We already knew that a Time Warner Cable launch of DOCSIS 3.0 services in New York City was close, and that NYC is the only market that's going to see the faster speeds this year. Insiders at Cisco working with the company have told us DOCSIS 3.0 gear has been installed in NYC for testing for months, and company COO Landel Hobbs recently confirmed NYC upgrades would be done by the year's end.

A poster in our forums notes the company is using surveys to figure out what they should name the new tiers, and how much to charge. "I get paid money for taking the surveys," says the user, who apparently didn't sign a non-disclosure form -- or possible doesn't care even if he did.

"It was a $2.50 payment for that particular survey, and it was about new speed tier and names like Roadrunner Flash, Roadrunner Extreme, Roadrunner Lightning, and a couple others that I forgot for the new title."

Hopefully "Extreme" didn't win, as that particular marketing-ism is getting a little long in the tooth for 2009, abused and used to death by a half-dozen broadband provider marketing departments, including Adelphia, DSLExtreme (of course), Cox, Comcast, and others. And that's just the broadband industry. It has become sort of a disease, and as a marketing meme it just doesn't work anymore.

Even Time Warner Cable already offers "extreme" tiers, which began as capped tiers that the company was offering in only select markets circa 2003, long before Time Warner Cable's latest capping fiasco. We're not sure if Time Warner Cable is listening, but please put us down for anything other than extreme. It's very 1997 Mountain Dew, and contrary to what some marketing execs apparently think, it doesn't say "edgy," it says "really, really corny."

On the more important subject of pricing, the obvious question is whether TWC's again going to try to impose low caps and high per-gigabyte overages on their customers, something that didn't go very well last time. There's still no sign of the promised bandwidth consumption meter the carrier said they'd use to "educate" consumers on usage, though it still seems likely a renewed effort will be made this fall to impose overages. We asked the company if faster speeds were any closer, and were told they're getting "closer every day" and to "stay tuned."