Suddenlink broadband customers in Lubbock and Midland, Texas will soon have a new option to boost their broadband speed to 36Mbps.  Dubbed MAX36, the new tier leaps over the cable company’s former top broadband speed of 20Mbps.  Upload speeds get a boost as well — to 2Mbps.

Multichannel News reports pricing for the new tier depends on how many other Suddenlink services you have.  Standalone pricing is $75 per month.  Bundle it with television or telephone service and the price drops to $65.  Take all three services and MAX36 costs $60 a month.

Suddenlink serves portions of these Texas communities

If that is too rich for your blood, Suddenlink next week will be providing existing broadband customers in Lubbock and Midland free speed upgrades:

• 1Mbps service increases to 1.5Mbps
• 8Mbps upgrades to 10Mbps service
• 10Mbps service becomes 15Mbps

The new speeds are possible because of DOCSIS 3 upgrades underway at the nation’s ninth largest cable operator.  Suddenlink has focused on DOCSIS 3 upgrades for many of its Texas systems, including Abilene, Bryan/College Station, Georgetown, Lubbock, Midland, San Angelo and Terrell.  The operator also deployed the technology in Beckley, Charleston and Parkersburg, West Virginia, as well as Jonesboro, Arkansas, Humboldt County, California, and Nixa, Missouri.  The company hopes to upgrade 90 percent of its cable systems within the next two years.  Nationwide, Suddenlink reaches 1.3 million subscribers.

Last summer Suddenlink introduced a usage meter for subscribers in Clovis, New Mexico and included a chart of what constituted average usage for its customers.

Suddenlink's national service area

The company openly admits it limits customer use of its broadband service is several communities where bandwidth upgrades have yet to occur, but at least drops communities from the usage limit list after expansion is complete.  As of February 4th, communities impacted by usage limits include:

• Arkansas: Charleston, Hazen, Mt. Ida, Nashville
• Kansas: Anthony, Fort Scott
• Louisiana: Ville Platte
• Missouri: Jefferson City, Maryville
• Oklahoma: Fort Sill, Healdton, Heavener, Hughes, Idabel
• Texas: Albany, Anson, Brenham, Burkburnett, Caldwell, Canadian, Center, Claredon, Crane, Dimmitt, Eastland, Electra, Hamlin, Henrietta, Junction, Kermit, Monahans, Nocona, Olney, Paducah, Rotan, San Saba, Seymour, Sonora, Trinity, Vernon, Wellington

Suddenlink also admits it engages in “network management” techniques which may spark controversy with the ongoing Net Neutrality debate, despite its declaration it “allows customers to access and use any legal Web content they prefer, thus honoring the principles of network neutrality.”

In addition to “mitigating network congestion, which can interfere with customers’ preferred online activities,” Suddenlink also discloses it “prioritizes certain latency-sensitive traffic such as voice traffic.”

Still, performing system upgrades to put a stop to usage limits and allowances is a move in the right direction, one that other providers seeking to monetize broadband traffic with Internet Overcharging schemes are loathe to take.

Watch some of Suddenlink’s more creative and amusing advertising. (2 minutes)

Suddenlink Usage FAQ:

On June 1, 2009, we notified residential Internet customers in our Clovis, New Mexico cable system of a new online tool to help them monitor their Internet usage each month and determine if they are in the typical usage range.

If they are well above the typical range, it could mean several things. For instance: a virus or “spyware” application might have infected a customer’s computer and started generating high levels of Internet traffic, or someone else might be using a customer’s Internet connection without his or her knowledge. To help guard against those issues, we are offering customers a list of steps they can consider, to help make sure their computers and Internet accounts are protected and secure.

We introduced this Internet usage summary tool in Clovis, to evaluate its usefulness, after which we will consider expanding it to all of Suddenlink’s residential Internet customers.

Longtime Stop the Cap! readers will recognize this trick only too well.  When a small cable operator spends its time, talent, and resources on “measuring tools” to help customers “determine if they are in the typical usage range,” it’s only a matter of time before that ‘experiment’ will turn into typical Internet Overcharging activity — usage caps, consumption-based pricing, overlimit fees and penalties, or service termination for those outside of that “typical usage range.”

Suddenlink, one of the nation’s smaller multiple cable system owners serving 1.3 million customers in mostly rural areas, is among the worst-rated providers in the country, based on actual customer reviews.  Its journey towards Internet Overcharging schemes will do its ratings no favor when customers find out.

Suddenlink’s approach is less brazen than earlier Internet Overcharging attempts consumers have fought back.  The company attempts to leverage the usual talking points about Internet activity into a justification for measurement tools, and cleverly tries to suggest the impetus for doing so is to protect customers who might have been hacked or have family members engaged in online activities unknown to others in the home.  But the road that measurement tools provided by a cable company pave today lead to limits and higher pricing tomorrow.

Suddenlink’s contribution to the “education campaign” consumers are being subjected to before the pickpocketing begins does bring some useful information to the table, however.  This small, mostly rural provider, turns in stunning statistics about average customer consumption:

Suddenlink 'Typical Usage' Statistics - Clovis, New Mexico (Suddenlink website 7/23/2009)

Those numbers represent one of three things:

1. Suddenlink is the first provider in a long list of providers producing honest statistics about broadband usage, not the low-ball estimates others have provided to make consumers feel guilty for exceeding them;
2. Suddenlink’s statistics are wrong;
3. People in Clovis download A LOT.

Just about every other major provider, and many small ones, have spent the past year telling the media and the public “the average user” consumes far less than what Suddenlink reports for Clovis, New Mexico:

• Frontier Communications: “Today, the average residential customer on Frontier’s network uses 1.5 gigabytes of bandwidth each month.” — Ann Burr 10/10/2008
• Time Warner Cable: “Our usage data show that about 30% of our customers use less than 1 GB per month.” — Landel Hobbs, COO 4/9/2009
• Time Warner Cable Austin: ‘Users download between 5-6GB per month on average.’ — Scott Young, senior director of digital systems  10/2008
• Comcast: “The average customer uses two to three gigabytes a month.” Jennifer Khoury, Comcast spokeswoman 10/29/2008
• Sunflower Broadband: “Our average users, about 77%, use 6 gigabytes or less of bandwidth per month. Our high-end subscribers, about 2%, use 50 gigs or more.” Sunflower Broadband Website 7/23/2009
• Bell (Canada): “Usage has increased… to more than 10GB (per average user) in 2008.” Bell Internet Usage Tutorial 7/23/2009

For the benefit of Suddenlink subscribers joining Stop the Cap! for the first time, here’s a road map for where things have traditionally gone among every other Internet provider that has introduced “measurement tools” for “your benefit” that were not beaten back by angry subscribers:

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