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. The 50Mbps downstream 5Mbps upstream service should hit 55Mbps with the nudge provided by Powerboost, a technology that boosts speeds for the first few moments of a download.

Cox first unveiled the faster service last month in Lafayette, Louisiana. Lafayette is of course the site of a municipal fiber deployment Cox tried very hard to shut down. They failed, and the city now provides standalone symmetrical tiers of 10Mbps, 30Mbps and 50Mbps for $28.95, $44.95 and $57.95 respectively. In Lafayette, Cox offers their 50Mbps Ultimate tier for $90 per month.

In the competitive hills of Northern Virginia, Cox is competing with Verizon, who offers a 50Mbps FiOS tier for $94.50 a month unbundled. That price point creeps higher in less competitive markets, where Verizon offers 50Mbps for up to $145 per month. Comcast offers their own DOCSIS 3.0 "Extreme 50" tier for $139.95. Cablevision became the industry price per bit leader last week by unveiling a new 101Mbps tier for $99 per month.

As for Cox, the company says the new tier is "the gold standard for speed and reliability." "Our customers have said they want an online experience that allows them to do more, do it faster and on a network they trust," says Cox Northern Virginia Senior VP Janet Barnard. "DOCSIS 3.0 lets them do that."

Well, sort of. Cox's new speed comes with a few caveats consumers will want to be made aware of. Cox announced in January they were beta testing a new throttling system that takes aim at specific protocols -- specifically P2P FTP, and other "non-time sensitive" file protocols. The company is also the only ISP we know of that employs a "three strikes" rule that boots repeated copyright violators from the Cox network.

Cox says they plan to offer the faster 50Mbps tier to "several" Cox markets by the end of 2009, and to more than two-thirds of the company's footprint in 2010. For most cable operators, the determination of where they deploy DOCSIS 3.0 is being determined by Verizon FiOS. Given the limited deployment of FiOS nationally, and the fact that the majority of customers are perfectly happy with slower speeds (20Mbps seems to be the sweet spot right now), most carriers aren't exactly chomping at the bit to get DOCSIS 3.0 into the field.