Cablevision, a cable ISP based in the New York area, claims to have taken the residential US Internet speed record by rolling out 101Mbps service across the New York area in the next two weeks. Just to sweeten the deal, Cablevision has priced the service at $99.95 per month—and won't use explicit data caps.

Since other high-speed providers like Comcast and Verizon currently offer a maximum of 50Mbps speeds (and both charge about $140 for it, though Verizon offers a cheaper deal in Virginia and New York), the Cablevision rollout sounds like a great deal. It also shows the power of competition; while much of the country has zero or one 50Mbps option, New York will now have two.

The fact that the upgrade can be offered at far less than both Verizon and Comcast are charging, and that it can be done without the data caps Time Warner Cable said it needed in order to fund such upgrades, suggests that US Internet could be much better than it is.

The fact wasn't lost on groups like Free Press, which have already praised Cablevision. "It does, however, beg the question why Cablevision can offer fast access with reportedly no caps or overage fees, when others claim such a plan would cause the sky to fall and an exaflood to break the Internet," said S. Derek Turner, the group's research director. "We hope this new announcement will put an end to the bandwidth bogeyman."

Assuming the service works as advertised, it will certainly boost Cablevision's image, which (among the much-loathed cable industry) is already pretty good.

The move also reminds us just how cost-effective these DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts have been. While Verizon has to lay new fiber to FiOS homes and AT&T runs fiber into the neighborhoods to power its U-verse system, cable companies have a monstrous hybrid fiber coax (HFC) pipe that requires inexpensive headend upgrades for far faster service.