Cablevision is joining the cable rate hike season festivities by increasing TV prices an average of 3.7% in 2010 for its 3.1 million customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Cablevision tries to ease the pain by telling reporters (Multichannel News, Dow Jones) that they haven't raised broadband or VoIP prices for seven consecutive years, and that the rate hikes are less than the 21% increase Verizon implemented for its legacy FiOS TV Premier Package earlier this month -- if that makes you feel any better. On a related note, Cablevision-owned Newsday later this month will be among a handful of news outlets to start charging customers for online news, but only if you aren't a Cablevision subscriber.

Back in April we reported how Cablevision was launching 101Mbps+ connection at a $99 price point (albeit with a whopping $300 activation fee), a first for the industry. Given the product is the marketing equivalent of a drop kick aimed squarely at Verizon's face, it wasn't surprising to see Verizon quickly downplay the offering, calling it little more than a "parlor trick." For now, Verizon believes their top offering of 50 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up is more than enough bandwidth for the average user.

Back in August insiders hinted that Cablevision was busy cooking up remote DVR management functionality, allowing customers to schedule recordings and delete content on their home DVRs from anywhere there's a 'Net connection. This morning Cablevision gave us a nudge to note that this functionality has gone live, and customers should be able to see a new "DVR" tab on the "TV Listings" category of the Optimum.net home page. According to Cablevision, the system allows you to name different DVRs in the home, as well as set DVR access privileges for different family members. You can keep tabs on user impressions of the service in our Cablevision forum.

Back in July we noted how the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was exploring the idea of offering wireless broadband service on the organization's New York area commuter trains. Cablevision says they've submitted their response to the MTA, suggesting the agency use Cablevision's Wi-Fi network, which the company started offering free to Cablevision customers late last year.

An anonymous birdie in our Cablevision forum claims that Cablevision will soon be releasing a DVR management portal on the optimum.net home page. The new functionality will allow Cablevision DVR users to schedule recordings and delete content on their home DVRs from anywhere there's a 'Net connection. Some users are already seeing the functionality in the portal (there's some GUI tweaks afoot as well), though availability seems inconsistent among users suggesting deployment is being staggered across markets. We contacted Cablevision, but the company wasn't willing to comment on the new system.

Cablevision has released their second quarter earnings, reporting income of $87 million, down 8% from $94 million one year ago. Revenue for the company rose 9 percent to $1 billion. As most expected, Cablevision announced they'd be spinning off their Madison Square Garden unit into a separate business.

Back in 2006, we discussed how Cablevision had to suspend their efforts to create a network DVR (content is stored on the ISP head end instead of a set top box) after being sued by broadcasters and the entertainment industry, who were afraid of losing control of their content and ad revenue. The entertainment industry won the first round of that fight, but the ruling was overturned last August by the 2nd U.S.

Cablevision and Verizon continue their battle for customers, the cable carrier now offering users $200 "cash" back to new double and triple-play customers who sign up before June 30. The rebate is an American Express gift card and is not the same thing as cash -- an important difference that has gotten AT&T in some recent legal trouble. Verizon has been offering new triple play customers $150 gift cards since April, a promotion the company says expires June 30. To receive the $200 American Express card, Cablevision customers have to maintain Optimum Online and Optimum Voice service for four months

As a way to help compete with Verizon FiOS, Cablevision recently began offering free 3Mbps/1.5Mbps Wi-Fi service to customers across the company's footprint. The deployment, which combined with DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades cost $300 million, is expected to be finished next year. According to Cablevision, they've quickly reached the two-million user session mark as the project's expansion continues. "We blew through the second million in half the time it took to hit the first, and our customers are now logging more than one million minutes online every day," Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella tells us. Cablevision continues to track deployment via their Optimum Wi-Fi website.

In a filing, (pdf) the DOJ Solicitor General on Friday urged the Supreme Court not to hear a case in which the entertainment industry has sued Cablevision for use of a network DVR (or RS-DVR). The network DVR stores video content at the network head end, eliminating the need for a consumer-side set top box entirely.

Earlier this week, the baby bells won a victory at the FCC after a court upheld a ban on exlcusive cable operator deals with apartment or co-op owners. Trying to ride on that victory's coattails, Verizon is now pushing the FCC to prevent cable operators who own sports networks (ie Cablevision in NY, Cox in San Diego and Comcast in Philadelphia) from preventing the telco's access to regional sports programming.

Cable operators have long dreamed of remote storage DVRs (RS-DVRs) that store video content at the network head end, eliminating the need for a consumer-side set top box entirely. Cablevision conducted a 1,000 person trial of a network DVR service in 2006 that worked essentially the same way as a traditional DVR -- except that 80 hours of video content were stored on Cablevision servers.

After just last week doubling the downstream speed of their free Wi-Fi service from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps, Cablevision today announced that they've further expanded their wireless footprint throughout New Jersey. The service, which collectively with DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades cost Cablevision $300 million, is now available in additional portions of Morris, Ocean and Monmouth Counties. Cablevision maintains a website that details their Wi-Fi footprint. While Verizon has referred to Cablevision Wi-Fi as a "marketing stunt," Verizon is now considering offering free Wi-Fi to their own customers as the two companies battle in the larger NY Metro region.

Cablevision was the latest carrier to issue their first quarter earnings, which note that revenue jumped 11% to $1.9 billion from $1.72 billion one year earlier. The company's net profit was $20.2 million, versus a loss of $31.6 million during the same time period one year ago. The company lost 6,300 basic cable customers but added 9,400 digital cable customers, while adding 141,700 new broadband customers and 51,400 new phone customers. Responding to the possibility of a Madison Square Garden spinoff, Stock jocks Craig Moffett and Chris Marangi helped rekindle the decade-old unsubstantiated rumor of Cablevision selling their cable networks to Time Warner Cable.

On Monday we reported how Cablevision would soon be offering a 101Mbps+ connection at a $99 price point, a first for the industry. Given the product is the marketing equivalent of a drop kick aimed squarely at Verizon's face, it's not surprising to see Verizon criticizing the new offering.

Confirming our earlier reports that Cablevision was cooking up a speedier new DOCSIS 3.0 offering, Cablevision tells us this morning that the company will be launching a new "Ultra" tier on May 11. The new tier features speeds of 101Mbps downstream and 15Mbps upstream for $99.95 a month.

Cablevision nudged us this morning to note that the carrier is ramping up HD channel availability. According to Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella, the company this week is announcing 30 new free HD channels in NYC, and 8 new HD channels across the company's entire service area. Maiella also tells us the carrier should have "more than 100 HD channels available everywhere by June." We've obtained a list (pdf) of all the new channels being added for those interested. Cablevision is engaged in heavy competition with Verizon FiOS, and in addition to ramping up HD channel availability, the carrier is spending $300 million to offer free Wi-Fi to users -- and upgrade to the DOCSIS 3.0. Though Cablevision is not commenting, we believe 100Mbps tiers are currently in testing.

It's no secret that Cablevision should be announcing new faster Optimum Online speeds very soon, something confirmed recently by COO Tom Rutledge in a conference call with investors and analysts to discuss last quarter's earnings. The cable provider is spending $300 million to upgrade all of their markets with the speedier technology and deploy free Wi-Fi to a growing number of areas.

Buried in a Yankee Group write up of last week's Cable Show conference in DC is an interesting nugget from Cablevision. At a roundtable at the show regarding capping and metered billing, Cablevision's Senior VP of Corporate Engineering & Technology, Jim Blackley, didn't exactly sound enamored by the idea of billing by the byte.

As cable companies have been trying to compete with FiOS, one of their favorite tactics has been a series of ads that intentionally distort the difference between core and last-mile fiber. Cable marketing folk assume that since the public is probably too stupid to understand the difference, they can take some of the shine off of the FiOS bloom by pretending that fiber is fiber.