Charter is about to announce the deployment of DOCSIS 3.1-powered 1 Gbps services in New York and six other cities, DSL Reports said.
Charter reps didn’t immediately respond to FierceCable’s inquiry for comment. But an intercepted memo indicates that as of Dec. 19, 940 Mbps services will be available in New York; Cincinnati; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; and Austin and San Antonio Texas.
Charter—which has been focused on the integrations of its major acquisitions in 2016, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks—has lagged behind Comcast in terms of DOCSIS 3.1 deployments. The operator announced its first DOCSIS 3.1 deployment just two weeks ago, in Oahu, Hawaii.
RELATED: Charter announces first residential DOCSIS 3.1 deployment in Oahu
The 1-gig 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 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.
Charter Chairman and CEO Rutledge outlined Charter’s early DOCSIS 3.1 deployment strategy on Oct. 26, speaking during the No. 2 U.S. cable company’s third-quarter earnings call. “We'll continue to increase our minimum speeds in 2018,” he said. “In a couple of months, we'll also launch gigabit speeds offerings in several key markets using DOCSIS 3.1, with more launches planned through 2018. We expect DOCSIS 3.1 modems to be priced similarly to DOCSIS 3.0 modems when purchased at scale, and we'll begin to buy exclusively DOCSIS 3.1 modems and drive higher entry-level speeds.”