Syracuse residents will be the first in upstate New York to benefit from Time Warner Cable’s Maxx upgrade program, which has been gradually moving across the cable company’s footprint.

This month customers will receive communications from TWC outlining its transition to a 100%-digital network. Moving to an all-digital lineup frees up bandwidth to make faster Internet speeds possible. Each analog channel takes the space of three to four HD channels and up to 12 digital networks.

The upgrade means customers using older analog-only televisions will need set-top boxes (or similar equipment) after Time Warner drops analog television service starting in April. The company plans to introduce Maxx service this year to all TWC customers in Syracuse and its suburbs, along with the following central and northern New York service areas: Auburn, Boonville, Burlington, Champlain, Clayton, Cortland, Dixon, Fulton, Gouverneur, Hamilton, Herkimer, Ilion, Indian River, Ithaca, Lake Placid, Lowville, Madison, Malone, Massena, Meridian, Ogdensburg, Old Forge, Oneida, Oswego, Potsdam, Rome, Saranac Lake, Utica, Watertown and West Carthage.

Broadband speeds will increase starting later this spring, with customers experiencing increases up to six times faster, depending on their current level of Internet service. For example, customers who subscribe to Standard, formerly up to 15Mbps, will receive up to 50Mbps; customers who subscribe to Extreme, formerly up to 30Mbps, will receive up to 200Mbps; and customers who subscribe to Ultimate, formerly up to 50Mbps, will receive up to 300Mbps, with no change in their monthly plan price.

Some customers will need to switch out their modems to receive the faster speeds and they will be communicated with via mail, email and phone messages with information on how to get a new modem.

Further south, in Wilmington, N.C., some customers are already finding they have faster Internet speeds, if they happen to live in a neighborhood that is a part of the now completed first phase of the Maxx rollout. Customers throughout the rest of the Wilmington and surrounding areas will see their speeds increase by the end of summer 2016.

“Our customers have asked for faster Internet speeds and we’re now able to provide these faster speeds at no additional cost to all of our customers in the Wilmington area,” said Darrel Hegar, regional vice president of operations for Time Warner Cable. “This is just the beginning of the benefits customers will see from our TWC Maxx initiative that will enhance our Internet, video and reliability.”

In the Wilmington area, Time Warner Cable has rolled out more than 1,500 TWC Wi-Fi Hotspots located both in popular outdoor areas and in indoor small business locations throughout the area, like restaurants, cafes, salons and shopping malls, with more hotspots to be added through 2016. In upstate New York, Time Warner primarily offers Wi-Fi access through Business Class Internet customers that volunteer to host hotspots. In New York, Time Warner has focused most of its owned and operated hotspot buildout downstate, particularly in Manhattan.

The original DOCSIS 3.1 standard offers up to 10/1Gbps speeds. Adding “full duplex” technology could boost that upstream speed as high as 10Gbps.

The cable industry is seeking to confront one of the strongest selling points of fiber broadband – identical upload and download speeds – by enhancing the DOCSIS 3.1 standard to support “full duplex” technology.

Since inception, cable broadband has been designed to deliver asymmetrical speeds, with priority given to download speeds. To this day, cable systems typically offer customers only a fraction of those fast download speeds for uploads. Cable broadband engineers originally assumed that since the majority of customer broadband usage would be on the download side, less bandwidth was needed for upstream activity. During the late 1990s, it was not uncommon to receive 6-10Mbps of download speed, while being offered just 384kbps for uploads. Today, 1-5Mbps is more typical for entry-level broadband upload speed, but that may no longer be sufficient.

The ongoing buzz for fiber broadband has called out this speed disparity. Most fiber to the home networks offer identical upload and download speeds, which can be as fast as 1,000Mbps or in some cases even faster. That marketing advantage may be costing some cable companies broadband customers. CableLabs, the engineering association of the cable industry, has been tasked with closing that gap and this week announced symmetrical speeds using the newest DOCSIS 3.1 specification are on the fast track and a release schedule could be announced as early as mid-2016.

Dan Rice, CableLabs’s senior vice president of R&D, told Multichannel News “full duplex” will be an extension of DOCSIS 3.1, not a replacement, which guarantees a faster rollout of the enhancement.

The delivery of symmetrical Internet speeds will likely require some cable operators to make hardware changes to their infrastructure. Key to that may be ridding cable plant of multiple amplifiers and filters installed between the cable company’s nearest fiber node and the customer’s home. As cable operators push more reliable fiber further out into their networks, reducing the amount of coaxial copper cable in use, network advancements become easier and less costly.

Whether cable companies will use the enhanced upstream broadband capacity to match their download speeds or just moderately improve them isn’t known. The completion of the enhanced specification will likely give engineers and accountants at each cable company a better idea of how much upload bang for the buck makes the most sense.

Time Warner Cable will upgrade its Cincinnati area customers to Time Warner Cable Maxx service offering broadband speeds up to 200Mbps by this summer.

The Cincinnati Business Courier was the first to report on the upgrade, which has yet to be officially announced by Time Warner Cable, but has been confirmed by a company spokesperson.

The upgrade started Feb. 15 and is expected to be complete in some areas by June, in part thanks to the fact Time Warner’s network in northern Kentucky was inherited from Insight Communications, which Time Warner acquired in 2011. Insight had previously upgraded most of its facilities to all-digital service. Elsewhere, Time Warner has to first upgrade customers to all-digital cable television, which begins with a notification to customers that they will be losing analog television service and will need a set-top box or other equipment for each cable-equipped set in the home.

The conversion to all-digital service frees up bandwidth to boost broadband speeds, giving customers considerably faster service at no extra cost. Standard customers now subscribed to 15Mbps service will be upgraded to 50Mbps. Customers currently frustrated by Time Warner’s top speed of 50Mbps in Ohio will get an upgrade to 300Mbps. Former Insight customers will be the first to get the faster speeds, starting in March. Other Cincinnati area customers may have to wait until summer or fall before the new speeds arrive.

Some Time Warner customers may need to replace their current cable modem, including those now leased by the company for $10 a month.

To ease the transition, Time Warner Cable will provide existing TV customers with one or more digital adapters at no charge through at least June 29, 2017, provided they order an adapter by Oct. 22, 2016. Customers can consult Time Warner’s website for local updates and ordering information.

CenturyLink is planning to trial usage caps on its broadband service later this year, not to reduce congestion or to bank the extra money for service upgrades, but to boost revenue and profits.

Stewart Ewing, chief financial officer at CenturyLink, told Wall Street analysts the company was on board with usage caps and usage billing primarily because its biggest competitor (Comcast) is already implementing a similar program in many of its markets. It’s that kind of “competition” many customers say they could do without.

“Regarding the metered data plans; we are considering that for second half of the year,” Ewing told investors on a morning conference call. “We think it is important and our competition is using the metered plans today and we think that exploring those starts and trials later this year is our expectation.”

No details about the test markets or range of usage allowances were made available by Ewing, but CenturyLink is under pressure by Wall Street to improve its revenue after raising prices and tightening credit standards on its customers. The combined impact of rate hikes and a tighter credit qualification policy led CenturyLink to lose 22,000 broadband customers during the last quarter, many who simply stopped paying the bill.

CenturyLink has been under pressure by Wall Street to put usage caps and usage pricing on its broadband service for over a year.

David Barden from Bank of America called data caps “an opportunity” for CenturyLink to rake in more dollars from customers by using misleading pricing to trick customers.

Post

“We have been seeing a lot of the cable companies experimenting with data caps and metering higher-end usage,” Barden told CenturyLink executives on the conference call. “It seems like the FCC is not pushing back on this and it feels like it could be a big opportunity for telcos to, if nothing else, price underneath the cable umbrella and start to raise rates from high-end users.”

In plain English, Barden wants companies like CenturyLink to make customers believe they are getting a better deal from a lower price, at least until customers actually use the service. Then, the rate increases from usage caps and overlimit fees begin.

Glen Post, CEO of CenturyLink, is still committed to believing CenturyLink is in a good position to add broadband customers, despite the forthcoming trials of usage caps and overlimit fees. He defines 40Mbps broadband from CenturyLink as the speed that will “address most of our customers’ actual needs.”

CenturyLink now has 940,000 households connected to its Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON), many for its Prism TV service. Another 490,000 businesses also have access to CenturyLink’s GPON network, primarily for broadband. Post claims more than 30% of the company’s service area is now served with broadband speeds of 40Mbps or greater.

In 2016, CenturyLink expects to spend $1.2 billion on upgrades for its broadband network and capacity. In comparison, in 2015 CenturyLink spent $1 billion repurchasing shares of its own stock and another $1 billion on dividend payouts – both to benefit shareholders.

At present, CenturyLink has around a 15% market share in its GPON-enabled markets (the company didn’t say what its market share was where legacy copper wire infrastructure still dominates). Post believes that gives the phone company enormous room to grow, assuming its customers can pass credit checks and do not mind their broadband service data-capped. Like many phone companies looking for the biggest return on investment, Post noted CenturyLink will pay extra attention to wiring Multiple Dwelling Units (MDUs) — apartment buildings, condos, etc. — where the company can bring fiber service at a lower cost than wiring each home and business.

Time Warner Cable has announced it will refocus its Maxx upgrade program, boosting broadband speeds to up to 300Mbps, on the Northeast and Midwest in 2016.

CEO Robert Marcus told investors on a morning conference call the company will continue making robust investments in improving its network and service regardless of the pending merger with Charter Communications.

“We have an ambitious 2016 financial and operating plan marked by continued subscriber growth, better financial performance, and continued investment to improve the customer experience,” Marcus said. “We plan to continue the rollout of TWC Maxx, completing cities begun in 2015, and adding cities primarily in the Northeast and Midwest.”

Coinciding with that announcement, Time Warner this afternoon announced its first new Maxx upgrade for 2016 will focus on the Hudson Valley in upstate New York.

Starting this week, customers will receive communications from TWC outlining a transition to a 100%-digital network. Moving to an all-digital lineup is required to free up the necessary capacity to offer faster Internet speeds in the Hudson Valley area, beginning this spring.

“With TWC Maxx, we’re essentially reinventing the TWC experience,” said, Gary Withey, area vice president of operations for Albany and Hudson Valley. “We will boost Internet speeds for customers up to six times faster, dramatically improve the TV product and set a high bar in our industry for differentiated, exceptional customer service.”

New York’s Hudson Valley

TWC Maxx will be available to all customers in the following Hudson Valley service areas: Hunter, Liberty, Middletown, Monticello, Newburgh, Olive, Port Ewen, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Saugerties, Walden, Woodstock and Wurtsboro.

Time Warner Cable’s resumed focus on the Northeast comes more than a year after launching Maxx upgrades in the New York City area. This year, upgrades are expected to target upstate New York, western Massachusetts, Maine, and Ohio.

Customers receiving Maxx upgrades get much faster Internet service or the opportunity to downgrade to a cheaper Internet plan that still delivers up to six times faster speed than customers now receive.

Starting this spring, customers who subscribe to Standard, formerly up to 15Mbps, will receive up to 50Mbps, customers who subscribe to Extreme, formerly up to 30Mbps, will receive up to 200Mbps; and customers who subscribe to Ultimate, formerly up to 50Mbps, will receive up to 300Mbps, with no change in their monthly plan price.

Some customers will need to switch out their modems to receive the faster speeds and they will be communicated with via mail, email and phone messages with information on how to obtain a new modem. Stop the Cap! still recommends customers buy their own modems and save the $10 a month Time Warner now charges to lease a cable modem.

The transition to an all-digital network will require video customers without TWC digital equipment (customers who plug their cable line directly into the TV, VCR or similar device) to order a TWC digital adapter.

TWC will offer existing TV customers one or more digital adapters at no charge, for any outlets that do not currently have digital equipment, through June 29, 2017. To qualify, customers must order their digital adapters by October 23, 2016. After this free period, each adapter will be billed at the prevailing price. TWC residential customers can order digital adapters through www.TWC.com/digitaladapter, calling 1-844-841-5085 or in person at a Time Warner Cable store.