Cox Communications

Cox Enterprises expanded into the cable television industry in 1962 by purchasing a number of cable systems in Lewistown, Lock Haven and Tyrone (all in Pennsylvania), followed by systems in California, Oregon and Washington. The subsidiary company, Cox Broadcasting Corporation (unrelated to the Cox Media Group, which focuses on radio stations and television stations), was not officially formed until 1964, when it was established as a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The company was renamed to Cox Communications in 1982. It was taken private by Cox Enterprises in 1985.

In 1993, Cox began offering telecommunication services to businesses; it was the first multiple system cable operator to do so. This eventually grew into Cox Business, which now represents $1 billion in annual revenue. In 1995, Cox acquired the Times-Mirror cable properties and as a result became a publicly traded company once again.

In 1997, Cox became the first multiple system cable operator to offer phone services to customers following the 1996 Telecom Act. Two years later in 1999, Cox acquired the cable television assets of Media General in Fairfax County and Fredericksburg, Virginia. In May 1999, Cox bought TCA Cable TV and its operations in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. In July 1999, Cox acquired AT&T Broadband's cable systems in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada. In August 1999, Cox sold systems in Massachusetts that served about 54,000 customers to MediaOne, in exchange for Cox acquiring MediaOne systems in Connecticut and Rhode Island that served about 51,000 customers. The following year, Cox Communications acquired Multimedia Cablevision with assets in Kansas, Oklahoma and North Carolina.

In 2004, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors found Cox Communications guilty of violating an agreement with the county which stated that all homes served by Cox within Fairfax County would be digital ready with the new fiber optic network by June 2003. When this term expired with less than 30% of the county having been completed, the Board of Supervisors decided to fine Cox $100 per day from the originally agreed completion date, until work was completed in January 2006. The Board also forbade Cox from raising rates to recover the cost of the fine for a period of 10 years from the actual completion date. The total fine was approximately $93,000. Also in 2004, Cox Communications announced plans to take the company private once again, expressing frustration in the shareholder's emphasis on short-term goals. The company was taken private for the second time in 2005.

By November 1, 2005, Cox announced the sale of all of its Texas, Missouri, Mississippi and North Carolina properties, as well as some systems in Arkansas, California, Louisiana and Oklahoma to Cebridge Communications. The sale closed in 2006 and those systems were transitioned by their new owner from Cox branding to Suddenlink Communications.

On May 14, 2007, Cox announced that they had sold their investment in Discovery Communications for the Travel Channel, related assets, and $1.3 billion.

In 2007, DiversityInc magazine named Cox Communications #25 in its Top 50 Companies for Diversity. Cox climbed to the sixth position on Diversity Inc.'s 2008 list. Also in 2008, Cox was named #8 on the Top 10 Companies for African Americans. Two years later, on

November 19, 2010, Cox began offering wireless services in Orange County, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and, in Hampton Roads, Virginia.In February 2011, Cox Communications completed its Alternative Energy Project which included two fuel cell installations at each of the company's San Diego, CA and Rancho Santa Margarita, CA headquarters. Two separate PureCell System 400 kilowatt installations will generate enough onsite power to reduce the company's dependence of the local power grid and decrease its carbon footprint.

Residential services

Cox Cable TV

Cox distributes standard definition and high-definition cable television programming, including Digital Cable. Cox launched Digital Cable on its Orange County system in 1997. In February 2008, Cox started to implement switched digital video (SDV) technology in some of their markets. In late 2014, Cox started notifying customers in their Connecticut market that they would be moving to an All Digital Video platform, requiring a small digital adapter (termed a Cox Mini-Box) for televisions that were previously connected to an analog only signal.

This same notification was extended to all other major markets in 2016.

Digital video recorder

Cox offers digital video recorder service, provided using Motorola, Scientific-Atlanta, Cisco, or previously Moxi equipment depending on the local market.

On Demand

Cox offers video on demand service in the majority of its markets under the name On Demand. On Demand offerings are fairly standardized, portal-based, and carry VODnets like The Ski Channel, and includes HD offerings and replays of major network series.

Carriage controversies

News Corporation dispute

On January 1, 2000, Cox was involved in a retransmission consent dispute with News Corporation (the parent company of the Fox broadcast network, now owned by Fox Corporation), pulling four Fox owned-and-operated stations, after retransmission consent talks between News Corp. and Cox broke down, reportedly because Fox had denied permission for Cox to broadcast programming on its O&O stations unless Cox gave it two channel slots on its digital cable service. The affected stations were WJW-TV in Cleveland, Ohio (now owned by Nexstar Media Group), KTBC in Austin, Texas, KRIV in Houston, Texas, and KDFW in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, off its cable systems in those areas; another Fox O&O WHBQ-TV in Memphis (itself now owned by Rincon Broadcasting Group) was also pulled from its Jonesboro, Arkansas, system (of the mentioned systems; only the Cleveland metropolitan area continues to be served by Cox; the Texas systems were later bought out by Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum) and Comcast; the Jonesboro system was sold to Suddenlink Communications in May 2006). The removal of those stations, which were temporarily replaced with premium service Starz! Family (which was made available to subscribers for free), blacked out Fox programming to 425,000 Cox customers. The blackout lasted six days as the two sides came to an agreement on January 6, and the Fox-owned stations were brought back to the systems. Cox gave $1 refunds of their January cable bill to roughly 90,000 subscribers in Texas and Arkansas as compensation.

LIN TV-Cox dispute

In a separate dispute (clumped with the above dispute by media outlets as the "Cox vs Fox" dispute) that occurred around the same time, customers in Hampton Roads, Virginia lost access to LIN TV-owned Fox affiliate WVBT (channel 43) on January 1, 2000; retransmission talks between WVBT and Cox broke down, reportedly due to a demand by WVBT to be placed somewhere between channels 2 and 14 (it had been broadcast on channel 43). Cox refused to move WVBT to a lower channel number; the channel space was filled in the interim by pay channel HBO Family. It was not until February 5 of that year that the station resumed on Cox's Hampton Roads system (remaining on channel 43), after an agreement was reached during a ten-hour arbitration session. Cox did not offer rebates to its 335,000 subscribers in Fairfax County, Virginia, and Cleveland, Ohio, who also lost their Fox stations.

Nexstar dispute

On January 29, 2016, seventeen Nexstar Broadcasting stations were dropped by Cox after failing to reach a new retransmission deal. The contract had expired on December 31, 2015, but the two companies allowed talks to continue until January 22, 2016. The channels were replaced by a screen which accused Nexstar of "demanding a significant fee increase". In Las Vegas, where the dispute threatened to black out Super Bowl 50 due to local CBS station KLAS-TV being affected by the dispute, Cox announced on February 3, 2016, that it would offer a free preview of the game's Spanish-language broadcaster, ESPN Deportes, over Super Bowl weekend. The next day, Cox reached a new deal with Nexstar, and the stations were restored.

Neighborhood-wide speed decreases

In 2020, Cox lowered the upstream bitrates of entire neighborhoods from 35 Mbit/s to 10 Mbit/s, because they determined that individual users within the neighborhoods had excessive usage.

Copyright lawsuits

BMG Rights Management

On December 17, 2015, Cox was held responsible for the copyright infringements of its subscribers according to a ruling from a federal jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The ISP was found guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered to pay music publisher BMG $25 million in damages. This verdict was reaffirmed by the judge on August 8, 2016. On February 14, 2017, Cox was ordered to additionally pay $8.5 million in costs. On November 7, 2016, Cox appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and on February 1, 2018, the court overturned the $25 million verdict due to erroneous jury instructions but upheld its loss of safe harbor protections due to not having a meaningful repeat infringer policy. On August 27, 2018, before the case was scheduled to be tried for a second time, both parties agreed to a confidential settlement.

Sony Music, et al.

On July 31, 2018, a billion dollar lawsuit was filed against Cox in the same court, before the same judge that handled the BMG case, by 53 record labels, including Sony, Universal, and Warner Brothers. On December 19, 2019, the jury ruled against Cox and awarded $1 billion to the record labels. On June 2, 2020, the judge ruled the jury's verdict is not excessive but also ruled that damages should be issued per work, not per copyright, as a single song, such as a mashup, may have multiple copyrights. However, on January 12, 2021, the court backtracked on this point because Cox did not raise it during the jury trial, and thus upheld the $1 billion verdict. The case was appealed to the Fourth Circuit on May 24, 2021. While pending, Cox filed an additional motion for relief with the district court on December 27, 2021, alleging concealed evidence that came to light in a separate lawsuit by the record labels against Charter. This motion was denied on March 23, 2022. In February 2024, the Fourth Circuit overturned the verdict, ruling that Cox was liable for contributory infringement but not for vicarious infringement. The Fourth Circuit vacated the $1 billion award and remanded the case to be heard by a second jury to reassess the damages. On March 25, 2026, the Supreme Court, in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, issued a decision 9–0 that Cox was not liable for contributory infringement, reversing the Fourth Circuit's decision.