Cox Communications today announced that the company has brought their faster DOCSIS 3.0 service to portions of their Arizona market. The launch comes after Cox unveiled the faster services in Lafayette, Louisiana, portions of Northern Virginia, and portions of Rhode Island earlier this year. According to Cox, the new 50Mbps/5Mbps tier is now available in Carefree and Rio Verde, will be in Scottsdale over the next month, with a complete market deployment over the next year.

Prices for the service do vary by location. Cox is offering the service in Arizona for $90 for the first year, the same low price they're offering customers in Lafayette, Loisiana, where Cox does battle with dirt cheap municipal fiber. Other markets aren't so lucky, with customers in Northern Virginia paying $140 for the tier, and customers in Rhode Island paying $145. Behold the benefit of actually having competition in your local market.

In all markets, the service comes with three unique IP addresses, 10 e-mail addresses, and 50 hours per month of remote dial access, an interesting perk we've seen a lot of carriers throw by the wayside in recent years.

According to Cox, the company hopes to offer the faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds in more than two-thirds of its systems across the country by the end of 2010. As always, our user opinions on Cox service can be found in our Cox review database, where 1,333 reviews are currently listed, or in our Cox forum.