In a project with an estimated price tag of $300 million, Cablevision began activating its Optimum Wi-Fi last year and expects to complete the deployment across its entire service area in early 2010. The company reports customers have now accessed the Web more than 1 million times using their WiFi network.
Cablevision operates Wi-Fi hot spots in commercial and high-traffic locations across its Long Island, Connecticut and Westchester/Dutchess service areas, in Bergen and Passaic counties in New Jersey, and at hundreds of commuter rail stations across the New York metropolitan area. The service is available to Optimum Online broadband subscribers for no additional charge.
Optimum WiFi has helped make Cablevision’s high-speed Internet service the most highly-penetrated in the nation, with approximately 2.5 million customers and a broadband market share exceeding 70 percent.
Meanwhile, Comcast and Time-Warner, have invested some $1.5 billion in Mobile WiMAX in an effort to coral the “quad play” of voice, video, data and wireless.
To help cable operators deliver Mobile WiMAX, BelAir Networks this week announced the BelAir100SX, the industry’s first dual mode WiMAX/WiFi wireless node optimized for deployment on existing cable infrastructure.
BelAir Networks strand-mounted WiFi nodes are optimized for cable operators and is used by Cablevision. The new BelAir100SX leverages the company’s modular architecture to combine the functions of a mobile WiMAX 802.16e base station, a WiFi access point, and a DOCSIS cable modem in one compact, ruggedized product.
“Half of the iPhone’s traffic travels on Wi-Fi. What that tells you is that [AT&T's] network can’t handle it,” said Craig McCaw at CTIA today. According to Robert Dotson, CEO of T-Mobile USA, the average G1 owner consumes 50 times the data of the average voice-centric phone user with half of G1 customers accessing Wi-Fi on a daily basis.
Clearwire and its partners plan on reaching half the U.S. population by the end of 2010, or 120 million people. Faster and cheaper.
