Cablevision To Offer 101 Mbps Down, No Caps 375
nandemoari alerts us to news over at DSLReports that Cablevision will be offering subscribers 101-Mbps download service, a new US record. That's fast enough to download an HD movie in less than 10 minutes. The package, known as "Ultra," will launch on May 11 and will cost $99.95 a month. Upload speed is 15 Mbps and there are no monthly limits. Cablevision is also doubling the speed of its Wi-Fi service, which is available free to subscribers using hotspots across the Northeast. "...the company will be launching a new 'Ultra' tier on May 11. The new tier features speeds of 101Mbps downstream and 15Mbps upstream for $99.95 a month. That's an unprecedented amount of speed at an unprecedented price, suggesting that Cablevision just took the gloves off in their fight against Verizon FiOS. ... Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella confirmed for me that the $99.95 price is unbundled, and the new tier does not come with any kind of a usage cap or overage fees."
The explicitly avoided topic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two choices (Score:3, Insightful)
Either they're really going to regret promising that, or they're hiding some dirty little secret...
Correction... (Score:5, Insightful)
(As always...) there you go, fixed that for you.
Re:Yes, BUT! (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe he's just in it for the stats?
Great for botnets (Score:5, Insightful)
The last Cablevision subscriber I saw was a friend who had a Windows machine plugged in directly into the small cable modem, with a world-routable IP address. The machine was idle and the modem was blinking constantly during the whole time I was there, without any one logged it. Needless to say, my friend complained his machine was "starting to get slow". Translation: the machine was pwnd.
I shudder at the thought of having botnets take hold of vulneratble machines sitting on 100 Mbit/s pipes.
Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:...And then Time Warner will come... (Score:3, Insightful)
Time Warner has no influence over Cablevision, other than being "buddy buddy" with them.
Each has their own monopoly over their given geographic area. In fact, the big boys (and CV is DEFINATELY one of them, not a "little guy" by ANY means!) have their own effective cartel with CableLabs.
Re:Funny how behind the US is (Score:2, Insightful)
At some point the broadband in the U.S. will pass you up but, it will be in the future when yours is aging.
Re:The explicitly avoided topic... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comcast's approach (bogus RST injection) was even nastier in some ways, since it would outright kill a connection instead of slowing it down. If you were using a protocol that didn't resume partial uploads (like Lotus Notes) you were completely screwed.
At least with CV's approach, you could still upload stuff, it just took forever because it was so slow.
In both cases, the companies never acknowledged that they engaged in such practices, at least not until quite a while after the public outcry.
If it's for the stats (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you want Baseball.
Re:Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
"UP TO" means that they're advertising that speed, but their TOS will say that they don't guarantee that you'll actually get that. I have found with the various ISPs I've had that download is usually 75-90% what they advertise and upload is 40-60%, which is pretty galling, considering I would much more prefer a faster upload than download.
Now if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if they offered this in the SF Bay area and had static IPs I'd get it.
Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a marketing thing, I think.
Re:Funny how behind the US is (Score:3, Insightful)
Water isn't free. You pay for clean water via your taxes and/or water bill. Or you buy it bottled.
Isn't it amazing how some people act like water falls free from the sky.
I know that was said as a joke, but in many communities around the country a normal property owner may not have rights to the surface water on their land (including rainfall).
NYC (Score:3, Insightful)
No change for NYC (At lease where you'd want to live...)
You're still stuck with Time Warner for cable.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/images/charts/franchise_territories.jpg [nyc.gov]
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:100 bucks!?!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do people complain about the cost of premium services? That's like complaining about the price of a Cadillac or Viper. If you don't value 100Mbit home service, buy something cheaper.
Re:Cablevision "expresslink" ISP caching (Score:5, Insightful)
They'd be smart to install intelligent caching boxes at local routing points to save themselves bandwidth. Proxy caches are a good thing for the Internet, and websites that don't work with them are both rare and broken.
In Sweden... (Score:2, Insightful)
...I have a 100/100 Mbps connection with no limits at a monthly cost of $21/month. That includes up to 1 GB of complementary web hosting (albeit with a crappy url) and some other small goodies. Seeing costs the like of ~$100/month just makes me laugh, really, since us Swedes paid about $25 for 100/100 Mbps connections ten years ago.
What about the rest of us? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't get cable or DSL where I am, I'm 1/3 of a mile from the nearest cable box and still can't get comcast to extend the line to our neighborhood!
How about settling on 3Mb/s to all of us instead of 100Mb/s to some and 56Kb/s to the rest of us?
How did the UK force BT to offer these services to everyone and the US can't be bothered?
Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:4, Insightful)
To add to that, I live in southern Nassau county (between Suffolk and Queens, for you non-Long Islanders), and the downstream bandwidth I see hovers around 8 megabits on a "15" megabit plan, although I've seen it jump significantly higher on occasion. It's hard to tell when the limiting factor is the last mile or the remote server capping me.
I don't torrent but I've heard a lot of complaints from a friend who's been hit by bandwidth caps in the past. They do wildcard DNS ad serving by default but you can opt out. I can't remember the last time service has gone down, although I don't live at home anymore (I'm at college in Suffolk).
Verizon's hanging around the area, trying to spread FIOS as much as possible. Compared with the basic Optimum Online plan, my feeling is that FIOS is probably technically superior, but Cablevison does a better job of rewarding (or at least not pissing off) their customers than a company like Verizon.