Cablevision set to roll out 100Mbps broadband, fastest in U.S.

For $99 a month, subscribers of New York-based Cablevision will be able to get broadband access fast enough to download an entire HD movie in just 10 minutes—all without bandwidth caps, by the way.

That's the scoop from Reuters, which reports that Cablevision (which services about 4.7 million New York/Long Island-area households) is also planning on doubling its Wi-Fi Internet access speeds to 3Mbps.

The high-speed rollout is slated to begin on May 11, according to Reuters, and the super-fast 100Mbps download speeds—courtesy of a new technology called DOCSIS 3.0, which effectively quadruples the amount of bandwidth that can be delivered through cable—will be the fastest available in the country, easily besting the 50Mbps-range services offered by the likes of Verizon FiOS, Charter, and Comcast.

Of course, the big question (as the Reuters story points out) is whether subscribers will be willing to shell out a C-note per month for 100Mbps broadband service. (I for one would be interested; unfortunately, I don't get Cablevision in my neighborhood, just Time Warner Cable.)

And it's worth noting that while a 100Mbps connection is, indeed, capable of downloading an HD feature film in 10 minutes, the bottleneck often lies with the streaming video provider (such as Apple or Xbox Live, both of which have a tendency to slow to a trickle during peak demand times) rather than your home broadband connection.

That said, I applaud Cablevision for actually offering its subscribers the option of bleeding-edge service for their money—all without setting hard-and-fast caps for bandwidth usage (more on that here).

Compare that to Time Warner Cable, which had been poised to essentially charge customers more for less with its restrictive bandwidth metering proposals. Those plans are currently on the back burner—for now, anyway.

So, what do you think: Anyone interested in 100Mbps download speeds (along with 15Mbps uploads) for $99 a month?

Related:
Cablevision rolls out super-fast Internet access [Reuters]