Broadband Wars Part II: Cablevision Strikes Back

Joseph Laszlo | November 08, 2005, 02:37 PM

I wish I'd waited a few days on my last post, although now I get to play up the sequel aspect to the Battle For Long Island.

Cablevision has fired back at Verizon's FiOS initiative by officially ramping all Optimum Online customers up to a 15Mbps/2Mbps service by the middle of next year, free.

They're also doing something Cablevision's never done before (at least for the residential product): introducing a premium tier of broadband (30Mbps/2Mbps) for an additional $15/mo (or $10/mo if you get their VoIP service too). AND there's going to be a symmetrical 50Mbps service. SYMMETRICAL. Yipes. Impressive, even if they aren't discussing prices for that.

For the past couple of years, there's been a nice equilibrium in the broadband market, where cable had speed and DSL had price as main differentiators. Comes FiOS and Verizon has price and speed, and cable's forced to respond in kind. Head to head competition is tough (no one likes a price war), and it makes it all the more imperative to find things beyond price, speed, and the bundle as potential differentiators/loyalty builders. But for consumers, it's totally great.