Rural upstate New Yorkers can now obtain far faster broadband service as Time Warner Cable continues to expand DOCSIS 3 speed upgrades everywhere in New York… except Rochester.

Time Warner’s “Wideband” Internet service offering up to 50/5Mbps service became available this week for the 11,000 residents of Oneida, who have joined cities as large as New York and as small as Utica and Watertown in getting the cable company’s fastest possible broadband speeds.

Ironically, the most significant city in New York still off the upgrade list is Rochester, the city with New York’s second largest economy and home to more than one million residents across the region.  Rochester was the city Time Warner Cable tried to use in New York for its 2009 test of Internet Overcharging schemes, claiming the usage limits would put Rochester high on the upgrade list for broadband expansion.  While other cities in New York never faced the prospects of usage limits and overlimit fees, they have all managed to obtain upgrades residents of the Flower City have yet to receive.

“Since we introduced Wideband earlier this year in Syracuse and throughout Central New York, customers looking for extra online speed have embraced our new service and its many benefits,” Henry Pearl, Area V.P. of Operations told the Oneida Daily Dispatch. “In addition to blazing-fast speeds, those benefits include shared wireless for multiple users through home networking, backed by our years of experience and dedicated, local customer service.”

Wideband service offers 50/5Mbps service for $99.95/month or 30/5 Mbps service for $69.95/month.

Already available in New York City, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Utica, and Watertown, Wideband will also be available in Binghamton as well as the New York counties of Tompkins, Jefferson and Cortland by fall.

Knology, a West Point, Georgia-based cable overbuilder, has acquired Sunflower Broadband in Lawrence (Douglas County), Kansas for $165 million cash.

Knology has been buying small, independent cable operators across the south and midwest to build its footprint and become a larger player in the heavily integrated cable television and broadband marketplace.

The company expects to acquire Sunflower partly from its own cash reserves and the balance from low interest loans.

Knology praised Sunflower Broadband’s advanced infrastructure — it has already deployed DOCSIS 3 broadband upgrades and uses a modernized hybrid fiber-coaxial cable network.  Sunflower spends between $8-9 million annually in capital expansion, a level comparable to Knology.

The purchase of Sunflower opens additional potential purchasing opportunities for Knology in the region to add other cable companies to its portfolio.

Lawrence residents were treated to gushing, emotional coverage of the sale in the pages of the Lawrence Journal-World this morning.  A sample:

In the beginning there was the vision. Forty-five years later, it was a spectacular reality. Today, the baton is being passed to a new owner.

One reader said the newspaper had a Messiah Complex.

Employees were informed this morning, but most will not know what impact, if any, will come from the sale until it closes in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The impact of the sale is drawing mixed reviews from Lawrence residents, some concerned about the loss of another locally-owned and operated business to an out-of-state “conglomerate,” while others believe the sale offers the potential for better service without irritating usage limits.

A Lawrence computer repair expert, “Dr. Dave” recognized the impact of Internet Overcharging schemes on Lawrence residents in a thorough analysis of the then-potential sale:

Sunflower stands apart from most Internet Service providers with its bandwidth caps. Knology and other suitors of Sunflower do not have these artificial limits. We’ll be free to use the internet at whatever speed we choose to pay for without fear of limits and overages. Online backups, security updates, and videos will be accessible without the worry of nasty additional fees.

Additionally, because our newspaper and television providers will be separated, the Journal World will be able to more accurately and fairly report news in Lawrence. No longer will they be limited by their vested interest in the cable company. Media consolidation is generally against FCC rules, but the loophole is that Sunflower is not seen as a “media” company. The loophole will be closed and growth of both companies will be natural and organic and both companies will be made stronger. We as citizens will trust the newspaper to accurately report the news and the Journal World will be restored to its role as watchdog for the citizens it serves. If the cable company isn’t acting in our best interest, I would trust the Journal World to report on it. Knology won’t be able to slack off and reduce the quality we’ve come to expect from Sunflower–the newspaper will see to that.

Knology claims it will get $5 million in “synergies” from the merger, much coming from volume discount programming purchases, a switch to Knology’s billing systems, and potential layoffs.  However, since Sunflower Broadband’s operating area does not overlap existing Knology service areas, the impact on jobs may prove limited.

One impact subscribers may not miss is the end of Sunflower’s Internet Overcharging schemes.  Sunflower is one of a handful of cable operators placing arbitrary limits on their customers’ broadband usage.  Usage caps, speed throttles, and overlimit fees are all imposed on Sunflower’s customers.

Knology has never imposed similar schemes on their customers.  Now may be a good time for Sunflower customers to let Knology management know they want an end to Sunflower’s profit-padding usage limits, especially considering AT&T U-verse, increasing competition in Lawrence, does not limit usage either.

Cricket, the regional wireless carrier that claims to offer “unlimited” data plans that really are not, has jacked up prices on its wireless broadband plans and reduced wireless data usage allowances.

Cricket used to charge $40 a month for 5GB of monthly usage, $60 for 10GB.  No more.

Now the company wants you to pay more for less:

2.5GB for $40, 5GB for $50, and 7.5GB for $60 is hardly "respeKting" your wallet

Thankfully, existing Cricket customers are grandfathered into their existing $40 for 5GB plan, so they do not face the price hike and allowance cut.

Cricket’s claimed speeds up to 1.4Mbps are fiction — in our own tests we found service never exceeding 650kbps, and often averages 500kbps or less in the Rochester, N.Y. area.  When Cricket cell sites become congested, as they have in the southeastern part of the city, speeds can drop to 56kbps or less, making the service completely unusable.  While web page browsing and audio streaming are acceptable using Cricket, video streaming is not.  YouTube and other video multimedia was too painful to watch.

Cricket’s best advantage in the wireless broadband market was its pricing.  Customers accepted dramatically reduced coverage areas (don’t expect Cricket to work outside of the city, nearby suburbs, and adjacent major highways), slower speeds, and a “Fair Access Policy” that throttles your connection to dial-up speeds (or less) once you exceed your monthly allowance, all in return for service priced $20 less than most of the competition.  The modem is usually free or deeply discounted, and there is no contract requirement.

But at Cricket’s new pricing, consumers should take a look at Clearwire’s new 4G service, Comcast High Speed 2Go, or Road Runner Mobile instead.  Clear’s 4G-only plan offers unlimited access for $40.00 a month without a “Fair Access Policy” throttling your service to dial-up speeds, and much faster service than Cricket can provide.  The only downsides are the up front cost of the modem and being sure 4G is available in your area.

Clear, Comcast High Speed 2Go and Road Runner Mobile offer 4G service plans with a fallback option to 3G coverage for about $55 a month.  Clear and Comcast do not limit 4G usage, but do limit 3G access to 5GB per month before overlimit fees apply.  Road Runner Mobile offers unlimited access to both 3G and 4G service.

Cricket likes to claim it “respeKts your wallet.”  Raising prices and reducing usage allowances isn’t exactly a sign of respect.

AT&T's HotZone in Charlotte only covers a tiny portion of the city, along S. Brevard Street between the NASCAR Hall of Fame and East Trade Street and for AT&T customers waiting to use the nearby Lynx light rail.

What do you do when your wireless 3G network capacity is hopelessly overloaded and you don’t want to spend the money to upgrade the network to meet the daily demands your customers place on it?  You offload as much of that traffic as possible on less costly, conventional Wi-Fi network technology.

AT&T has discovered that Wi-Fi can turn an ugly congestion problem into a marketing opportunity.  The company has announced free, unlimited access to its increasing number of “Hotzones” to AT&T wireless customers, promising stronger signals and faster speeds along the way.  The three cities chosen for the launch of the neighborhood-blanketing Wi-Fi service are New York, Charlotte, N.C.,  and Chicago.

That New York and Chicago are on the list come as little surprise, but why Charlotte?

It turns out Charlotte is among the top-10 cities companies use to test market new products and services to get a better feel of how customers will react.  Charlotte has served as a test market for years.  FedEx used the city to test drop boxes inside U.S. post offices back in 2001.  Time Warner Cable brought its “Start Over” and “Caller ID on TV” services to Charlotte to get customer reaction.  AT&T first test marketed its 3G Microcell service in the area, so the company has a track record of choosing the community to test its newest offerings.

Stop the Cap! has been measuring reaction on our own to learn what Charlotte residents think about AT&T’s Hotzone.

First, many AT&T customers are still unaware that this Wi-Fi service has even made it to Charlotte.  For those who have learned about it, anything that improves AT&T’s service in uptown Charlotte is good news for them.

“Although AT&T in Charlotte has never suffered from the kind of congestion faced in larger cities, when you concentrate a lot of data users in one area, such as the Time Warner Cable Arena on East Trade, AT&T’s network can slow to a crawl,” writes Stop the Cap! reader Eric, who lives in Charlotte.  “I have ventured around that area several times and, to be honest, you can quietly hop on one of many business Wi-Fi hotspots for free now, but you can’t go too far before losing the signal.”

Eric says AT&T would be better off extending their Wi-Fi network across the city of Charlotte if they really want to offload 3G traffic.

“Wi-Fi is faster than their 3G service and it’s unlimited,” he notes. “I’d actually have a much more favorable impression of AT&T if they created city-wide Wi-Fi networks for their customers because it would add tremendous value and be a great reason to stick with AT&T for cell service.”

But Liam, who works in downtown Charlotte but lives near Freedom Park writes it’s a Band-Aid for a much bigger problem — AT&T underestimating the demand on their network.

“I am not sure how excited I should be about a Hotzone that runs up a street for about four city blocks,” he says.  “This is not midtown Manhattan where a service like that could make a huge difference for residents of skyscraping-condos and apartment buildings.  What about the rest of Charlotte?”

Liam was an AT&T customer but left for Verizon Wireless nearly a year ago.  He thinks AT&T isn’t a bad provider in Charlotte — in fact he thinks AT&T does a much better job in rural western North Carolina than Verizon does, but inside metro Charlotte, Verizon’s signals are more consistent.

“If this service does reach into Time Warner Cable Arena, it could make a big difference though, especially when that stadium is nearly full,” Liam notes. “Somehow I think we’ll see Time Warner Cable’s own Wi-Fi service operating there, for free, in the not-too-distant future.”

The Charlotte Observer‘s @Charlotte blog asked readers what they thought about AT&T’s Charlotte Hotzone in two articles.  Amidst a rhetorical war over the merits of AT&T and Apple’s latest iPhone, most comments welcomed the improved service, even if some are not sure exactly where that improved service can be found.

Reporter Eric Frazier wrote, “I was trying to find out for certain whether this zone will cover the office towers along Tryon Street, but a spokesperson for AT&T told me they can’t say whether specific buildings, such as the Bank of America headquarters, will or won’t be covered by the Hotzone.

Reverend Mike wants to know when he can get a Hotzone installed in his backyard, noting he was “glad to hear they are setting this up downtown.”

AT&T completed upgrades to its HSPA 7.2 network earlier this year and offers about double the potential speed its older 3G network provided Charlotte customers.

We have received a copy of AT&T’s statement in response to yesterday’s report about slowed upload speeds impacting customers in several cities around the United States:

AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect — triggered under certain conditions – that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment. This impacts less than two percent of our wireless customer base. While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices.

That two percent figure seems low considering the sheer number of reports received, but it’s not unprecedented.  Equipment and software glitches can create major slowdowns and outages.  While the problem is being fixed, affected customers are falling back to older and slower upload protocols.  AT&T didn’t apologize for the slowed upload speed, nor provide an estimate for when repairs would be complete.  As of the time of writing (3pm ET), problems are still being noted by some customers.

Customers annoyed by the glitch might be able to obtain some credit for the reduced level of service by contacting AT&T customer service and asking for it.