Cox Communications is informing Louisiana customers that they'll be raising both TV and broadband prices this fall. According to The Advocate, basic cable customers will be seeing a price hike of $2.58 per month, and those who subscribe to expanded basic will pay another $3 per month. Premium services like HBO and Showtime will also be seeing $1 hikes. Cox customers on starter, value, preferred or premier broadband tiers can also expect rate hikes of between $2 and $3 a month. The hikes are occurring in Lafayette, despite the added competition in the market from the local municipal fiber deployment Cox tried so very hard to derail.

Last year Comcast faced an FCC investigation and endless media scrutiny for their decision to use packet forgery to throttle upstream P2P for all users. Cox dodged much of that media attention despite the fact they were busy doing roughly the same thing. That's in part because nobody noticed what Cox was doing (well, almost anybody). But it's also because unlike Comcast, Cox didn't lie about what they were up to when asked about it.

Just a few days after Cox bumped speeds in some of their more competitive markets, a Cox employee has stopped by our forums to indicate that the carrier has clarified their usage caps. With the FCC (and State Attorneys General) increasingly demanding network limitation transparency with consumers, the Cox website now not only lists concrete usage limits for all tiers, but the various top speeds they provision in each Cox market (which is usually dictated by the level of competition they're facing).

According to Multichannel News, Cox just finished upgrading 86,000 miles of the carrier's 106,000 miles of coaxial plant to 1 Gigahertz. The upgrades give Cox a little added legroom when provisioning broadband and HD services, by providing markets with 140 to 250 MHz of additional bandwidth to work with. The report notes that Cox, who says they've spent $16 billion on upgrades over the next decade, will have spent more on the 1 GHz upgrades than they plan to spend on building out a wireless network. Cox is still fairly tight-lipped about their wireless broadband plans, but earlier this year vendors noted Cox would go from CDMA to LTE.

On the heels of launching faster DOCSIS 3.0 service and faster 50 Mbps speeds in parts of Rhode Island, Louisiana, Arizona and Northern Virginia, Cox says they're now boosting the speeds of their Preferred and Premier broadband tiers starting September 29. According to Cox, the company's Preferred tier will be increased to 15 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream.

AT&T today launched their VDSL-based U-Verse service in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as the company continues to ramp up deployment of the service across former BellSouth markets. The company also recently launched the service in Memphis and portions of Alabama.

We recently noted how Time Warner Cable was running surveys in a quest to find a new name for their upcoming DOCSIS 3.0 service. Several users write in to note that Cox Communications has also been using surveys to pick the brains of their customers. According to users, the survey informs users that Cox could launch a tier as fast as 100Mbps soon, and offers users several possible names for the service -- including "3-D broadband" (which makes little to no sense) and "Extreme Broadband" (a marketing meme that was considered lame back in 1997). Cox's top speed is currently 50Mbps, and has been launched in parts of Louisiana, Northern Virginia, Rhode Island and Arizona.

Cox Communications today announced that the company has brought their faster DOCSIS 3.0 service to portions of their Arizona market. The launch comes after Cox unveiled the faster services in Lafayette, Louisiana, portions of Northern Virginia, and portions of Rhode Island earlier this year.

Cox Communications gave us a nudge this morning to note that the private cable operator has now launched faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds in Rhode Island. That's the third market to see DOC 3.0 deployment, after the company offered the service earlier this year in Lafayette, Louisiana and portions of Northern Virginia.

Users in our Cox Communications forum indicate that the cable provider is continuing their deployment of faster DOCSIS 3.0 service into Arizona (previously only available in Lafayette, Louisiana, and competitive portions of Virginia). Arizona locals are able to order a new 25Mbps downstream and 2Mbps upstream tier can that reach downstream speeds of around 28Mbps with Powerboost. The new tier costs $79 -- a price point several area users call "weak." Cox offers a 50Mbps/5Mbps tier in other DOCSIS 3.0 markets for anywhere from $90 to $140, depending on discounts and area competition. Strangely, the Cox Arizona website makes no reference to a 50Mbps tier.

Cox Communications says the company is deploying the company's faster DOCSIS 3.0 "Ultimate" tier into Northern Virginia, specifically Fairfax County and Fredericksburg. According to the company, the new speedier tier will cost customers $139.99 per month, with an introductory rate of $109 per month.

Though a bit behind their telcoTV competitors, Cox looks prepped to unveil their multi-room DVR service, announcing earlier this month via press release that they'll be launching the service in an un-named market later this year. There was some question of what in-home networking spec Cox was going to use, and it looks like they've settled on MoCA (Multimedia Over Cable Alliance), which will allow hardware to communicate throughout the home on existing coaxial lines. Light Reading notes Cox will be using Entropic, the same vendor Verizon is using for in-home FiOS networking.

Now that Cox Communications has decided to become a wireless phone company, the obvious question becomes: what kind of phone company will they be? Initially the answer will be "one much like Sprint," since it's expected they're partnering with Sprint to offer EVDO at first -- though Cox hopes to migrate to LTE and be largely independent in time. The Wall Street Journal checks in on the project, much of which (including cost) remains unknown, given Cox is now a private company. The carrier does say they'll be offering an application store, though just how "open" the Cox Wireless network will be remains to be seen when the first markets launch later this year.

Though a bit behind their telcoTV competitors, Cox looks prepped to unveil their multi-room DVR service, announcing via press release that they'll be launching the service in an un-named market later this year. The release stays vague about additional market arrivals, only saying there's "additional launches to follow." There was some question on what in-home networking spec Cox was going to use, and it looks like they've settled on MoCA (Multimedia Over Cable Alliance), which will allow hardware to communicate throughout the home on existing coaxial lines.

As we mentioned yesterday, Cox is deploying 50Mbps/5Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service in Lafayette, Louisiana -- partially in response to a municipal fiber build in the city, where users can get symmetrical 50Mbps service for $57.95. Cox's 50/5 tier is $139.99 ($90 as part of a local offer), but as Cable Digital News explores, it is the first instance where Powerboost has been applied to DOCSIS 3.0 service. Powerboost, which gives users and extra kick of speed for the first few moments of a download, could temporarily boost the tier to about 55Mbps -- assuming network conditions are optimal. The site also offers a video interview with Cox's Jay Rolls.

Cox Communications reached out to us this morning to note that the carrier will be launching their first 50Mbps/5Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service tier in none other than Lafayette, Louisiana. The new "Ultimate" Internet tier costs $139.99, though the company tells us there's a discount offer being pushed in this launch market of $90 per month.

In the recent 700Mhz auction, Cox Communications won 14 Block A and 8 Block B licenses for bids totaling roughly $304 million. Through a joint venture with Sprint and several other cable companies, Cox also spent $2.37 billion to buy 137 AWS licenses. The company has since announced they plan to become a wireless carrier, starting with CDMA/EVDO and eventually making the jump to LTE. While Cox isn't talking much about their wireless network build yet, indications are that BCI Communications is helping Cox and that construction is well underway.

A growing number of cable operators are deploying switched digital video (SDV) technology, which frees up bandwidth on cable systems by delivering fewer channels to the cable-box, keeping the rest waiting at the edge router. In current cable systems, all channels are consistently made available to the set-top box, using up valuable bandwidth even if your TV is off.

In the recent 700Mhz auction, Cox Communications won 14 Block A and 8 Block B licenses for bids totaling roughly $304 million. Through a joint venture with Sprint and several other cable companies, Cox also spent $2.37 billion to buy 137 AWS licenses. The company has since announced they plan to become a wireless carrier, starting with CDMA/EVDO and eventually making the jump to LTE. The company this week hired two industry execs to help launch the service, which Cox has previously stated should be commercially available sometime this year. Both execs have formerly worked for AT&T or BellSouth.

Last month we profiled Cox's new network management system, which de-prioritizes certain types of traffic when the network gets congested. Unlike Comcast, Cox is targeting specific protocols, and any applications the company deems non-time-sensitive.