June 22 - 10:30am EDT   Verizon today ramped up FiOS with speed upgrades for all its regular tiers as well as the addition of a new middle tier. A new 35Mbps plan offers a balance between more typical speeds and the 50Mbps maximum tier; it also has the same 20Mbps upload speeds as the previous symmetric 20/20 tier and the 50Mbps service; the speed would let it upload an hour-long 720p HDTV show in 20 minutes. The carrier doesn't say how much this version of its fiber optic service would cost but says it's only available in bundles with TV or phone service. [full story]

June 9 - 1:45pm EDT   Comcast today expanded its DOCSIS 3.0-based cable modem service to Washington, D.C. with a price cut to match. The US capital has the same 50Mbps peak downloads and 10Mbps peak uploads as other areas but has had the price of the service drop substantially, down $40 to $100 per month. It's not specified whether the cut applies just to the Washington area or if other regions also receive the price cut today, though a leak regarding the cut said it would apply broadly on June 20th. [full story]

April 30 - 5:05pm EDT   At an earnings conference on Wednesday, Time Warner Cable COO Landel Hobbs said that the cable provider will begin using the newer, multi-channel DOCSIS 3.0 standard to provide Internet and data access to homes and businesses this summer, although it will be limited to New York City only. Time Warner Cable is currently testing DOCSIS 3.0 in NYC, Hobbs says. Testing has netted 138Mbps download speeds and and 18Mbps upload speeds, the COO says, adding that these won't be offered initially. [full story]

April 20 - 3:25pm EDT   Verizon today expanded its mobile FiOS DVR control to include a web version of its FiOS TV Central feature. Previously only available either as a desktop site or in a native app for certain LG phones like the enV 2 and Voyager, the feature lets any phone with a sufficiently advanced web browser, including non-Verizon devices like the iPhone, remotely program the IPTV recorder with all the same remote features. Owners can manage as many as three individual DVRs, add or delete shows (including Video On Demand) and browse media guides. [full story]

April 16 - 3:40pm EDT   Time Warner Cable has scrapped its plans to trial metered Internet access in Rochester after political resistance, local news said on Thursday. Senator Chuck Schumer delivered surprise news that he had successfully negotiated with the Internet provider to drop Rochester from a planned expansion of metering, which would otherwise have arrived in August. A lack of competition is cited as the primary factor, as subscribers wouldn't get enough alternatives to Time Warner if they dislike the caps and overages. [full story]

March 19 - 3:40pm EDT   The state of New Jersey's Division of Consumer Affairs has filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Verizon for allegedly using "deceptive and misleading" marketing practices for its high-performance fiber-optic FiOS television, telephone and Internet services. The lawsuit states Verizon broke the state's Consumer Fraud Act by misrepresenting and omitting material facts in its promotion of the FiOS service. [full story]

March 18 - 4:45pm EDT   The University of Melbourne and NEC in Australia are working on developing a high-powered laser that would cut the costs of bringing high-speed Internet access to rural areas of the country over fiber. Dr. Ka Lun Lee and his colleagues at the University are conducting an experiment in the state of Victoria, where the service can be sent to 99 percent of residents. Results of their work will be presented next week at a fiber optics expo in San Diego. [full story]

January 29 - 1:15pm EST   Charter Communications recently announced it will launch the one of the fastest widely available Internet services in the US, capable of delivering 60Mbps download speeds and 5Mbps uploads. Called Charter High-Speed Internet Ultra60, the service will initially be released in downtown St. Louis before expanding to other, unnamed markets. At the same time, the Internet provider says it will upgrade its Charter High-Speed Internet Max service to give subscribers 20Mbps download speeds instead of the current 16Mbps without increasing their monthly rates. [full story]

December 24 - 12:05pm EST   Lafayette, Louisiana yesterday revealed that it will soon become one of the first significant US cities to deploy a municipality-run fiber optic Internet connection. Lafayette Utilities System plans to launch the service with a combination of Internet, phone and TV services and will offer them either as part of bundles or as individual options. Internet service tops out as high as 50Mbps both downstream and upstream and will offer more bandwidth still for connections between users on the same network, doubling to 100Mbps. [full story]

December 11 - 2:40pm EST   Comcast today said that its DOCSIS 3 Internet access has reached about 20 percent of its coverage areas in less than a year through expansion into three new areas. Subscribers in particular areas of Atlanta, Balitmore and Chicago now have the option of using the faster, channel-bonded access with either a 50Mbps Extreme tier with 10Mbps uploads or an in-between 22Mbps Ultra tier with 5Mbps upstream. [full story]

December 5 - 10:20am EST   The speeds of Verizon's FIOS fiber-optic Internet access should double in less than a year, the company's technology head Vincent O'Byrne has said at a media event on Thursday. Although the telco has already boosted its service to 50Mbps US-wide just this past June, its plans now have a trial 100Mbps service expanding to an official service sometime in 2009. The increase will be necessary as many services beyond ordinary computer-borne Internet access, such as HDTVs with direct video downloads and network-attached storage drives, will demand a large amount of bandwidth on their own. [full story]

October 22 - 3:30pm EDT   Comcast today officially launched and expanded its DOCSIS 3.0 service in a bid to compete against Verizon's FIOS and other very high-speed Internet connections. Originally available in a limited form just in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, the now established Extreme 50 plan bonds cable channels together to reach downstream speeds of 50Mbps, or bandwidth three times faster than the provider's DOCSIS 2.0-era 16Mbps tier. The performance is high enough to make HD video feasible: a full 6GB movie can download in as little as 16 minutes. [full story]

July 23 - 2:20pm EDT   Verizon today said it has upgraded the custom-modified routers for its FIOS fiber-optic Internet service to prep them for the future as well as to give users more control over their home networks. The new versions of the firm's Actiontec and Westell routers support local connection speeds of as much as 175Mbps (up from 75Mbps) that makes sure devices inside the house can make the most of the connection. Each device also supports as many as four Wi-Fi access points at the same time that can be used for public or private networks. [full story]

June 26 - 3:35pm EDT   Comcast's cable TV network will be all digital in the space of three years, according to claims by an unnamed senior executive at a communications company. The service provider is allegedly buying up as many six million digital-to-analog devices from Motorola and others this year as well as 12 million in 2009, all of which will be handed out to subscribers whose TVs don't support digital tuning. The move will let Comcast shut off analog cable entirely in favor of purely digital networks; the process should have all of Comcast's cable base on digital channels by 2011. [full story]

June 18 - 10:25am EDT   Verizon today it would upgrade all the speeds for its FIOS fiber-optic service nationwide, giving users in all 16 states the same speeds that were previously reserved only for the most competitive areas. All of FIOS' 16 states now have access to up to 50Mbps downloads with 20Mbps uploads at the highest-end, $140 monthly tier ($90 in New York state and Virginia) versus the 30/15 services that were used for most regions; the synchronous 15/15 service is also slightly faster at 20/20 across those areas without changing the $65 monthly rate. [full story]