Time Warner Cable is quietly demonstrating DOCSIS 3.0 broadband connectivity of 290 Mbps downstream and 90 Mbps upstream in its booth at The Cable Show.

“This is the first time these speeds have been shown outside of labs,” said a TWC insider.

The demonstration uses an Arris CMTS and cable modems from both Arris and Motorola. The demo is live, connected to TWC’s Los Angeles headend.

The company is achieving the speeds using 8 x 4 channel bonding. With TWC’s top tier rated at 50/5, the demo shows speed increases of greater than fivefold on the downstream and 18-fold on the upstream.

The TWC engineer compared the MSO’s achievement with the 300 Mbps that Bell Labs demonstrated on DSL recently.

“What they’ve got is something in the lab that goes 10 feet, and what we’re showing is live from our headend 22 miles away. We can compete with DOCSIS,” he observed.