Charter Communications has officially announced and activated its deployments of DOCSIS 3.1-powered 1 Gbps services in New York and six other markets.
Earlier this week, the operator began circulating memos (PDF) to customers in select regions, informing them that as of Dec. 19, 940 Mbps services would be available in New York; Cincinnati; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; and Austin and San Antonio, Texas.
Charter announced its first DOCSIS 3.1 deployment just two weeks ago in Oahu, Hawaii.
“Charter’s state-of-the-art, fiber-rich network is superior in its ability to deliver fast and reliable internet to millions of consumers across the country,” said Tom Rutledge, chairman and CEO of Charter, in a statement released today. “As technology continues to evolve, the products and services of tomorrow will increasingly rely on faster broadband connections. Charter’s world-class network is best-positioned to deliver the bandwidth and capacity needed to meet these growing demands.”
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The 1 Gbps services will come with a 35 Mbps upload speed and be priced at $105 a month. The minimum speed in the deployed regions will increase to 200 Mbps. Services will remain uncapped, per a six-year agreement with regulators as part of the TWC and Bright House purchases.
Additionally, Charter is rolling out a 400 Mbps tier that will. According to the memo, that tier will be available in most if not all of Charter’s footprint.
Focused on its integrations of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, No. 2 U.S. cable operator Charter lagged behind No. 1 MSO Comcast in terms of DOCSIS 3.1 deployments. Comcast just announced deployment of DOCSIS 3.1 services in Sacramento and is nearing completion of its national rollout of the CableLabs specification.
Another top 10 U.S. cable operator, Mediacom, said it completed its national rollout of DOCSIS 3.1 earlier this year.
Not that being a little behind has cost Charter one iota. Both Comcast and Mediacom recently conceded that the signup rate for 1-gig services has been modest so far.
In October, Mediacom CTO JR Walden conceded that only around 10% of new Mediacom broadband customers are taking DOCSIS 3.1-powered 1-gig services, Walden said, adding that the cable company has deployed around 12,000 DOCSIS 3.1 gateways.