Cox Communications announced that its high-speed Internet customers who use its newsgroup service will be able to experience a number of enhancements, including faster transfer speeds, longer storage of newsgroup posts and access to additional newsgroups. Newsgroups will continue to be available to all Cox High Speed Internet customers at no charge.
"Newsgroups are the original version of collaborative online communities," said Scott Hightower, Cox's vice president of data development and support. "Many of our customers remain loyal newsgroup users, and we are glad to expand our already comprehensive newsgroup service."
Cox is working with Highwinds, an industry leader in newsgroup management, to:
- Increase retention by at least 30 days: Retention time for binary newsgroups is being increased from an average of 3 days to at least 30 days. Text groups will have even longer retention.
- Boost transfer speeds by more than 30 percent: Each Newsgroup user can use up to four connections to the server, and transfer speeds for each connection have been increased from up to 384 Kbps each to up to 512 Kbps each.
- Add more newsgroups: Cox has traditionally offered access to over 55,000 newsgroups, and now thousands of additional newsgroups are available to Cox customers. Each newsgroup has a primary topic of discussion, and users can read and post messages on topics ranging from C++ programming to sports and jokes.
