I never thought I would say this: right now I wouldn’t mind living in Long Island. Why? Because I would have access to Cablevision’s Optimum Online cable modem service which will offer a standard downstream bandwidth of 15 megabits per second, with no additional charge to current 1.52 million Optimum customers. That makes it the best offer amongst all MSOs for now, and perhaps the only one near close to Verizon’s FIOS service. I am pretty sure this is going to cause a lot of indigestion amongst incumbents who are offering trickles-as-broadband.
There is a battle raging right now in Long Island over who can offer the most bandwidth and speeds to consumers. Expect this scenario to repeat itself all over the country as cable carriers try and wrestle with the phone companies. Cablevision is also offering two premium bandwidth tiers – 30 megabits per second and 50 megabits per second – by using technology from Narad Networks, a company I have written in the past. The premium offerings are called Optimum Online Boost (speeds of up to 30 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream,) and Optimum Online Ultra, offering symmetrical data connections of up to 50 Mbps upstream and downstream. Boost will cost an extra $14.95 per month, or $9.95 for those who buy company’s VoIP phone service. Photo via Flickr
Only $15 extra for 50Mbps up/down? Insane. It’d be great if something like this was available in my area.
Between you and Tom Keating – http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/technology-and-science/cablevision-high-speed-internet-upgrade.asp – who also wrote about the Cablevision story this morning, you’re both making me want to move to the Northeast to be in CV’s footprint! So make that the three of us!
I used to have Verizon FiOS when I was in Lewisville, TX and it was F%#%#%#%$ awesome!! Vonage + FiOS was unbeatable.
Alas, moving to the Northwest, to an area where Qwest is a monopoly and the cable players haven’t made in-roads, I have to suffer through their dial-speed like 1.5 MBps that works at a max of 184kbps any given day.
Once in a while you hear something from cableco’s using Narad Networks’technology. Can someone explain how their technology works and, more interesting, which active components in the network should be replaced and what is the maximum looplenght? Higher frequencies are vulnerable to noise. Finally, I’d like to know how they realize QoS in these shared networks (time division multiplexing?
Axel, if you are offering a “dumb pipe” service there is no need for traditional QOS. You just need to implement some basic fairness algorithms to keep high usage users from clogging the pipe, as it were. Throw some packet prioritization on top of that and your own VoIP is going to outperform Vonage et al, justifying a small price premium. Remember, this is packets, not the circuit switched world.
[But] Ain’t competition wonderful? The game of chicken has finally been declared, anew. Cable has returned Verizon’s serve and put the ball right back in FTTP court. Both providers know by now, of course, that scant few users will have cause, or an application that can, push those links to the limits being quoted. At least not anytime soon. At present, the need for super high speeds over cable doesn’t exist to the same extent that it does for a SBC’s FTTN platform, or a BLS’ intermediate-range FTTC, say, because the cable operator has the advantage of having its video supported over the analog portion of the HFC plant. So, the CM data rate is independent of video. FTTN and FTTC (even PON-based FTTH), on the other hand, must support all three of the so-called “plays”, i.e., Voice, Video, AND high-speed Internet access, over the same 12-to-24 Mb/s (depending on distance), without the benefit of video being supported by a separate, analog cable plant. So, 50 Mb/s down of cable modem is not the same as 50 Mb/s down of FTTx.
from: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21864936
ps – Actually, Om, LI isn’t such a bad place to live “on”, even without the soon-to-be IMS-infected, “fat-wasteband” pipes – w/thanks to Fred Goldstein who coined the phrase- supplied by the incumbents 😉
Will the current Internet as it’s made now actually let you make a true 50 Mbps connection with another computer system? I have 5 Mbps through my cable modem, but I rarely ever download any single file at speeds faster than 1 Mbps, if that. Or is this just about making multiple connections through the same pipe?
I work for cablevision and yes we do offer the Ultra service but its a bit pricy… I only have to pay 50$ a month for it (when it gets to my area shortly)
For those of you who would like to get the ultra this service should be available in MANY areas in the northeast as soon as this time next year. It costs more money to create the access points for this service then it would cost for 20 customers to pay the 125$ a month, for an entire year. But with how fast we are growing it will be no time at all for us to move on to other cities across the nation.