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Time Warner Cable is nearing the end of its $60 million “Maxx” upgrade of San Antonio, company officials said in a news release.
The Maxx upgrade most noticeably boosts broadband speeds up to six times faster than what customers used to receive, at no change in price, up to 300/20Mbps.
Time Warner Cable Maxx Broadband Speed Comparison
Earthlink customers will also get a speed boost. The traditional EarthLink Broadband plan will become EarthLink Extreme with speed up to 50/5Mbps. EarthLink Cable Max will become EarthLink Ultimate with speed up to 100/10Mbps. Customers who want faster Internet will have to switch back to Time Warner Cable to upgrade above 100Mbps.
As part of the upgrade, Time Warner has converted its analog television signals to all-digital service. Free digital adapters are available to customers until Dec. 28, 2016. After that, each adapter will cost $2.75 a month.
And yet many citizens in the suburbs cannot get ANY service from TWC, ATT and others. This race to higher speeds is interesting, but by focusing resources on those already served, these companies continue to neglect those who are not. So with MAXX maybe you get $30 more per customer, or you keep 5% of those who might jump to another provider, but you lose out on thousands of customers who would pay full price for your service. Seems like a bad business proposition to me.
It costs much less to hand over better service to existing customers than expanding out their network. Time Warner’s cable systems are already more or less paid off. They were built to sustain 100 or so analog television channels, but with digital television they have recaptured a ton of bandwidth they can use to cell broadband, etc. There is little incentive for them to expand cable service into less populated areas where getting that investment paid back will take longer. In most areas, you have to basically bribe them to do it — franchise renewal contingent on adding 500 more… Read more »