Cablevision floats multi-state 100Mbps Wi-Fi plan

Muni Wi-Fi may be dead, but what about statewide Wi-Fi? Sounds crazy, but Cablevision is looking at this from a purely commercial perspective: Subscribers in its wired Internet service area (covering New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) may soon have the option of connecting to a Wi-Fi based alternative that offers Internet, phone, and TV service, all sans cables.

The company is spending $300 million to roll out the service across the three states and hopes to finish the work by 2010. And speeds would be substantially faster than anything cable has to offer: 100Mbps is the figure being floated, thanks to so-called DOCSIS upgrades to its backbone network. Wish I could sign up (though pricing has not yet been publicized).

Such news must be at least a little troubling for Sprint and Clearwire. I met with Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff last week for the lowdown on what's new with WiMax: The company is in the midst of its WiMax rollout now, which will provide wireless data service to some 60 to 80 million people in its coverage area by the end of 2009. WiMax currently offers average performance rates of about 6.5Mbps, which is far faster than 3G networks as well as most wired data networks, but which would be distantly eclipsed by a wide-ranging Wi-Fi installation.

Of course, technologies like WiMax offer the possibility of national access at those speeds, while the Cablevision plan would be limited to its relatively small existing service area and wouldn't be a good solution for frequent travelers who only want to pay for one type of access. On the other hand, WiMax will be limited to major metro areas for the foreseeable future, so it isn't without some challenges, too.

Another problem may be waiting in the wings, and that's whether Wi-Fi, designed for just a few people to use in one area at a time, can really scale to such reaches. Vendors frequently report trouble with wireless LANs where too many people try to access the network at once. But a single college dorm is one thing. Manhattan is something entirely else. New York state yet another. I hope Cablevision has some nifty tricks up its digital sleeves, because I'd love to see this plan take off.