IN BRIEF

By MCN Staff -- Multichannel News, 3/22/2010 1:06:53 PM

TWC Bows Wideband In Dallas, New York State

NEW YORK — Time Warner Cable on March 16 — the same day the Federal Communications Commission released its National Broadband Plan — officially launched DOCSIS 3.0 service in parts of its North Texas and Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y., service areas, offering subscribers downloads of up to 50 Megabits per second.

Previously, TWC had offered the next-generation cablemodem technology only in its New York City division, where it became available in the fourth quarter of 2009.

As in the Big Apple, Time Warner Cable Wideband Internet with up to 50 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up is available to residential customers for $99.95 per month in the new markets. The Road Runner Extreme tier with 30 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up is $69.95 per month; that tier is not available in NYC.

In the Dallas/Fort Worth area, TWC said it will deploy DOCSIS 3.0 services to all customers in North Texas “in the coming months.”

In Buffalo, the wideband service initially will be available to two-thirds of the operator’s service area, according to spokesman Justin Venech.

Charter Eyes EBIF For Half of Digital Footprint

ST. LOUIS — Charter Communications expects to deploy support for the Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format — the CableLabs interactive TV spec that forms the basis for Canoe Ventures’ initial services — to about half its digital set-tops by year-end to deliver interactive programming and advertising.

At the end of 2009, Charter had approximately 3.2 million digital video subscribers with 4.8 million digital set-tops deployed. That means the MSO is aiming for around 1.6 million households to have EBIF-enabled settops by the close of 2010.

Charter has selected the EBIF platform from FourthWall Media (formerly BIAP). In addition, the cable operator will use FourthWall’s Event Stream Collection to compile anonymous usage data across its linear, DVR and interactive platforms in conjunction with Concurrent’s video-on-demand and backend data solution.