Time Warner Cable says speed upgrade is starting and will be half complete by June

Time Warner Cable, which announced last fall that it would increase Internet speeds in the Kansas City area, said the upgrade is rolling out and will reach more than half its customers by the end of May.

The effort, called TWC Maxx, boosts service speeds without raising prices. Customers paying for a 15 megabits-per-second connection, for example, will be boosted to up to 50 megabits, and those paying for the current top service, at 100 megabits, will get up to 300 megabits instead.

Time Warner Cable, in a release Wednesday, said Lee’s Summit, Leavenworth and parts of Kansas City, Mo., were among the first areas for the upgrade. Customers will be notified, a company spokesman said, when the faster speeds are coming to their area. The company expects to have the whole metro area upgraded by fall.

The 300-megabit service will have roughly one third the speed of Google Fiber’s gigabit service and AT&T’s Gigapower service, but most American homes get by now on 10 to 15 megabits, and Time Warner’s current 15-megabit service is its most popular plan. Google Fiber first brought the superfast service to the Kansas City area, and AT&T this year started its gigabit service in several Johnson County cities.

This story was originally published April 29, 2015 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Time Warner Cable says speed upgrade is starting and will be half complete by June."