Cablevision’s Wi-Fi hotspots have been seemingly cropping up like mushrooms after a hard rain. To wit: the New York City area cable operator has reached the 100,000 milestone for hotspots deployed in its tri-state footprint.
Cablevision started its Wi-Fi network build out in Long Island back in 2008 at estimated cost of $300 million. Since then Cablevision has been a leader among cable operators when it comes to Wi-Fi.
“More than one million of our broadband customers are using Optimum WiFi, providing them with the maximum connectivity that today’s digital lifestyle demands,” said Gemma Toner, Cablevision’s senior vice president of broadband product management. “Not only is Optimum WiFi incredibly fast and reliable, but our customers can connect their mobile devices to our hotspots when they are out and about to avoid the significant overage fees that are common to so many cellular data plans.”
In April, Cablevision announced it was up to 75,000 access points for its Optimum WiFi service, which is free to the company’s data subscribers. Cablevision followed that up with the news that New Jersey Transit’s board had approved its plan to offer Wi-Fi service on commuter trains. Earlier this summer, Optimum announced a partnership with New York City and Time Warner Cable to launch public Wi-Fi in 32 parks across the five boroughs.
Cablevision is also a member of CableWiFi alliance, which is a roaming agreement that also includes Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks that allows subscribers of the participating companies to access each other’s Wi-Fi networks. Through this initiative, Optimum customers traveling outside of the company’s footprint can connect to any CableWiFi hotspot using their Optimum ID and password.
It was announced at The Cable Show earlier this year that the CableWiFi collaboration had reached 150,000 hotspots, which made it the largest Wi-Fi network in the nation.
In March CableLabs announced that its Wi-Fi app, which it developed in conjunction with Cablevision and other member companies, had been licensed to mPortal in order to make the app more readily available to the cable industry.
