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Review by WoodyLI 
Posted: 1.7 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 113 visits, last login: 27 days ago
 Manorville,Suffolk,NY
 $49 per month
 "reliable, low latency"
 "poor customer service, surreptitious line capping"
 "They will likely lose a lot of customers to Verizon this year"
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Connection Reliability:
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(ratings match consensus)
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I've had Cablevision's Optimum Online Internet service for about four years now and generally the service is reliable but suffers from misleading marketing and poor customer service. I've had a couple of cases where tech support has come out and then I have to clean up the mess they've made with my cable. I installed my own coax and recommend doing it yourself if you want it done right. The coax that came with my house was old and not up to the task of running the newer digital cable signals. I'm sure they have some solid techs and installers out there but not all of them are that good and I've run into a couple. The only time techs have actually visited my home is when I was out of town and my wife called them. Both times they caused more harm than good and were unable to fix what turned out to be a minor issue when I came home.
I first purchased Optimum Online at a Cablevision "Wiz" store that no longer exists and performed a relatively painless self install. I found this more convenient than trying to schedule an installation (memories from the movie "Cable Guy"). You can still self install but only for basic OOL and not if it includes Optimum Voice service. I also had Optimum TV service and again won't allow you to self install in all cases such as the use of a High Def receiver. Unfortunately you have to pay for installation so it's important to find out if you can self install before ordering.
Phone support is generally good, 24 hours and they are very polite and helpful. If I get a good phone support person I try to leave some positive remarks during the post call automated survey to encourage them. They don't always know everything but there are a few who stand out as well informed and they are effective at helping with most minor issues.
The main issue I have to knock down Optimum's score for customer service is this bizarre line capping policy they utilize. What kind of company actually considers it good policy to use scare tactics and threats with their customers? It seems the capping policy is in place to prevent abuse of the bandwidth and to protect the system from compromised computers that may have been hijacked to distribute spam or DOS attacks, etc. The idea is sound but the implementation has been a disaster and has likely cost them a lot more than it's saved. My guess is that the majority of people they cap never figure it out and have no idea that their service has been changed. The average home user doesn't understand or even care much about what all those advertising numbers mean and have no idea how to run speed tests or analyze the results. Those users will never post reviews and so it's impossible to know how widespread the capping policy has been. Probably it depends on the local bandwidth availability and the presence of a competitor such as Verizon. Some users report that they never get capped no matter how hard they try.
Here's how it seems to work: Typically, if you upload a continuous stream of data, regardless of the speed, for more than an hour or so your system will be subject to capping depending on your location. Tech support will appear to have no idea what the problem is and pretend it doesn't exist until you press them. They will refer your case to their so called "security department" which are actually just a separate department of phone techs who's job is to intimidate the customer and request you to reiterate an agreement to the "terms of service." They will wait and call you in 24-48 hours and if you miss the call will not call back until you contact tech support and request again to be called. You cannot call them. Once you do that they will uncap you but they will threaten to suspend or cancel your service if it happens more than three times. The problem with this is they are indiscriminate in their policy and are completely unwilling to provide the customer with any information they can use to avoid getting capped such as available max bandwidth use or a way to monitor your uploads to self regulate. Possibly because they don't want to advertise the service as "faster than DSL unless...."
Primarily this will affect you if you use any kind of file sharing software that runs continuous uploads, even for a short while, or you transmit large files via FTP to a slow connection. It can also affect you if you play certain online games that may require a long slow continuous upstream of data like a flight simulator or you stream video or use a "Slingbox". Cablevision could greatly improve this situation by being more courteous and helpful to customers and providing them with alternative techniques or monitoring tools. Customers are not criminals and generally are willing to work with the service if given the opportunity. Woe is the customer who has no idea what file sharing means but has a teenage daughter who traded music all night and now he can't access his VPN account at work until he gets scolded and threatened by "Security techs" at Cablevision after waiting two days.
Cablevision is now offering customers the opportunity to subscribe to the Optimum Online service without subscribing to Optimum TV first. Previously you were required to pay for at lease basic cable in order to be eligible for Optimum Online. You must subscribe to Optimum Online to be eligible to subscribe to Optimum Voice which is the VOIP phone service they offer (similar to Vonage). Optimum Voice works very well and you can get a very good introductory price if you combine both services when you order as a new customer. They will also sometimes offer this introductory discount to returning customers especially if they have gone to Verizon and decided to come back. The main complaint people seem to have with any VOIP phone service is 911 availability which seems to be solved with new FCC requirements and that phone service is tied to your main AC power rather than having a dedicated electrical power source like in POTS (Plain old telephone service) lines. Of course since most people use fancy cordless phones that need to be plugged in anyway in this doesn't seem to be a significant factor and you can always plug your cable modem into a battery powered uninterrupted power supply. In my opinion VOIP is the way to go.
The "Triple Play" package is a huge marketing success and provides customers with a convenient and affordable way to combine TV, Internet, and Phone serices into a single package. Unfortunately Optimum Television leaves a lot to be desired compared to Satellite or Verizon FIOS. Most of the main channels are still sent via old fashioned analogue signals despite Cablevision's marketing that stresses digital television. The picture quality is vastly inferior to true digital signals from satellite or FIOS especially on a modern high definition television. Modern satellite dishes now offer high def content directly from the satellite and typically there is a wider selection of channels for less money. The same with FIOS TV services. I expect the poor TV service will be a huge factor for Cablevision losing customers especially to FIOS services that don't require a dish on the roof and can also combine Internet and phone into a single service plan.
Optimum Online "Boost" is a fairly new add on that is offered to Optimum Online customers for about $15 per month or $10 if you have the Optimum Voice phone service. The marketing says you get "double your speed and more." This sounds great but in practice it's meaningless. The main advantages of boost is the additional email accounts, the 450MB remote server space to host a web site, the free domain name registration and the ability to run a local server from home. Of course the bandwidth they advertise is never actually what you get and most people don't understand that there's a lot more to the speed of your online experience than available bandwidth. For just about any home user, even with several computers connected via a router, the standard service is more bandwidth than you can use and the advertised speed is probably beyond your home router's capability anyway. Some have speculated that subscribing to Boost will eliminate capping or that capping is a practice to encourage users to upgrade to Boost but this isn't the case. Having Boost service will in no way affect your likelihood of getting capped. Even though you have the ability to run a home server, you are not permitted to run continuous uploads of any kind. You get a better value by subscribing to the standard Optimum Online service and using a basic third party web hosting service.
Recently, there has been a lot of hype about franchising rules that have inhibited the spread of alternative services that require infrastructure such as FIOS that will compete directly with cable services. Cablevision has been directly challenging Verizon town by town in an effort to slow the spread of FIOS and tie them up in drawn out legal battles and political slowdowns in an effort to preserve cable monopolies in most locations. Other cable companies have used similar tactics against Verizon and AT&T nationwide. The FCC has recently moved against this absurd practice by standardizing franchising rules nationwide to facilitate the spread of competitive line services that will only serve to improve consumer choices and force cable companies to improve service and lower prices as they compete with other telecommunications companies in markets they previously monopolized. We can now expect to see a more rapid deployment of FIOS services across the country over the next few years.
I have heard great things about FIOS from people who have it and I plan to switch when it becomes available in my location. I've already canceled Optimum TV and Voice in favor of Satellite TV and a competing VOIP technology and am much happier with the services. Even if you don't care for FIOS, the spread of new and competitive technology will benefit all consumers since it is highly unlikely that Cablevision will take this lying down. Although they have a long way to go, I'm sure that service will improve and the ridiculous capping practice will be eliminated or refined to become more accommodating to honest customers. After all, bandwidth demand is only going to go up and the best long term solution for Cablevision is to turn those healthy profits they've been making into long term infrastructure upgrades to meet demand.
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