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Cablevision To Offer 101 Mbps Down, No Caps 375

Posted by kdawson from the like-a-drug dept.
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."
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Cablevision To Offer 101 Mbps Down, No Caps More

Cablevision To Offer 101 Mbps Down, No Caps

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  • Starting to pack my things... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nschubach ( 922175 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:40PM (#27747925) Journal

    Now I need to find a town with Cablevision service to move to...

    • Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:48PM (#27748027) Homepage Journal

      I had my card in hand, looking for the local number to switch here in Dallas, but the story doesn't point out that they're only located in the Tri-State (NJ-NY-CT) area. Bummer. Cablevision, do you hear me?

    • Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bee-17 ( 893779 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:52PM (#27748099)
      Before you do, ask how much bandwidth Cablevision provisions to serve each neighborhood. A 100 Mbps last-mile connection isn't worth didly-squat if the CMTS head-end only has a 155 Mbps uplink. Even a gig uplink is only enough for about 80 customers, given typical 8:1 oversubscription. Many ISP's don't mind 100:1 oversubscription or worse!

      • Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @01:21PM (#27748537)

        I live in central jersey and I pay an extra $10 a month for their 30/5 plan right now. I can tell you that anytime I run a speed test I come in right around 27-30/5 regardless of when I run it. Cablevision's normal plan is 15/2 and most of the people who's houses I have been to can always hit that speed regardless when it is.

        • I hope they are ready to go national, because they just made a plan that everyone around the country would love to have.

          Any bets on if comcast/TWC/etc will raise the bar as a result (albeit unlikely)?

          • "I hope they are ready to go national, because they just made a plan that everyone around the country would love to have. Any bets on if comcast/TWC/etc will raise the bar as a result (albeit unlikely)? "

            Only if in most cities they change the laws/regulations/contracts in place, and allow other companies like Cablevision to come in and compete....sadly.

      • Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Targon ( 17348 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @02:10PM (#27749277)

        I live in Cablevision territory, and will explain just how good the service is. Now, I am out on the east end of Long Island, NY in a fairly normal residential neighborhood. What I see here is around 12 megabit down, 384k up. This is with the theoretical maximum of 15 megabit down on the normal Optimum Online service.

        From what I have gathered by talking to Cablevision techs, the "Boost" package basically doubles the speeds, so you get a 30 megabit down with no caps, not sure on the upload speed. They also run the Boost service on a different frequency, so if you have a lot of people in the neighborhood with the regular service and they are sucking up the bandwidth, Boost customers will not get slowed down. Cablevision, at least out here, has plenty of bandwidth to handle providing the bandwidth. In addition to this, Cablevision has also been offering fiber optic connections up closer to New York City called Lightpath. While it is a business class offering, the fact that they have the bandwidth to offer it shows they can handle the data demand.

        A big part of a new offering like this is the number of customers in an area that they expect will be using the service, but also if they are doing equipment upgrades. Fiber cables are fiber cables(for the most part), but the equipment used to push the data through those fiber cables is the limiting factor. If they upgrade that equipment, they could in theory have a jump in the bandwidth for a fairly low amount of labor.

        Things in different areas COULD be different, but for the entire eastern half of Suffolk County, I have NEVER seen customers getting less than 8 megabit down with their Optimum Online service, except when there is a wiring issue in the house or neighborhood(which repair service can often fix in a few days).

        • Re:Starting to pack my things... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Workaphobia ( 931620 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @05:05PM (#27752093) Journal

          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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      I have had 100Mbps for years now... That single megabit won't make any difference.

    • Now I need to find a town with Cablevision service to move to...

      Cablevision services metro New York.

      4.7 million residential customers. 600,000 businesses.

      No where else in the U.S. - no where else in the Western Hemisphere - will you find so tightly compacted and rich a market.

      Cablevision owns Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the Ziegfield Theater and other legendary houses.

      Cablevision owns MSG, MSG Plus, Fuse, American Movie Classics, The Independent Film Channel, The Sundance Channel and

  • The explicitly avoided topic... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pahalial ( 580781 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:43PM (#27747961)
    Traffic shaping! It's fine if they do or don't do it, but will companies PLEASE start being up-front about it? Put as much spin on the damn thing as you want, just at least mention it if you're doing it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

      Yeah. Cablevision is notorious for some shady "stealth capping" policies, or at least was back in 2003-2004.

      If you used too much of your upload bandwith (with "too much" being undocumented to the customer), you would have your upstream cap lowered to 150 kilobits/sec (from something like 1.5 Mbits) without any notice.

      • Re:The explicitly avoided topic... (Score:5, Informative)

        by MeanMF ( 631837 ) * on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:53PM (#27748111) Homepage
        Yeah they used to do that and it was really annoying since they wouldn't tell you what was acceptible. But they dropped that practice years ago, and the upload speed for their least expensive service is now 2Mbps.

      • Yeah. Cablevision is notorious for some shady "stealth capping" policies

        Ha. Are we talking about Cablevision here or Comcast?

        • Re:The explicitly avoided topic... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7@@@cornell...edu> on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @01:07PM (#27748317) Homepage

          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.

        • I think you meant Charter, they had the same problem where there was some sort of limit on upstream, but they wouldn't tell anyone what it actually was.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MeanMF ( 631837 ) *
      As far as I can tell, the only traffic shaping they do is to prioritize VoIP traffic for their Optimum Voice service. That's not to say that the bandwidth is always constant... During peak hours it's not uncommon for download speeds to drop by 30-50% depending on where you live, but that's likely more of an oversubscription problem than them doing any kind of traffic shaping.

    • Aslong as the 'spin' isn't just flat out lies: virgin [virginmedia.com] simply lie here, the reality of being on virgin is if
      1) you have unencrypted torrents
      2) you upload more than 10,25,45 kb/s (yes there are 3 distinct caps even though they claim 2) for more than a few minutes
      3) all your traffic slowed (not 75% but 100% of pings to Google will take >3s)
      So they have two pages on their site explaining what they do and how they do it, no mention of phorm and only a hint of truth between both of them.

  • Yes, BUT! (Score:4, Funny)

    by C_Kode ( 102755 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:44PM (#27747967) Journal

    They still don't offer NFL Network so, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!

  • Two choices (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pathological liar ( 659969 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:46PM (#27747989)

    Either they're really going to regret promising that, or they're hiding some dirty little secret...

    • Either they're really going to regret promising that, or they're hiding some dirty little secret...

      At a minimum, read the fine print.

    • Or maybe they have deals with content providers for something, who knows why they are offering the service, but they won't regret it. I read a recent analysis of TWC's SEC report and it basically states that TWCs cost of providing broadband, including service, repair, cable modems, everything was $5 per broadband customer per month. Buying programming from the networks is in the $30 a month range. Which has the biggest profit margin. If you cut your TV part of your service and get the $99 a month system, e

  • DOCSIS 3.0 (Score:5, Informative)

    by TehCable ( 1351775 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:47PM (#27747997)
    Don't get ready to move across the country for this service just yet. This is just the beginning. DOCSIS 3.0 is the new standard that supports bonding together traditional cable modem channels to support these kinds of speeds, and the equipment that supports it is currently in late development stages and is being tested by all of the major cable operators. You are going to see a lot more announcements like this one over the next few years, possibly in your area.

    • Re:DOCSIS 3.0 (Score:5, Informative)

      by sarahbau ( 692647 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:53PM (#27748109)

      Not likely. In areas where there is no competition for broadband (like RTP for example), the cable companies have no incentive to increase bandwidth, and have shown over the last 10+ years that they will keep bandwidth at a minimum. Time Warner is really the only option here in Raleigh, NC. There are a few pockets that can get DSL, but there is no FTTH. The fastest DSL here, if you can get it, is 6Mbps, so Time Warner offers 7Mbps down/384 up for $50 a month. I don't see that increasing until there's some competition. Time Warner is currently trying to push a bill through in NC that makes it so cities can't even provide their own broadband to compete with them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by idiotnot ( 302133 )

      Yes, but are they rolling full IPv6 support, too? I couldn't care less about 100mbit speeds if I'm so NATted that most applications where I could make use of it don't work

  • Correction... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Foolicious ( 895952 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:48PM (#27748015)

    Upload speed is 15 Mbps and there are no posted and well-defined monthly limits for now.

    (As always...) there you go, fixed that for you.

    • From TFA:

      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.

      I realize it's hard to take these people at their word, but given the recent PR disasters, it's hard to imagine another big telco/cable company making the same mistakes.

  • Great for botnets (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ericferris ( 1087061 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:51PM (#27748077) Homepage

    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: (Score:2)

      by db32 ( 862117 )
      This does raise an interesting issue. As the price goes down and the bandwidth goes up there will eventually be a point where it would be profitable for botnet herders to subsidize infected machine connections. Like Netzero only a little more sinister.
    • Could have been time for the annual reinstall Windows routine. Windows loves to slow down for any and all reasons.

    • I shudder at the thought of having botnets take hold of vulneratble machines sitting on 100 Mbit/s pipes.

      Too late for that. Other countries have decent home internet speeds you know.. Not to mention US Universities with 100 Mbit or better dorm connections. Scanning bots for years have selectively gone after university address spaces and fast cable lines to get the best bang for their scans.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mikael ( 484 )

      My cable modem has four lights (power- always on, PC - blinks continuously, data - only blinks when data is coming down the pipe, cable - always on as long at the modem is connected to the network).

      I was curious about the data light continuously blinking and why packet received counters of my system were constantly increasing - seems that the cable network broadcasts IP WhoIS requests to find out each IP address. At 12 packets/second for 24 hours/day this seems to add up to a few Gigabytes/week.

  • Unpossible (Score:3, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:53PM (#27748105) Journal

    We've already had this discussion. A company improving their service or product offerings by impetus of competition is a fiction. If the government doesn't force them, subsidize it or directly provide it, it won't happen. Period, the end.

    You may now commence sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA" until Congress or some other branch of government takes credit for this.

  • I know Verizon is exempt from any and all cases of domestic spying (which has kept me away from fIoS)

    Does anybody know Cablevision's deal with Congress?

  • Dubious speed claims (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KerberosKing ( 801657 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @12:58PM (#27748191)

    OK, so they double-bond cable modems, giving you twice the usual speed to your desktop. Then you get on the same clogged, shared network as the rest of your neighborhood, and hope they have enough bandwidth upstream to handle the potential doubling of clients (from double-bonding). In a dense residential area (urban apartment buildings for example), I have never seen a cable company actually be able to back up their claims of speed, upload or download.

    To me, this sounds as bogus as the dual-bond 56K modems where you had to buy two phone-lines just for data, and then you would want one for voice, and heck maybe even a fourth for FAX.

    What's next, a seven-bladed razor?

  • Yay for Cablevision (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @01:05PM (#27748285)

    Now all we need is for Cablevision to drop the price by one order of magnitude. Then we can be competitive with South Korea!

    Oh, and for all of you in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, I hate you. I hate you from the depths of the Charter service area, in the midwest. Bastards.

  • 100 bucks!?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by maillemaker ( 924053 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @01:08PM (#27748329)

    A hundred bucks a month for internet service is insane. For that kind of money a customer service rep should come over every other week and give me a blow job.

    • Yeah, but with that kind of pipe(huh, huh), the HD porn streaming(huh, huh) from your PC will almost feel that real...

    • Re:100 bucks!?!?!? (Score:4, Funny)

      by melted keyboard ( 798559 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @01:27PM (#27748633)
      What a brilliant idea to improve customer loyalty! We will send over Joe at once.

      Your friendly Cablevision rep.

    • It's really not that much, especially if you're a company that would actually use a 100 Mbps down, 15Mbps up connection. Do you have any idea what it would cost to have a commercial DS3 line running 15Mbps symmetrical?

      Sure, this cable line probably doesn't offer the same level of service or uptime guarantee, but for a lot of people, it'd do the job.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MikeBabcock ( 65886 )

      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.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @01:21PM (#27748533)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I don't have any hard data for you, but I recently moved from Yonkers, NY to Brooklyn, NY and had to give up Cablevision for Time Warner.

    With Cablevision, I could regularly pull down 5-7 MBytes/sec down and had at least 250 Kbytes/sec up. It was paradise!

    Of course, now that I have time warner, my max upstream is a whopping 60 Kbytes/sec, and my downstream never goes above 1 Mbyte/sec.

    Granted, Yonkers is only about a tenth of the size of Brooklyn population-wise, but everyone else I knew in Westchester count

  • I pay $89.95 now for 1.5/512 here on the East Coast in CT, and that's the best deal there is, a few miles from the CO. There's no other game in town :(

    If you know a place where I can get faster speeds for less (or the same!), sign me up!

  • I care more about getting 10Mb for $40/mo. There is no way I'm forking over $1200/year for internet. I have no use for that kind of bandwidth, way overkill for me, and I'd imagine most people.
  • When I had them 3 years ago, they were blocking incoming port 80 and 25, do they still do that? It was incredibly annoying.

  • Now if... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ericdano ( 113424 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @01:52PM (#27749021) Homepage

    Now if they offered this in the SF Bay area and had static IPs I'd get it.

  • Okay,

    I admit I'm as interested as the next guy in having the fastest connection as the next guy, but there is another piece to the equation that most people seem to care less about.

    How much does it cost the end user.

    I'm recently tired of being dealing with TWC and am axing Cable and Internet from them. Just the internet piece cost ~$50 a month for 10Mb/350Kb connection.
    For $30 I'm replacing it DSL from Verizon for a 3Mb/750Kb connection (that has been much more reliable in the short time I've had it).

    Yeah,

  • NYC (Score:3, Insightful)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @02:12PM (#27749313) Journal

    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]

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