Cablevision Goes Wireless
17 May 2008- Wi-Fi, Not WiMAX
Cablevision will spend over $300 million to build a network of Wi-Fi hot spots primarily across its footprint on Long Island, NY but also in others parts of the New York City market. The service will be free to Cablevision customers.
The company has already begun the rollout and expects to be finished in two years.
Cablevision, together with Time Warner Cable, is at the epicenter of the market that Verizon has targeted for its fiber optic delivered FiOS pay-TV and broadband service. Verizon can bundle mobile phone and mobile broadband service from its Verizon Wireless service. Cablevision, like most US cablecos, has no wireless service to offer.
Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge says the wireless broadband service will help it keep customers. “Creating this value proposition for customers will enhance our service and cement our relationship with our customers for the long haul,” Rutledge told analysts this week.
US cable TV companies clearly think they need at the very least wireless broadband to compete with the telcos, if not a full-blown mobile phone service. Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House have invested in Clearwire for the specific purpose of getting access to Clearwire’s WiMAX wireless broadband network. Cox, the third largest US cableco, says it’ll use the spectrum it recently acquired in a US government auction to provide some sort of as yet unspecified wireless network to consumers in its footprint.
Wi-Fi hotspots are popular with people that move around and use laptops to connect to the Net as well as owners of mobile phones (iPhones) and portable media players (iPod touches) that have built-in Wi-Fi. AT&T, the exclusive US iPhone distributor, is building a nationwide archipelago of Wi-Fi hotspots. It’ll have 17,000 locations once it gets its gear in every Starbucks, which is expected to happen by year-end.
Lest we forget, Wi-Fi has not proven technologically sound when it comes to covering large areas. The citywide Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia that shut down this week is but one of many that have gone dark. Wi-Fi is good in specific hot spots like at the home or a coffee shop but is totally not a mobile solution. For that a technology like WiMAX should be better. It offers higher speeds, security and the ability to keep devices connected as they are moved around - three characteristics that Wi-Fi lacks, at least in its current iteration.
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