Cablevision has increased speeds of its residential and commercial broadband service as the fight between cable operators and phone companies intensifies, CNET News reported.
The cable operator, which serves parts of the New York City region, announced last week that it would sell new premium broadband services with download speeds of 30Mb/s and 50Mb/s to its residential customers. The company would also increase download speeds on its basic service from 10- to 15Mb/s at no additional charge to customers.
Cablevision’s new speeds come just as Verizon Communications starts rolling out its new FiOS in parts of Cablevision’s region. Verizon’s FiOS network provides enough capacity to allow the company to scale its high-speed Internet service up to 100Mb/s in addition to providing television and phone service over the same pipe.
Verizon has spent billions of dollars in the past year digging up streets to lay the new fiber network in neighborhoods in half of the states where it provides local phone service. The base plan for FiOS offers download speeds of up to 5Mb/s, with an upload speed of 2Mb/s for $39.95. For $49.95, consumers can get download speeds up to 15Mb/s, and for $199.95, users can download at 30Mb/s and upload at 5Mb/s.
Cablevision charges $49.95 for its basic Optimum Online broadband service, and it offers a $5 discount for customers that subscribe to both its high-speed Internet and cable services. New broadband customers can get the service for as little as $29.95 per month for a limited time.
Cablevision has not disclosed the price of its 50Mb/s service, which also offers 50Mb/s of upstream capacity. The 30Mb/s service, which offers 2Mb/s upstream, will cost an extra $14.95 per month, or $9.95 more for customers who also have a voice over Internet protocol phone line. Cablevision said the service would be available to all of its customers throughout its network by the middle of 2006.
