Earlier this week a Time Warner Cable insider tipped me off to the fact that Time Warner Cable is testing Comcast's Powerboost technology in certain upstate New York markets. Powerboost delivers cable customers a little more than double their usual bandwidth during the first few minutes of an upload or download. While user speedtests nearing 20Mbps confirmed the insider's claims, I today also received official confirmation from Time Warner Cable.

"I can confirm that we're testing Powerboost in upstate New York," Time Warner Cable spokesman Jeff Simmermon tells me. "It was tested on Turbo customers in Syracuse and Binghamton earlier in the week." The speed of their Turbo tier often ranges from 7Mbps to 15Mbps downstream and between 512kbps and 2Mbps upstream depending on how competitive the market is. Some of the trial participants previously only saw around 8Mbps.

While Jeff couldn't provide additional launch details yet, he did confirm a licensing relationship with Comcast. Comcast licenses the technology to both Cox and Canadian cable operator Shaw Communications, though some of Time Warner Cable's implementation will be home-cooked. "We licensed the name from Comcast, had some discussions with their engineers, but built most of it ourselves, internally, as an in-house hybrid."

I imagine that Time Warner Cable will offer some additional launch specifics later this year.