We are watching you.

Cox Cable has become so dedicated to bringing broadband usage under control, it has reportedly opened a new call center solely to deal with usage cap enforcement.

Cox Security has taken a hardline approach to usage cap violators — cutting off service once usage limits are exceeded, at least until customers call in for a lecture about their usage.  After customers humble themselves, their service is turned back on.  After three warnings, Cox tells customers, it reserves the right to terminate broadband service for good, although we haven’t seen it come to that just yet.

Jim Redmond, a Stop the Cap! reader in San Diego, called Cox to complain about usage meters and limits and got an earful from a customer service representative.

“They told me the only people violating their usage limits are copyright violators illegally downloading music, movies, and software and, in fact, they are doing us a favor by protecting us from ourselves,” Redmond says.  “I was shocked by the cavalier attitude from the employee, and while I haven’t gone over any of their limits, I am fairly close and wanted to know what I could do to raise my limit.”

Redmond says Cox wanted him to either upgrade his Internet service plan or simply stay off the Internet.

“I told them I’d consider staying off Cox altogether by switching to another provider,” Redmond responded. “That’s your choice, I was told.”

Remarkably, Internet Service Providers may be spending more money trying to control usage than that “excess” usage costs the provider.  Dedicating call center support staff to usage enforcement, requiring employees to unfreeze locked out accounts, and the cost to good customer relations are likely hurting Cox more than the “tiny minority of customers” Cox claims are “using too much Internet.”

Broadband Reports‘ readers heard one representative suggest overlimit fees are already in the works to charge customers for every gigabyte they exceed Cox’s arbitrary limits.

“They’ll never get one additional cent from me if they try it,” Redmond says. “I think it’s long past time for consumers to band together and send a message to the industry that this kind of Internet rationing is completely unacceptable.  It certainly worked with the banks who discovered consumers won’t accept a $5 monthly fee for a debit card to access their own money.  It’s time Cox customers rise up and let the company know how unacceptable this really is.”