Suddenlink this week officially announced they're bringing DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades and speeds up to 20Mbps to to select areas of Texas. According to the provider, the deployment will service 100,000 customers, or about 8% of Suddenlink's 1.3 million residential subscribers. Suddenlink offers cable broadband service in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia. Just last month the company began offering users a usage monitor to help consumers track usage, a move that could ultimately result in caps and overage charges. The carrier consistently brings up the rear in our user review rankings, something reflected by how hard it is to get standalone broadband pricing information out of their website (try Lubbock, TX zip code 79401).

Cable provider Suddenlink is one of the most poorly reviewed cable operators in our user review rankings, consistently battling with Charter Communications for the least popular cable broadband experience. Now user iansltx writes in to note the carrier has deployed a usage monitor that could be a prelude to a shift to metered billing. According to a new website, Suddenlink says they've delivered the usage tool in Clovis, New Mexico, but have no immediate plans for caps or overages:"Typical usage" is defined as up to 21GB per month for users on their 1Mbps tier, up to 34GB for users on their 8Mbps tier, and up to 66GB for users on their 10Mbps tier. The carrier says that just one out of every 100 customers in Clovis has usage that is "well above" average. As with many carriers thinking about caps and overages, Suddenlink thinks e-mails are a useful metric when talking about consumption, proclaiming that their definition of normal usage allows you to send "1.5 million emails."

Given Time Warner Cable's metered billing PR disaster last April, Suddenlink may be taking things very slowly, giving users ample time to understand how much they consume before moving forward. After consumers reacted poorly to caps as low as 1GB with overage fees as high as $2 per gigabyte, Time Warner Cable backed off their plan -- stating that customers needed "education" before the plan could move forward.

Suddenlink Communications continues to lose weight. After the provider shed some of their Virginia systems to Jet Broadband over the summer, the company now confirms that they're looking to offload some 150,000 subscribers in Texas and Oklahoma. The company also recently sold some 17,000 customers in Bakersfield, California. Suddenlink has beaten out Charter to be the worst-reviewed cable broadband company in our review index.

When Suddenlink announced last month that they would be doubling their download speeds, they failed to provide information about what the new services would cost. The staggered deployment of faster speeds is about to reach Eastern North Carolina where existing Suddenlink customers will be automatically upgraded to the new speeds at no cost. There’s still no information on the company’s website about the exact cost of the service to new customers but Suddenlink points out that “customers appreciate the value and convenience they receive when they bundle their high-speed Internet service with cable TV and our phone service on one monthly bill”. They may appreciate that but they don’t appreciate the slow deployment; there has been some heated discussion in our forums about the fact that the colleges in the area seem to be getting the most attention in the deployment. As the service becomes more widely available, new customers may be willing to foot the bill for the 10 Mbps premier tier which is faster than any other high speed internet offered in the area. Of course, that's assuming that the advertised speeds are the actual speeds seen by customers.

Suddenlink, which just increased their download speeds in some areas, is making customers even more happy by bringing Digital Phone services to new areas. They’re now providing voice to 75% of their customers, up from only 15% at the beginning of this year. The news from our forums is that they’re offering bundle packages for the phone services, cable and Internet which cut users’ monthly bills by about $50. The rates are temporary of course, lasting about a year, so customers wonder if they’ll see a hike after that but overall are happy with the new service.