Charter Communications is adding two new higher-speed tiers. Charter has a 3 Mbps tier universally available. It now also has a 5 Mbps tier, and is in the process of adding a 10 Mbps data service tier. Upload speeds on at least the 10-meg tier will increase to 1 Mbps.

Charter has the 5 Mbps high-speed data (HSD) service across its three operating divisions and is currently signing up 5 Mbps subscribers in all 20 Charter key market areas. The MSO has 10 Mbps available in 15 of its 20 market areas, and gradually through the fall will make the new tier available in the rest.

Charter noted that more than 25 percent of U.S. households have a home network, and furthermore, approximately 36 percent of online users engage in online games, and 25 percent download music. Charter said the 10 Mbps service will make home networks more responsive to multiple users, will enable online gamers to host multi-player games and chat with other gamers during play, and will decrease the time needed to download music and movies.

All Charter HSD service at 3 Mbps and above will also now come with a security package the company is sourcing from F-Secure. This new security software offers root kit detection, anti-virus and spyware protection, parental controls, and a firewall.

As of June 30, 2006, Charter had 2.4 million residential high-speed Internet customers nationwide.