Speaking to reporters and analysts during the company's 3rd quarter earnings conference call, cable overbuilder RCN has announced that they're taking their DOCSIS 3.0 plans out of neutral very, very soon. According to the company, residential customers in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Boston and New York should see faster speeds before the end of the year. The company says the "majority" of their remaining footprint will see the faster speeds in 2010. There's no word on residential pricing yet. As their press release attests, RCN is going to make small business customers their primary marketing focus at first.

Users in our RCN forum note that the cable overbuilder has decided to use TiVO digital video recorders in the field. According to RCN, this won't be a software update pushed to existing devices, but an entirely new unit. The company says the launch is planned for early 2010, but so far a monthly price tag for the service or device hasn't been finalized. At one point a few years ago it wasn't clear that TiVO would survive as a brand -- but the company has since struck a number of major deals with cable operators such as Cox and Comcast. In RCN's case, TiVO will be their primary product and won't play second fiddle to other DVRs, something that seems to have plagued Comcast's limited deployment of the technology.

As users in our RCN forums discuss, cable overbuilder RCN is raising their rates for a number of services, increasing bundle costs for consumers anywhere from $8 to $20 per month, while raising the prices for a number of their broadband tiers across several markets. A mailer (see pic) informs customers that the price increases are necessary to provide "the most up-to-date products and services at a competitive rate." Of course the term "up to date product" and "competitive rate" are subjective, as one of our users notes: story continues..

Cable overbuilder RCN says they're starting to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 technology in their New York City and Boston markets. They aren't offering any details on speeds and prices as of yet, though they say they'll offer speeds of 50Mbps "and faster." RCN CEO Peter Aquino tells Light Reading that the carrier is "taking the time now to test the platform to ensure that when we fully deploy this upgrade it is done in the most efficient and effective manner for our customers." RCN competes with Comcast in Boston and Time Warner Cable in New York City. RCN also serves portions of Chicago, Washington, DC, and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

RCN users in our forums are discovering that RCN has joined the growing number of ISPs who no longer offer newgsroup services. That's not particularly surprising, given the dwindling numbers of Usenet users, a wide variety of dedicated newsgroup shops, and the industry's consistent efforts to cut corners. What annoys users however, is that RCN never bothered to tell anyone they were phasing the service out. "First you raise my rate by $30 a month, then you cut off news.rcn.com without so much as an email notice, forcing me to purchase an alternative news service, and next you will force me to rent additional cable boxes for all the TVs in the house," complains one regular user.

Users in our RCN forum report that the cable operator has raised their rates for a number of channel packages (by as much as 15-20%) and the cost of set top box rental for most RCN users. This is particularly annoying to customers in our forums who say the cable provider is compromising HD quality in order to offer more HD channels, something Comcast was taken to task for back in April. "I know this won't be a popular answer, I understand that there will be groups of people who are excited about the additional HD offerings, while some will be upset to see small aspects of shaping," says an RCN employee in our forums.

As of yesterday, RCN has begun to reclaim all of the analog channels that had been duplicated with digital simulcast in an effort that’s been dubbed “the analog crush”. This transition is part of a plan to make RCN 100% digital. A similar effort was already started in RCN’s Chicago market where customers now require a digital converter box to get their signals.

Remember all of the talk about how when the phone company got into the TV business, you'd see lower prices? Apparently they were just kidding. The Boston Globe notes that RCN, Comcast and Verizon are all raising prices in the region.

Yesterday we mentioned how RCN users were having trouble with BitTorrent connectivity, but suggested it was likely a network issue and not a new effort to throttle p2p traffic. Jason Nealis Senior Director of operations for RCN, tells us that the problem has been addressed. "The device we use to enforce our P2P policy has some issues and was causing a degrade in service," says Nealis. "We are still tracking the problem, but a reset of the interface cleared the issue." RCN has consistently been very direct about their network management policies.

Users in our RCN forum are complaining that cable overbuilder RCN is blocking BitTorrent connections. Some RCN technician posts to the forum seem to indicate that this is not a policy change, so this could simply be a technical problem.

A study in Massachusetts recently showed that FiOSTV was probably taking a bigger bite out of cable overbuilder RCN's business than anbody else. Recent web metrics also show that a significant portion of the visitors to Verizon's website are RCN customers shopping around.

Compete, which tracks user web activity thanks to user clickstream data ISPs won't admit to selling, offers up this brief insight into the viewing behavior of people who headed to Verizon's website. The study seems to confirm a recent study that suggests it's RCN who's taking the biggest hit due to Verizon's entry into TelcoTV. story continues..

An RCN rep stops by our forums to note that the cable overbuilder has updated their webmail platform and increased user storage to 500MB (2GB total). According to the company, they've upgraded the application's calendar tools, GUI and contract management. The company has also been active in our forums, helping users with a stuttering HD DVR glitch that's now resolved. As an aside, RCN this week was given regulatory approval to acquire wholesale communications provider Neon Communications Group for $260 million.