Cablevision broadband customers are likely to see some new, faster upload speeds from the cable operator between now and sometime in July thanks to ongoing competition from Verizon FiOS.

Employees are informally telling Stop the Cap! the cable company has already dropped the “go-away” $300 installation fee for the company’s highest speed Ultra tiers and is set to formally introduce these packages this summer:

• Optimum Online Basic gets an upload speed boost. The 15Mbps download speed stays the same, but the 2Mbps upstream speed increases to 5Mbps;
• Optimum Online Boost will be retired. The 30/5Mbps service was Cablevision’s “turbo” tier, but now customers will be encouraged to consider faster packages;
• Optimum Online Boost Plus will be reintroduced as Optimum Ultra 50. The download speed remains 50Mbps, but upload speed is going up from 8Mbps to 25Mbps;
• Optimum Ultra also gets an upload speed boost. The 101/15Mbps tier becomes 101/35Mbps.

Courtesy: Sutheras

Cablevision did not get back to us in time to confirm the changes, but multiple sources have told us they are imminent.

Customers might appreciate the new speeds, but we’ve also heard from several readers Cablevision is now injecting ad banners into the browsing experience.

“I just started seeing advertisements for Optimum’s new website at the bottom of my screen, regardless of what web page I visit,” writes Dean Portew. “It just started happening and the ads disappear sometimes as quickly as they appear and Cablevision claims to not know anything about it.”

Reviewing the terms of service for Cablevision, the cable company doesn’t call it a web browser ad injection, they call it watermarking and to quote Det. Joe Fontana from the late Law & Order, “we’re authorized.”

32. Watermarking:

Subscriber understands and agrees that Cablevision may use “watermarking” techniques to message you about your account, Optimum services or for other communication purposes while using the Optimum Online Service. These “watermarks” may appear superimposed from time to time over portions of website pages you visit while using the Optimum Online Service, however, you understand and agree that this in no way indicates Cablevision’s approval of or responsibility for the content of such websites, which are solely the responsibility of the website operators and/or content providers. You further agree that you will not seek to hold Cablevision responsible in any way for any third party website content or the operation of any third party website accessed via the Optimum Online Service, or for the appearance of an Optimum “watermark” over a portion of any website.

A number of customers are not too happy about the intrusion, judging from an active discussion on DSL Reports’ Cablevision forum.

The people of Malta will soon have a choice between a cable broadband provider offering 250/20Mbps service or a fiber to the home network now under construction that will be capable of delivering gigabit broadband across the island — all without usage limits or speed throttles.

Starting this month, for €96 per month ($128), customers of Melita can buy a triple play package of phone, broadband, and cable television that includes a free upgrade to 250/20Mbps.

“The FibrePower 250 product leverages the investments Melita has made in the past years and further strengthens the company’s position as Malta’s fastest service provider,” said Michael Darmanin, director of marketing and corporate services at Melita. “We are seeing an exponential growth in demand for higher speeds and capacity. This is driven by more people connected in the same household or business, more devices and more consumption of video over the Internet.”

Darmanin added the Maltese people want fast and unlimited broadband service, and they will deliver it, starting at Tigne Point (Midi) and Fort Cambridge in Sliema. The service will then gradually be rolled out in other Maltese communities.

Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, has a population of around 450,000. The country has two major telecom companies: Melita which delivers cable service and GO, which delivers DSL service over the telephone network. Vodafone used to offer a now-discontinued WiMAX service across the island, which never had a significant market share.

The Maltese government made broadband expansion a national priority and set regulatory policies that would increase competition. But the government also insisted that telecom market improvements also benefit customers, and the country laid the foundation of its broadband policy on encouraging the development of a nationwide fiber to the home network.

The tradeoff: the government would deregulate the broadband marketplace and remove regulatory obstacles and unnecessary red tape governing pole usage and underground trenching, but in return providers must meet government objectives towards enhancing broadband speeds and price competition.

As a result, Melita has aggressively invested in cable broadband upgrades that have delivered broadband speeds faster than what most Americans and Canadians can buy from their cable providers. The cable operator plans to be among the earliest adopters of DOCSIS 3.1 which will support up to 10/1Gbps broadband speeds.

Not to be outdone, GO is rolling out its own fiber to the home network supporting interactive IPTV and faster broadband speeds. It will then be able to retire its DSL service, which now provides respectable Internet speeds up to 35Mbps.

We saved the only good part.

The best part of Cablevision’s latest ridiculous advertising campaign is the 12-month introductory price new subscribers will pay for phone, broadband, and television service: $84.95 a month. Not bad. The same cannot be said to the advertising agency that created this mess and the executives who approved it.

Richard Greenfield from BTIG Research, which covers Cablevision for Wall Street, isn’t impressed with Cablevision’s ads either:

We believe it is time for Cablevision to find a new ad agency, bring in some new marketing executives internally and seriously rethink what their consumer proposition is – going back to pitching the triple-play at an ever lower (now $84.95 price point) is not particularly compelling. Cablevision already has very high level of bundling of video, data and voice services across its customer base.  Given that, Cablevision should be devising a marketing approach to upsell existing customers, especially higher speed, higher ARPU broadband services (given their high margin).

Consumers concerned about the high cost of cable may not agree with Greenfield’s assessment. Paying $85 a month for a triple play package is a great deal, at least until it expires.

But we suspect a lot of consumers will never get that far through the ad, particularly when most viewers don’t pay that much attention to advertising in the first place.

Israel has decided its broadband future can no longer lie in the hands of one phone and one cable company, so the country is commissioning a nationwide fiber to the home broadband network that will be run as a public-private partnership, eventually reaching every home and business in the country.

This week, a quasi-governmental committee chose Sweden’s Viaeuropa to build the fiber network beginning as early as six months from now.

The network will support speeds up to 1Gbps and will be owned by the public utility Israel Electric Corporation and a consortium of private entities including Viaeuropa.

“All citizens of Israel will enjoy very fast Internet speeds, which could be a significant growth engine for Israel’s economy,” Roni Friedman, acting director of the Government Companies Authority in the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The new broadband service will deploy at least 25,000km of fiber, 70 percent purposely wired above-ground to reduce construction costs. By 2020, at least two-thirds of Israel will have access to the service. Israel’s electric utility will also contribute its 3,000km of previously deployed fiber cable to the venture.

Current consumer broadband speeds in Israel top out at around 100Mbps, but at a price. Broadband is still costly in Israel and most customers choose packages comparable to what Americans receive — 10-15Mbps service.

The Israeli government is concerned that a duopoly is suppressing Israel’s broadband standing, a condition considered intolerable as the country moves towards the 21st century digital economy.

Bezeq, the former state-owned phone company, has a 61 percent market share. It offers a fiber to the neighborhood service similar to AT&T U-verse, with broadband speeds in some homes up to 100Mbps. Cable company HOT has most of the rest of the market — 39 percent, and also offers up to 100Mbps service. Upstream speeds are much slower — 1-1.5Mbps maximum.

The new fiber network is capable of gigabit broadband speeds in both directions. The government hopes the competition will force both the phone and cable company to deliver improved services at lower prices. Bezeq has already begun fiber to the home service trials.

At least 88 percent of Dutch consumers are getting 50Mbps from their broadband provider, with the remaining 12 percent expected to get similar speed increases within two years.

A Telecompaper survey found nearly one-third of those consumers consider 50Mbps speeds necessary and almost the same number believe they will need 200Mbps service at some point in the future.

The Netherlands has benefited from a series of provider speed upgrades which have lifted connection speeds to 50Mbps or more.

Only 12% of Dutch consumers do not already receive 50Mbps broadband service. They will have it within two years according to Dutch telecom observers.

This year, enhanced competition from fiber broadband providers have forced cable companies to boost speeds. Some providers now offer tiers as fast as 100-200Mbps, mostly over fiber networks. Two-thirds of Dutch consumers believe fiber networks are necessary to get the best speed increases.

At the end of 2012 there were 1,450,000 households connected to fiber to the home service, 440,000 more than one year before. This is reflected in the growing number of consumers reporting they have fiber broadband, which has halted the growth in cable broadband’s market share.

The report ‘Dutch Consumer Connected 2013’ is based on the Telecompaper Consumer Panel, an online survey conducted between March and May 2013 among almost 15,000 consumers aged 12-80. The report also presents the results for 2010, 2011 and 2012.