I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you want to get a Manhattan resident’s blood boiling, your best bet is to mention Time Warner Cable. In addition to the horrid billing and customer service problems experienced by TWC customers all over the country, New York customers will claim they are plagued by frequent and unexplained outages and bouts of cripplingly slow download speeds. From what we gather, things aren’t much better for TWC customers in L.A.

That’s why the company — currently the subject of much takeover buzz — says it will spend about $3.8 billion a year for the next three years on improvements to its entire network, but especially in its two largest markets.

“We’ll triple Internet speeds for customers with our most popular tiers of service, add more community WiFi, dramatically improve the TV product and, perhaps most importantly, we’ll set a high bar in our industry for differentiated, exceptional customer service,” TWC CEO Rob Marcus explained to analysts, presumably with a straight face (which is why he gets paid the big bucks).

The L.A. Times reports that TWC will be spending some of that money to finally convert all Southern California customers over to its digital network. TWC says that this change will ultimately improve speeds for all customers (plus result in more monthly revenue from set-top boxes from all those customers who don’t currently pay for one).

NYC and L.A. customers will also be the first to get their hands on something TWC calls “TWC Maxx,” which has to be extra awesome because it’s not just “Max,” it’s “Maxx!”

An explanation from the company:

“[T]he first phase of this initiative in NYC and L.A. will include a stringent review and upgrade of every network connection site (referred to as hubs) to ensure optimum service levels are delivered to every neighborhood. Each TWC hub serves thousands of customers with phone, video and data services. The first four hubs to receive upgrades are those that service customers in West Hollywood and Costa Mesa in California, and portions of Woodside (in Queens) and Staten Island in New York. The Company will complete its transformation of the customer experience in both major markets by year-end.

After all these upgrades are made, here’s how TWC says the current Internet tiers will improve (click for full size):

The company also plans to compete with Netflix and other streaming services by boosting its on-demand selection to 75,000 hours of content. TWC says the next generation of set-top box will hold up to 12 times what customers currently get and will let them record up to six shows at once.

Meanwhile, TWC lost another 217,000 video subscribers mostly tied to its idiotic decision to black out CBS last summer, a standoff that resulted in no benefit to TWC or its customers.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.