3:05 PM -- RCN Corp. chief Peter Aquino got a bit more mileage out of the company's pre-launch of Docsis 3.0, telling folks at the Deutsche Bank Securities confab Tuesday that deployments of a 50 Mbit/s (downstream) tier in New York and Boston will be starting up within a couple of months, "if not weeks."

RCN identified those two cities as the first to get wideband from the overbuilder, but it has not dislosed an exact launch date. (See RCN Claims to Chase Competitors in Wideband .)

RCN, however, sees the Docsis 3.0 market developing in much the same way Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) COO Tom Rutledge suggested it would last week when Cablevision posted its fourth-quarter numbers: Expect wideband to be most attractive to small business customers in the early going. (See Cablevision Says to Watch for Wideband.)

"I think that's where we can get our bang for the buck," Aquino said of the SMB opportunity. According to One Touch Intelligence 's writeup, RCN is growing more open to the idea of shedding its properties in eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Cable Digital News