Cablevision announced they are planning a wideband roll out in their New York City metro market, where they compete directly with Verizon FiOS in many regions. The comments came from Tom Rutledge, COO of Cablevision who addressed the annual UBS Global and Media Communications Conference. Cablevision is a fierce competitor and has done an admirable job of meeting the FiOS competitive challenge head on. Their success is evidenced by industry leading penetration rates of triple play, broadband (50% of homes passed) and voice services (40% of homes passed). They are also in the process of building a mesh Wi-Fi network across their footprint, bringing a broadband wireless value add service to their subscribers.
Given their relative success against FiOS without DOCSIS 3.0, one has to imagine they’ll be even more effective with it. In addition, Rutledge discussed the advantage switched digital video (SDV) is bringing them, including providing more content options. It’s kind of ironic that Cablevision is leveraging SDV against a telcoTV competitor. It’s usually the opposite scenario. Looks like Verizon’s dogfight with Cablevision is about to get even more intense.
