Jeff Baumgartner

NewWave Communications is gearing up to bring 1 Gbps speeds to a handful of rural markets in 2015, and said it will use the emerging DOCSIS 3.1 platform to deliver them.

NewWave will start the deployment in the fourth quarter of 2014 and intends to boot up Gigabit-class services to residential and business customers in a handful of markets -- Poplar Bluff (MO), where it competes with AT&T, and in Monroe, Rayville, Delhi and Tallulah (LA), where it tangles with a mix of municipal and local service providers.

Phil Spencer, CEO of NewWave and Rural Broadband Investments, said it made sense to focus on those initial markets first because the infrastructure there is well-prepared to take on the upgrade.

Charter Communications said it’s unleashing faster broadband speeds and a heavier high-definition television channel lineup in its Southern California systems following all-digital upgrades that are coupled with the introduction of the multiple service operator’s new “Spectrum” branding.

Charter is bidding adieu to its analog spectrum and using that reclaimed capacity toward the boosting of the downstream speeds of its flagship broadband service from 30 Mbps to 60 Mbps, the broadening of its HDTV lineup to more than 200 channels, and enhancing its voice service with features such as unlimited nationwide calling. Charter Spectrum also touts a video-on-demand menu of more than 10,000 “choices.”

Add Jacksonville (FL) to the list of markets where AT&T has committed to deploy its fiber-based 1 Gbps-capable “GigaPower” network.

As has been the case with most of AT&T’s GigaPower market announcements, specific locations of availability and pricing of GigaPower for Jacksonville will be announced at a later date.

The introduction of GigaPower will represent speedier competition for Comcast, Jacksonville’s incumbent cable operator. There, Comcast is already equipped to fight fiber with fiber, as Jacksonville is one of a group of select markets that offer Extreme 505, a fiber-based residential broadband service that delivers up to 505 Mbps downstream and 100 Mbps in the upstream.

Following its launch of ‘GigaPower’ in Austin in late 2013, AT&T has begun to offer services on its fiber-based, 1-Gig-capable network to parts of Dallas and Fort Worth, where the telecommunications company competes with Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and Grande Communications.

The telco added that it has also begun to offer speeds up to 100 Mbps via its U-verse platform in portions of Dallas and Fort Worth and several surrounding cities, including Allen, Arlington, Euless, Fairview, Granbury, Irving, McKinney, North Richland Hills, Weatherford and Willow Park. Customers in those areas will be able to upgrade to 1-Gig by the end of 2014, AT&T said.

AT&T flurry of GigaPower announcements continued with word that it will bring its fiber-based, 1-Gig-capable network to parts of Miami, where Comcast is the incumbent cable operator.

Per its recent string of GigaPower market announcements, AT&T said it will announce pricing and specific target areas at a later date. In addition to the city of Miami, AT&T is also considering GigaPower deployments in several nearby areas, including Hialeah, Hollywood, Homestead, Opa-Locka, and Pompano Beach.

Netflix posted its Internet service provider (ISP) Speed Index for July 2014, and there was not much shuffling among the top 16 US providers that the streaming giant measures.

In fact, there was just one change in that grouping -- AT&T U-verse dropped one spot, to number 14, delivering an average Netflix streaming speed of 1.44 Mbps. That allowed Clearwire (1.48 Mbps), the only US wireless provider measured in that group, to rise one spot, to number 13.

The final rankings of Verizon FiOS (No. 12/1.61 Mbps) and Verizon DSL (No. 16/970 kbps) were unchanged from the Netflix index for June 2014.

Doctor On Demand, a healthcare service that provides “video visits” with board-certified physicians, announced that it has landed a $21 million “A” round and signed on Comcast as a customer.

Comcast has signed on to offer the service to all of its US employees and will integrate Doctor On Demand into its health and wellness offerings. For certain plans, Comcast will also fully subsidize employees’ visits with Doctor On Demand physicians.

AT&T said it will offer broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps to parts of Greensboro (NC) and Houston (TX) through the deployment of its new fiber-based “GigaPower” network.

As it’s been with recent, similar commitments in other markets, AT&T said specific locations of availability and pricing for GigaPower services in the Greensboro and Houston markets will be announced at a later date.

Charter Communications has raised the downstream speeds supported by its business-class broadband service for small- and mid-sized businesses in St. Louis, with its high-end tier now maxing out at 200 Mbps.

Charter Business said it is raising speeds for three of those business Internet tiers for no added cost:

• Customers on the 60 Mbps tier are now getting 100 Mbps;
• Customers on the 80 Mbps offering are now getting 150 Mbps; and
• Customers on the 100 Mbps plan are now getting 200 Mbps.

Perhaps there’s too much of a focus on raw speeds and the focus on megabits and gigabits. An initiative underway at CableLabs is lavishing some attention on milliseconds.

CableLabs is exploring the implementation of Active Queue Management (AQM), a technology that’s designed to reduce latency, buffering and packet loss – elements that can improve the overall performance of DOCSIS-delivered broadband services.

Posting big speeds will always provide grist for the marketing people, but CableLabs believes that an additional focus on latency can juice up the performance of broadband-fueled multiplayer gaming, video conferencing, video streaming and even the simple task of loading Web pages.