Recent rumors of new speeds for Denver-based Wide Open West were correct. The company's website now lists all of the upgrades to the company's existing tiers. The company's fastest speed was previously a 6Mbps/1Mbps tier they charged $63.99 for, but WOW has now unveiled faster 15Mbps tiers. The freshly announced upgrades vary only slightly from the rumors that have been circulating for weeks in our forums. Here's the changes in a nutshell:

•The "Value" (768kbps/256kbps) and "Basic" (2Mbps/500kbps) tiers have been replaced by "Xcite 2Mbps Internet," which offers 2Mbps/1Mbps service for $41 per month.
•The "Advanced" (4Mbps/500kbps) and "Ultra" (6Mbps/650kbps) tiers have been replaced by "Xcite 4Mbps Internet," which offers 8Mbps/1Mbps service for $58 per month.
•The "Ultra Plus" (6Mbps/1Mbps) tier has been replaced by "Xtreme 15Mbps Internet," which offers 15Mbps/1Mbps for $68 per month.
•The company has added a new "Xtreme Turbo 15Mbps Internet" tier, which offers 15Mbps/2Mbps for $73 a month.

Check out this thread in our forums for user impressions of the new speeds. Many users report that they need to call WOW in order to see the upgrade, which should be available to all users in short order.

The past week or so has seen our Wide Open West forum filled with chatter about the company upgrading their speed tiers starting tomorrow (September 16). Tipsters suggest that customers will not only be seeing new bundles, but most tiers will see significant speed hikes as well.

Cable operator Wide Open West (WOW) offers service in portions of Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois, but hasn't upgraded their top speed tier (for most customers that's 6Mbps) for going on three years now. However, industry gossip seems to indicate that a 15Mbs/2Mbps tier is currently in testing, and some customers have been told that unofficially, the new tiers are scheduled to drop this fall. Officially, WOW isn't yet willing to publicly comment on the new speeds (fairly common practice until launch). Currently, the fastest standalone broadband service WOW offers is 6Mbps/1Mbps for $63.99.

Customer backlash, fears that the technology could violate several privacy and wiretap laws, and the threat of Congressional investigation caused Charter this week to suspend their trials with behavioral advertising firm NebuAD. But what about the companies who were tinkering with the technology long before Charter? Embarq tells the Washington Times that "We are not currently using behavioral targeting tools and have not decided whether to move forward with them, either through NebuAd or with any other vendor." Their privacy policy still references such systems: story continues..

A debate is raging in the UK over ISPs' use of deep packet inspection hardware to watch consumer surfing habits and sell them targeted ads. The conversation here in the States remains muted, largely because the biggest ISPs haven't implemented such systems yet (given the ceaseless need to please investors, they will).

A user for cable operator Wide Open West writes in: "Just thought you'd like to know, that I'm suspicious of my ISP, Wide Open West. I'm in the Chicagoland area, and it sure looks like they're allowing NebuAD to infect their network (sorry - my personal interpretation...I'm quite peeved about this) and altering pages to include their tracking cookies.