Cox announced the expansion of their DOCSIS 3.0, or wideband, footprint to now include its Rhode Island markets. That’s Verizon FiOS territory. Cox’s wideband product is called the Ultimate Tier, and offers download speeds of 50 Mbps and upload speeds of 5 Mbps.
It’s priced $144.99 per month when unbundled. That’s priced exactly similar to Verizon’s FiOS offering in that market for 50 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream for $144.95. For five cents less, you get 15 Mbps more in upstream bandwidth. Upstream is Verizon’s latest competitive weapon. A true FTTH architecture gives them this advantage over cable. It’s not that HFC networks can’t increase upstream bandwidth, it’s just a little trickier, and presumably too costly. At least for the time being.
