11:45 AM -- RCN Corp. , a competitive cable "overbuilder," has been threatening to launch speedier Docsis 3.0 services for many moons now, but is evidently closing in on an actual product introduction. (See RCN Closing in on Wideband .)

"We are in the process of completing our testing and will begin our initial rollout sometime in the second quarter," RCN president and CEO Peter Aquino said on the company's first-quarter earnings call yesterday. (See RCN Posts Q1.) So RCN's got less than two months to live up to that.

Aquino has previously discussed offering a Docsis 3.0 tier that caps the downstream in the neighborhood of 50 Mbit/s, but he left some wiggle room for the company to deliver even faster speeds.

He said recent tests indicated that the "RCN network can deliver 100 megabits of download speed." And that's probably a big relief, considering that one of its competitors, Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC), is about to launch a tier that can produce bursts of 101 Mbit/s. (See Cablevision Debuts 101-Mbit/s Wideband Service.)

RCN has already revealed that it's starting to wire up its Boston and New York City systems for Docsis 3.0. (See RCN Boots Up Docsis 3.0.)

RCN has yet to respond to questions about what speeds and prices will grace its initial Docsis 3.0 offering. Its present high-end tier offers speeds of up to 20 Mbit/s downstream and 2 Mbit/s upstream.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Cable Digital News