Time Warner should be offering their "Wideband" service to Austin sometime this year, tho I've not been able to get anybody to actually pin the date down. This is huge news for our events. Check out Time Warner's "info page" here. It's already in New York, and it's in Dallas (more info here) for $99.95. Austin should be next, then San Antonio. Those are the only cities in Texas slated to get this service in 2010. And honestly the only reason TW is implementing this service (in these cities) is due to competition from AT&T's U-Verse and Verizon's FIOS...
Another company jumping on the bandwidth wagon is Comcast. Their "Extreme 50" is already in certain areas of Houston. This service offers 50Mbps down and 10Mbps up; note the speeds connecting to Austin and Dallas from Houston in the pics below. In other areas of Houston, the "Blast" is available, which offers downloads of up to 20Mbps, with uploads up to 4Mbps.
One problem with Comcast however, is that reports of a "250GB monthly download cap for residential customers" might be in place:
There are several differences b/w the four carriers' offerings; it appears that Time Warner and Comcast are the only companies that will allow us to use our own modem and router, and does not limit the number of computers hooked up to the network. But no matter which company you use to attain these lightning speeds, you'll need modems with DOCSIS 3.0. Highly suggest buying your own modem to avoid the cheezy ones like TW has. Unlike Comcast, you'll get no money back from TW for doing this, b/c TW doesn't charge for their equipment.
All the research I've done has brought to light this modem for our needs, which is backwards compatible to existing 2.0 and 1.0. That means I can buy it now and install it, then when TW's "Wideband" arrives in our area, I'll be ready to go. It's currently available at NewEgg for $90, tho quantities are limited. (click here). NOTE: This modem does not have phone capability; you'd need a "voice" modem for that. Full list of Motorola modems is here.
