”

Other customers also note that Cox is a little expensive. Longtime Cox customer M.J. Stevens finds that it doesn’t offer great value for money. "But I still do it because I get everything I need with a minimum of fuss and bother," he explains.