Time Warner Holding Back Super-fast Broadband?

The saga continues.

Time Warner Cable's consumption-based billing trials brought along with it testing of the new DOCSIS 3.0 system.

DOCSIS 3.0 promises much improved throughput speeds and Time Warner Cable was set to roll out a 50 Mbps service in conjunction with the upgraded standard.

While details are still sketchy, it seems that the whole speed upgrade and consumption-based billing were tied more closely together than previously let on. Now that the tiered system is being shelved, so too might be the rollout of the newer technology.

Alex Dudly, VP of PR at TWC, posted a response on his Twitter to a question from GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham saying that the DOCSIS 3.0 was scheduled as part of consumption-based billing trial, but that consumer backlash has changed the company’s plans.

GigaOM got clarification from TWC, who said it is now “reevaluating whether or not the trial cities are among those places” scheduled for DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts.

The cities originally targeted for TWC’s trials were San Antonio and Austin, Texas; Greensboro, N.C., and Rochester N.Y.

What’s likely to be happening right now is that TWC has gone back to the drawing board on how to re-approach this most delicate situation. Hopefully we’ll get more detailed explanations outside of tweets constrained to no more than 140 characters.