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Time Warner Cable will increase the broadband speed for its most popular Standard service to 15/1Mbps across the country over the next 60 days.
With increased competition from Verizon’s FiOS fiber to the home network and AT&T U-verse, Time Warner is boosting Internet speeds to stay competitive with aggressive promotions on offer from phone companies throughout its service area.
Rob Marcus, chief operating officer for Time Warner, today told investors U-verse was available in about a quarter of the company’s footprint, with Verizon FiOS offering service in 12% of the areas where the cable company provides service.
“Last quarter, U-verse featured fairly aggressive double play promotions, especially in Texas and the midwest, while FiOS continued to aggressively enter new buildings in New York City,” Marcus said.
Marcus
Time Warner Cable failed to meet investor expectations for broadband growth during the third quarter, and some are questioning the company’s wisdom narrowly-targeting promotions to specific segments of its customer base. Bloomerg Industries analyst Paul Sweeney suggested the company was struggling to market the correct bundles of services to its customers.
Marcus reported Time Warner has seen the largest growth in DOCSIS 3.0 enhanced broadband so far, with 73,000 new customers signing up for the company’s 30/5Mbps Extreme tier or 50/5Mbps Ultimate tier during the last quarter. Combined with Turbo customers, this represents over 22% of all Time Warner’s residential broadband customers.
But while the company celebrated its new revenue from cable modem rental fees, the new charge has alienated a number of customers, some now shopping around for a better deal from competitors.
“In essence, this is a rate increase on [broadband] service, but the key is our customers have a choice,” Marcus said. “If customers prefer to buy their own modem from a qualified list of options, we’re all for it. After all, if the modem is on the customer’s balance sheet, that is less capital expense for us and fewer truck rolls.”
Marcus’ statement conflicts with one made earlier by Joli Plucknette-Farmen, communications manager for Time Warner Cable in western New York. She told WGRZ-TV last month the new fee was not a “rate hike dressed up as a fee”, as some critics have suggested.
The company made no announcements about increasing the speeds of its higher-speed tiers to maintain their value in light of the forthcoming speed increase for Standard service.
Any word on whether upload speeds will also increase?
No word. It might or might not happen. 15/2Mbps seems to be the new normal, but no word if TWC will follow that pattern.
Ditto.
No reasons to buy faster speed packages (e.g., 10/1 is currently fast for standard) since the free upgrades are included after a few/several years. But then, I guess the new monthly cable modem rental fees pay for this speed upgrade. I wonder if there will be caps, faster uploads, etc.
I wonder what will happen to TWC’s 20 Mbps tier in light of this speed increase. Maybe 10/1 becomes 15/2 and 20/2 goes away?
I’m still hoping for an upload speed increase on TWC’s 50/5 plan, but that may be awhile in coming.
I believe the 20/2 tier might see a boost to 25/2 or 20/3. Now that Standard is going to 15/1 I really hope with that new modem rental fee that they start giving everyone but the basic 1/1 and 3/1 tiers DOCSIS 3.0 modems. Turbo alone is already pushing what a single channel can do on the downstream when you factor in congestion.
We should see 50/25 rolled out within the same window, TWC has already begun upstream channel bonding and nearly all of NYC is completed.
That could be delayed thanks to Hurricane Sandy. 🙁
Still no upgrade with RoadRunner out of Carlsbad, Ca. I have had a Netgear Docsis 3 cable/modem for a couple years, and we also have had Turbo a few years.. and the speed is still 15/1.7, on the best days, about a year ago or so, we were getting above 20 down, and a solid 2 up. then it dropped downa lot.. so, I guess we wil see so far we are 30 days into the 60 days… now in December 2012.