fiber to the home

DOCSIS 3.0 pushes U.S. broadband speed wars

Cablevision is planning to launch a 101/15 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 broadband service, which would be the fastest available in the U.S., at a price of $99 per month. The service will launch in NYC suburbs, an area where Verizon has gained strongly with FiOS.

It’s expected that cable will be pushing speed limits up this year, since DSL services can’t begin to match DOCSIS 3.0 performance, and only Verizon among the U.S. RBOCs has the regional demographics to make FTTH widely suitable. This could be good news for equipment vendors, because nothing other than competition is likely to provoke investment in wireline broadband given the low ROI.