"If there is demand for [1 Gbps] service we will provide it," Time Warner Cable chief operating officer Rob Marcus told attendees of a conference this week while discussing Google Fiber. Speaking at the Broadcast and Cable/Multichannel News OnScreen Summit yesterday, Marcus stated that while the company may eventually have to raise speeds to compete with Google Fiber, so far the company hasn't had to.

Granted at the moment Google Fiber's footprint is minuscule. Marcus claims that Google Fiber's deployment currently only impacts about 100,000 broadband customers, and around 100,000 cable TV customers. The COO also spent plenty of time downplaying the need for 1 Gbps services, and questioning consumer demand for such speeds.

"It will be interesting to find out whether there are applications that will take advantage of a 1 Gbps service," Marcus said. "If there is, we will provide it. Our infrastructure has the ability to provide much faster speeds today.

After Time Warner Cable took a public relations beating for pushing low caps and high per byte overages on consumers back in 2009, the company has been stepping very carefully in what is quite obviously their relentless desire to charge consumers broadband overages. Early this year their metered billing option returned to a few tiny markets as a voluntary option named "Internet Essentials."

The company promises users a $5 discount off their bill if they sign up for the plan, which features a 5 GB cap and $1 per gigabyte overages.

Time Warner Cable today made a fairly tepid attempt to counter some of the constant positive press Google is receiving for Google Fiber, announcing that Kansas City residents now have access to free Wi-Fi (if they're a subscriber) and discount broadband (if they're a low income family). Time Warner Cable held a press event in Kansas City today to announce that their network of Wi-Fi hotspots has expanded to Kansas City, as well as their $10 Starter Internet package aimed at low-income homes.

Time Warner Cable's "six strikes" anti-piracy measures won't include the filtering of any websites, Broadband Reports has learned. The six strikes plan, scheduled to launch later this year, will vary from ISP to ISP -- with Verizon last week acknowledging they'll be throttling repeat offenders to an as-yet-unspecified speed.

We've been hearing from sources for a while that the change was near, and now Time Warner Cable appears finally to be eliminating the Roadrunner brand from their product lineup. A source tells us that as of May 19, numerous markets are seeing the logo and branding eliminated by products, with existing tier names simply seeing the addition of the word "Internet." For example, the company's "standard" tier will simply become the Time Warner Cable "standard Internet" tier.

Time Warner Cable has been talking about a brand change ever since they were spin off from Time Warner back in 2008. Like their DOCSIS 3.0 network upgrades they're taking their time accomplishing this, acknowledging last summer the refresh would involve the elimination of the Roadrunner brand, and possibly the Time Warner Cable name entirely.

Time Warner Cable initially took their time deploying faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds, priced them well beyond what most sane people were willing to pay (often in upscale "Signature Home" packages), then complained that the services weren't initially seeing quite the uptake they'd hoped for during a recession. That seems to be improving slightly in some markets (the company signed up 54,000 wideband subs in the fourth quarter), thanks in part to offers like the free Slingboxes they were giving out in NYC last year. In NYC they compete with Verizon's slowly-spreading FiOS footprint, and are also now offering an interesting deal: one free year of VoIP service for users who sign up for 50 Mbps broadband.

Todd Spangler over at cable-industry trade magazine Multichannel News crows that cable operators came out on top in 2011 in terms of speed. According to data compiled over at the Ookla Net Index, the six fastest residential ISPs in the U.S.

Earlier this year Netflix began ranking the quality of video streaming performance for each of the nation's largest ISPs. HD streams have variable bitrate but can potentially top out at around 4800 kilobits per second, and the data provides a bird's eye view by ISP of sustained throughput available from a given ISP over time.

Confirming earlier reports, Time Warner Cable has launched an initiative to give some customers free Slingboxes -- in a roundabout fashion. The company's website now confirms that customers who sign up for Time Warner Cable's 50 Mbps "Wideband" service and buy a Slingbox PRO-HD from a participating Best Buy will get "up to" $300 back on their Time Warner Cable bill (technically it's a $50 credit each month for six months). "Time Warner Cable account must be in good standing at the time of purchase, and remain in good standing through the offer processing period (approximately 6 - 8 weeks) and for at least six (6) months after the offer processing period is completed to qualify for the full $300 credit," says the offer fine print.

For several years now PC Magazine has been conducting a somewhat controversial ranking of broadband ISPs by speed, using the PC Magazine Surfspeed application. Criticism over the years has grown about the magazine's methodology, and their decision to rank ISPs based on browsing speed in the age of 100 Mbps connections and Internet video.

Time Warner Cable has been talking about a brand change ever since they were spin off from Time Warner back in 2008. Much like their DOCSIS 3.0 network upgrades they're taking their time accomplishing this, telling Fortune this month (via Stop the Cap) that they're officially retiring the Roadrunner brand and mascot as part of a "brand refresh" strategy. The plan, according to a Time Warner Cable spokesperson, is to "create excitement around the eye-ear symbol," which the company has been using for a number of years. While Fortune wonders if the Time Warner Cable eye doodle is really any more sexy or exciting than the infamous Roadrunner, they're right in noting that the company's shift is driven by a desire to have a cohesive brand across services (see Comcast Xfinity and Verizon FiOS).

Stop the Cap directs our attention to a rather odd and unprecedented story out of North Carolina, where a woman notes she received lewd, sexually-suggestive comments from a Time Warner Cable representative employed in a support chat room. According to local North Carolina news outlets, "Bobby from sales" apparently thought it was a good idea to sexually harass the woman instead of help her with her support issues, greeting the customer with "hello my baby" before proceeding to inform her "I here to #@!$ you." The woman says complaints to Time Warner Cable weren't responded to, so she headed to the company's Facebook page and posted her story. "Within 24 hours of this incident, the agent was no longer supporting Time Warner Cable," Time Warner Cable said in a statement, noting that the employee was outsourced and they were taking steps to improve the employed firm's apparently nonexistent screening process.

Comedian Eugene Mirman wasn't too happy with his Time Warner Cable experience recently, so he wrote a very funny letter and bought ad space in several New York papers where it ran last week. In between barbs about Time Warner Cable's low Yelp rating and how the company is "run like an ill-managed Soviet factory," he notes that Time Warner Cable botched two installation dates.

Time Warner Cable has released their first quarter earnings, which note that the nation's second-largest cable company's first-quarter income rose to $325 million from $214 million a year ago. The company continues to bleed cable subscribers to telcoTV competition, losing 65,000 basic video customers during the first quarter. However, Time Warner Cable offset those losses by adding 84,000 digital phone customers and a better-than-expected 189,000 broadband customers, bringing the company's broadband subscriber total past 10 million for the first time. "Our high-speed data product just crossed the 10 million subscriber threshold and is quickly becoming the anchor product in the eyes of consumers," insists Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt.

Time Warner Cable recently launched their new iPad app, offering customers the ability to watch 30 channels on the iPad. Despite the fact this project involves making customers happy by giving them an additional way to watch content (and ads) they're already paying a good deal of money for, broadcasters are already threatening lawsuits and Fox has demanded their channels be pulled.

As we've been exploring, a new firm called the "U.S. Copyright Group" has been trying to make a business model out of suing users who trade copyrighted files.

Time Warner Cable recently launched their new iPad app, offering customers the ability to watch 30 channels on the iPad. While a promising start, the service arrived with a number of caveats -- including the fact it only works inside the home on Wi-Fi, and is restricted to only customers who have both Time Warner Cable TV service and broadband service.

Lt. Daniel DeVirgilio, an engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, was more than a little shocked at his high Time Warner Cable bill.

Yesterday we noted how Time Warner Cable had launched a promising new iPad application offering thirty channels of television content. Unfortunately, like many cable industry TV Anywhere initiatives aimed at reducing the lure of streaming video alternatives, it suffers from a few limitations -- like only working while the subscriber is at home using Time Warner Cable Wi-Fi, a limited catalog of content, and only being offered to users who subscribe to both Time Warner Cable television and broadband service.