Need help and suggestions selecting a new internet provider

Ok. So I'm tasked with finding new internet for the house. I'm a college student living with my parents and I'm beginning to get tired of the AT&T DSL internet that we have. My mom is more than happy to get better internet but I'm looking for it because my mom and dad are busy with other renovations with the house so I volunteered to do the research.

Our internet currently drops about 5-7 times a day. Even at night when I'm the only one on the internet late at night. We get a whopping max 600Kbps download speed and with me playing online games all the time this is pretty abyssmal. I want to try and make the upgrade to cable internet.

My mom pays about $60 a month for the internet and would like to keep it around there. I was looking at COX cable internet and their basic internet is about 35 a month at 5mbps which sounds like a godsend to me.

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of those really cool high end internets available in my area. AT&T U-Verse among them. I just want to make sure I'm not going to make the wrong decision and tell my mom to get something we actually don't want in the end because I don't know too much about internet packages and all that. With that said, do internet providers still have data caps? Do they provide unlimited data offers? I feel like unlimited internet would be a must with my house hold if it exists.

Thanks in advance. I can always rely on the two community for help.

Most providers do still have caps but they aren't always stated or enforced. I haven't lived in a region with COX in awhile so I don't know what their current policies are. Sometimes they are not enforced however. I've been using Comcast since 2010 when I moved to Houston, Texas. I had a 250 GB limit the whole time I was there but didn't know about it for a several of years because it wasn't stated when I signed up for the package and it was never enforced. I noticed when I started tracking my data usage more. It turns out the data cap had been "suspended" in my area. I moved to Alabama this year. I started a new account with Comcast because they have the fastest residential service in the area. The data cap is strictly enforced but they did bump it up to 1TB. I'm about 90 GB from going over it this month.

If you are gaming online, then you need to be testing ping times, not just download speeds, to reduce lag times in games. 5mbps isn't considered broadband anymore. You'll need at least 25mbps for it be considered broadband plus you may want a little head room if you want to maintain good bandwidth while gaming or streaming video and still have enough bandwidth left for others to use the internet.

Oh I know Download speed has nothing to do with online gaming. I worded that sentence incorrectly. My ping is fine most of the time but if someone starts streaming something then the ping shoots up to unplayable levels. COX provides 15mbps and even that feels like it would be good. I found out the current internet I have is 5 mbps or around there.