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Time Warner Cable customers with deep pockets and a need for speed will find Time Warner Cable’s new Wideband Internet service arriving in certain North Texas neighborhoods on or around March 19th.
Made possible by DOCSIS 3 upgrades, the new service will provide 50/5 Mbps service for as low as $99.99 per month.
As has been the case in other cities getting TWC’s Wideband service, self-install kits are not yet available and a formal service call is required. You will also need a new DOCSIS 3-capable cable modem.
Interested customers in the Dallas area can call Time Warner Cable after March 19th at (972) 742-5892 to determine if service is available yet in your neighborhood.
Time Warner Cable competes with both AT&T and Verizon across its North Texas division.
AT&T U-verse maxes out at 24 Mbps currently, and although Verizon FiOS can match Time Warner Cable’s speed, the phone company’s current price is $40 higher for the service.
Customers who need this level of speed should call Verizon or Time Warner Cable and inquire about any promotional pricing that could lower your bill for several months. In New York City, some customers received discounted Time Warner Cable Wideband service for six months.
Eventually, competition should result in lower prices for super fast broadband connections. DOCSIS 3 upgrades offer a win-win for both customers and the cable company providing the service. Increased capacity resolves neighborhood congestion issues and also permits higher speed, premium-priced tiers to deliver additional profits to providers. In return, customers who need ultra-fast speeds get them, and are only to happy to pay for them, as long as they are not usage-capped. Nothing destroys the value of premium-priced tiers better than unjustified usage limitations.
FIOS though probably has a higher upload speed though compared to TW’s. All the tiers I have seen look like 50/50, 50/20, 20/20, ect.. TW’s upload speed is no more than 5Mb/s. I would pay the extra, if I had it, for the higher upload bandwidth.
FiOS sits at 50 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up. They also have a 25 Mbps symmetric tier for $70, which I’d take any day over $100 50/5.
Also, DSLExtreme will sell you 50/20 FiOS for $100 per month, same as TWC. Except FiOS will have more upload speed and probably more reliability.
Furthermore, Verizon has historically lowered 50/20 pricing in competitive areas to $90 per month, slightly lower than TWC’s offering. I can see Verizon doing this in Dallas, then running attack ads about upload speed against TWC.