Cable One

Cable One Internet

Cable One is an American broadband communications provider that offers high-speed internet, cable television, and phone services. It was established in 1986 as Cable One and rebranded to Sparklight in 2019. Sparklight is part of the Cable One family of brands. The company is headquartered in Phoenix, AZ but doesn’t service the Phoenix metro. Instead, Cable One serves more than 1.1 million residential and business customers in 24 states. It features a hybrid fiber-coax cable internet connection depending on location and offers plans with download speeds up to 940 megabits per second.

Hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) internet combines optical fiber and coaxial cable to transmit data. It can provide phone, internet, and television services. The hybrid model has been used by cable TV companies since the 1990s. The network is generally stable (but outages can occur and systems may be taken offline or slowed when they are being serviced or repaired). Internet speeds for the hybrid model are often sufficient for homes and small businesses. With the hybrid method a node is extended to within a mile of the service location whereas with fiber optic internet the fiber is extended all the way to the home or business. Coax cables provide asymmetric speed which means that the upload speeds are faster than the download speeds.

Cable One ranks within the top 15 cable providers in the United States. Service areas include parts of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. In Idaho Sparklight is available in Boise, Meridian, Nampa, and Idaho Falls. It is also available in Fargo, ND and Rio Rancho, NM. In Texas Sparklight is available in Angleton, Aransas Pass, Bay City, Bonham, Borger, Denison, El Campo, and Henderson. Service areas may include additional locations.

Sparklight started transitioning away from traditional cable services in 2021 and stopped selling new traditional cable TV subscriptions. Current customers are being moved over to streaming only. Sparklight TV provides cloud-based video programming to both businesses and residents. This is a response to the trend for people to stream rather than use cables for TV channels. For many people streaming is a cheaper way to watch TV and for cable companies it can save money on maintaining cable boxes and other equipment. The new Sparklight TV service needs a device like Apple TV or Amazon Fire Stick to work. Sparklight TV is available inside your home and if you use the Sparklight TV Everywhere app you can access TV content on the go.

Internet plan options range from $70/mo. up to $125/mo. depending on how fast you want your internet and how much data you need or can afford. Download speeds range from 300 Mbps - 1 Gig depending on the plan. There are no contracts. You can buy more data as you need it on most of the plans but allocations are generous going in at 700 GB for the cheapest plan up to Unlimited Data at the high end. If you do opt for the most expensive plan and you manage to use more than 5 TB of data your speed may be slowed for network management.