Some Thoughts on Cablevision's 101 Mbps Speed
Verizon first demonstrated the ability to deliver 100 Mbps to the home over our FiOS system nearly two years ago. Now Cablevision is offering that speed - oh, yeah, 101 Mbps — over its DOCSIS cable system, it claims, to customers across its footprint in the New York area.
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon's post lands at the end of a combative month for the carrier: Ivan Seidenberg had already publicly mocked Sprint and discussed LTE-capable iPhones in a Wall Street Journal interview earlier in April 2009, so the jab at Cablevision fits an established posture. The substance behind it is that Verizon first demonstrated 100 Mbps delivery over FiOS nearly two years before Cablevision's claim, making the 101 Mbps DOCSIS tier read to Verizon as catch-up marketing rather than a technical leap.
First-order effects
- Cablevision gains a headline-speed advantage over FiOS in the New York area, claiming 101 Mbps to customers across its whole footprint where FiOS depends on neighborhood-by-neighborhood fiber build-out.
- Verizon responds with positioning rather than network changes, leaning on its earlier FiOS demonstration to argue the DOCSIS number is presentation, not capability.
Second-order effects
- The exchange pressures Verizon to accelerate FiOS marketing and availability in overlapping New York-area territories, since a rival can now advertise a higher number to households FiOS has not reached.
- It sets a precedent for DOCSIS operators like Cablevision to counter fiber messaging with footprint-wide speed tiers, pushing the rivalry toward whichever side controls the speed narrative rather than the underlying plant.
Third-order effects
- If cable and fiber keep trading record-speed announcements, competition in dense markets shifts from raw download figures toward price, reliability, and upload performance — dimensions where the technologies differ more honestly.
- Sustained gap between advertised peaks and delivered speeds invites consumer and regulatory scrutiny of how ISPs measure and market 'speed', a pattern the industry has seen whenever tiers outrun household demand.
The trend: Cable DOCSIS and fiber FiOS are locked in a headline-speed arms race in the New York market where each megabit announcement is as much competitive positioning as engineering.