Broadband

Cox Communications this week boosted connection speeds for major broadband packages in Arizona and Las Vegas -- which included kicking up its Preferred tier from 15 to 25 Megabits per second down and doubling the Premier tier to 50 Mbps -- with other markets to follow.

The operator’s Rhode Island, Louisiana and Cleveland markets will be “quick on the heels” with the same speed upgrades and other regions will receive the upgrades through the rest of 2013, Cox director of media relations Todd Smith said.

Cable legend John Malone has purchased an equity stake in Columbus International, obtaining a board seat and helping to fuel the Caribbean and Latin American communications services provider’s expansion plans.

Comcast is upgrading the Ciena 6500 Packet-Optical Platform in its core network with the vendor’s third-generation WaveLogic coherent optical line interfaces, which the MSO said will let it scale its backbone to 400 Gigabits per second in the future.

According to the companies, Comcast has been deploying Ciena’s coherent 40G and 100G technologies across its national fiber network since 2009. Comcast also is using Ciena’s packet networking solutions to support its Metro Ethernet services offering.

As ESPN2’s promo for the Australian Open -- accompanied by Oz stalwart AC/DC’s “Long Way To The Top If You Want To Rock ‘N Roll” -- suggests, the tennis world is about to get “Pumped up Down Under.”

Which, of course, is what the men’s and women’s fields would like to do against Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka -- put the defending champions down and themselves on top at the first Grand Slam of the tennis season

Las Vegas -- Broadcom is unveiling its first gigabit-speed DOCSIS 3.0 integrated circuit and also is introducing what it claims is the world’s first Ultra HD TV video decoder chip, even though Ultra HD televisions today are pricey and years away from mass-market adoption.

Broadcom’s fourth-generation DOCSIS 3.0 system-on-a-chip solution, the BCM3384, provides the ability to perform channel bonding across up to 24 downstream channels (for throughput speeds up to 960 Megabits per second in North American cable systems) and eight upstream channels (for up to 240 Mbps).