Nearly a year after being the first North American carrier to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 in the field, Canadian cable operator Videotron says they've expanded the availability of their 30 and 50 megabits per second cable services. Now available to some 377,000 homes in 34 communities in the South Shore region around Montreal, the tiers have also seen an increase in their caps. Previously 30 and 50GB per month respectively, Videotron says they're now increasing the caps for the two tiers to 70GB and 100GB per month. If you sign a one year contract, the two tiers cost $64.95 and $79.95 per month, respectively ($54 and $67 US).

Canadian cable operator Videotron says they're deploying a new "fiber deep" architecture from Aurora networks that will greatly reduce the number of homes using a single node -- from between 500 to 1,000 homes per node now, to about 125 homes per node after the upgrade. The upgrade also reduces power consumption, since the new architecture eliminates the amplifiers between the node and the home. Videotron was the first North American cable operator to deploy faster pre-cert DOCSIS 3.0 speeds last February. While they offer 30Mbps and 50Mbps tiers, they come with 30 and 50GB monthly caps respectively (plus $1.50 per additional gigabyte).

As was predicted yesterday, Canadian cable provider Videotron is the first North American cable operator to offer their customers pre-DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. According to the company, they'll be offering 30Mbps ($64.95) and 50Mbps ($79.95) speeds under the "Ultimate Speed Internet 30" and "Ultimate Speed Internet 50" tier names.

Canadian cable provider Videotron last year said they achieved speeds up to 98Mbps in trials of Cisco's pre-DOCSIS 3.0 wideband technology, and has stated that through bonding eight channels, they should be able to achieve speeds of 320Mbps. The company, which has been at the forefront of DOCSIS 3.0 deployment in North America, is preparing to unveil faster speeds tomorrow, according to this announcement: story continues..

Recently, we reported on the bi-directional caps being imposed by Canadian broadband provider Videotron. Customers continue to be active on our forums, discussing the details of the issue, including the recent news that the high-speed $30 package will also be affected by the caps. Consumers can join in a class action suit against Videotron to thwart the capping (details in English and submission form in French).

Though our French is a little rusty, Canadian broadband provider Videotron has e-mailed their customers to let them know that starting October 1st, the company will be imposing a monthly 100GB cap (downstream and upstream combined) on their 10Mbps "Extreme" tier of service.Users who go above the 100GB limit will pay an additional $1.50 (Canadian) per gigabyte. Customers can track their usage here. Users have thirty days from the date of the letter to cancel service with no penalty, which, you know, is really sweet of them.