Starting June 3, Time Warner Cable will debut its 300 Mbps tier to more than 100,000 customers in Austin, Texas.
Back in February Time Warner Cable announced it would increase the speeds across six of its residential data plans at no additional cost in Austin. As examples, the Ultimate plan will increase from up to 100 Mbps on the downstream to 300 Mbps while customers who subscribe to the Standard Internet plan, formerly up to 15 Mbps, will receive up to 50 Mbps.
Time Warner Cable said the faster speeds were the result of a nearly $60 million investment by the company in its Austin area network. As part of its “TWC Maxx” service upgrade, which includes all digital conversions, Time Warner Cable previously launched 300 Mbps tiers in parts of Los Angeles and New York City while other tiers saw speed increases as well.
“These significant speed increases will allow all our Internet customers in the greater Austin area to enjoy TWC Internet better,” said Kathy Brabson, area vice president of operations for Time Warner Cable in Central Texas. “Time Warner Cable offers a variety of Internet speed plans and prices to meet the varying needs of our customers. So whether they are simply surfing the Web, streaming video or downloading music and photos, these faster Internet speeds will enhance their experience with Time Warner Cable.”
The Internet speed upgrade in June will be available to almost 40 percent of Time Warner Cable Internet customers in the greater Austin area, including customers in these Austin neighborhoods: Downtown Austin, West Campus, Hyde Park, Clarksville, Old Enfield, North Loop, Terrytown, Highland Park West, Central East Austin, Windsor Hills, Copperfield, Springdale Heights, Harris Branch, Edinburgh Gardens, Rollingwood, West Lake Hills, Lost Creek, Barton Creek, Jollyville, Anderson Mill, Brushy Creek, Bull Creek Park, Steiner Ranch, River Place, Canyon Creek, and the Reserve at Twin Peaks, as well as these communities: Manor, Cedar Park, Jonestown, Bee Cave, Kyle, Mountain City, and Uhland.
The roll out will continue through the summer before wrapping up this fall. Other communities slated for the increased speeds include: Round Rock, Leander, San Marcos, Elgin, Marble Falls, Lockhart, Bastrop, Fredericksburg, Taylor, Smithville, Wimberley, Liberty Hill, Lago Vista, Buda, Kyle, Elroy, and Lakeway.
Time Warner Cable said some Austin subscribers would need a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem to get the full benefits of the speed increases. Customers who lease their modem from TWC and need a more advanced modem to receive the faster speeds can swap out their modems with no additional charge.
Time Warner Cable Business Services announced new speed tiers of 100 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up, 200/20 and 300/20 as new options in its Austin portfolio. The new tiers will be available on the same schedule as the residential speed increases.
Time Warner Cable also announced that it has more than 2,000 Wi-Fi hotspots available to its business and residential broadband customers in Austin. Time Warner Cable subscribers have access to the 250,000 hotspots across the nation via the CableWiFi roaming alliance that also includes Comcast, Cablevision, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks.
Austin has become a hotbed for companies offering fast data speeds. Grande Communications currently offers a fiber-to-the-home 1-Gigabit service in some areas of its footprint as well as a 110 Mbps service that it plans to upgrade to 300 Mbps.
Last year AT&T announced it would offer its “GigaPower” service in Austin with plans to reach speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second later this year. AT&T is currently offering a symmetrical 300 Mbps service over its fiber network in Austin prior to the 1 Gigabit deployment.
Google Fiber also plans on offering its 1 Gbps service in Austin sometime this year, but both Google and AT&T’s services won’t be available across all of Austin.
Time Warner Cable does compete with Google Fiber in the Kansas City area, but at The Cable Show last month Time Warner Cable executive vice president and chief technology and network operations officer Mike LaJoie said during a panel session that Google Fiber had “thousands of customers, not tens of thousands of customers” and that anecdotally it appeared as though some of those subscribers were coming back to Time Warner Cable.