Time Warner Cable's starting to lose daylight if it wants to be seen as a company that takes network investment seriously. The carrier is falling well behind other cable operators (both larger and smaller) in terms of DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, with faster next-gen services available only in parts of New York City. Last October a company insider told us the company hoped to launch multiple additional upstate New York markets in December and January, but obviously the launches were delayed. According to Light Reading, Time Warner Cable is "far along" in portions of Texas, Ohio, and upstate New York:Time Warner Cable has long stated their DOCSIS 3.0 deployments would be "surgical," which is code for "areas where Time Warner Cable sees serious competition." Time Warner Cable's deployment speed should tell you a little something about the competition in many of their markets. So far, the company has found it more cost effective to confuse customers into thinking core network fiber is the same as last mile fiber. That said, this next round of select market launches should arrive in fairly quick succession.

One specific location that could see the upgrades is Beaumont, Texas, where you'll recall that Time Warner Cable tried (and backed off due to consumer backlash) to impose low caps and high overages. Beaumont is also the location of one of two AT&T metered billing trials. Because of DSL distance constraints, AT&T's U-Verse service tops out at 24 Mbps, and Time Warner Cable could gain market share by offering faster speeds -- and ironically by offering them without caps or overages.

Regardless of where Time Warner Cable chooses to deploy the upgrades, the nation's second largest cable company needs to get moving. Company executives have hinted they believe that the faster speeds DOCSIS 3.0 provides are only really useful to business customers, but the upgrades do provide overall capacity help -- and the consumer impression that Time Warner Cable is being cheap when it comes to network upgrades doesn't exactly help a brand image that was already badly battered by last year's metered billing kerfuffle.

Comcast, the nation's largest carrier, is quickly approaching 90% DOCSIS 3.0 coverage across its larger footprint. Even smaller, less profitable carriers like Suddenlink and Mediacom have been working at a faster pace than Time Warner Cable. According to recent cable industry data, DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades now read 43% of the nation's 120 million homes served by cable.