Cable’s Answer to FTTH

At The Cable Show this week, the cablecos provided a look at their answer to what telcos like Verizon are doing with fiber. Rather than push fiber deeper into their networks, the cablecos say they’ll rely on DOCSIS 3.0 to increase bandwidth on their HFC plants in a big way.

Chances are you’re already aware of DOCSIS 3.0 (which combines channels on the cable network to deliver higher bandwidth). After all, it’s been in the works for some time at CableLabs. What you may not be aware of, however, is just how much additional bandwidth it promises to give cablecos. And you may not have heard about the Comcast-led effort to get the ball rolling on DOCSIS 3.0 deployment faster than CableLabs originally had planned.

As I wrote from The Cable Show earlier this week, Comcast Corp.’s Brian Roberts opened the event Monday with a demo of ultrafast broadband at rates in the 150mbps range. Part of the demo had the cableco chairman and CEO downloading a 4GB file including a 32-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary in just less than four minutes. Using a conventional cable modem, at 3mbps to 5mbps, that would’ve taken three hours and 12 minutes, Roberts said.

“It really is a whole new technical platform,” he added, noting the ability of this 150mbps-capable version of broadband based on channel bonding technology from Arris would support not just data but also advanced video and voice services.

Beyond delivering greater upstream and downstream rates, however, DOCSIS 3.0 also offers IPv6, endpoint addressing and a very broad array of other functionality.

CableLabs initially laid out a DOCSIS 3.0 equipment and certification and qualification timeline that would’ve meant cablecos had to wait for 2009 or 2010 until DOCSIS 3.0 equipment was available. That wasn’t quick enough for Comcast, so the company (with the blessing of many of the other major cablecos) delineated the most important aspects of DOCSIS 3.0 and created “bronze” and “silver” pre-DOCSIS 3.0 categories and is pushing vendors to submit gear for bronze, silver or full DOCSIS 3.0 testing as soon as possible in hopes of having commercially deployable gear available in the 2008-09 timeframe.

Peter Percosan, director of broadband strategy for TI, which is the key vendor championing this acceleration along with Comcast, expects DOCSIS 3.0 products to begin ramping in January 2008.

The cablecos feel that DOCSIS 3.0 will position them well against Verizon, which is taking fiber all the way to the home in select areas as part of its FiOS project, and AT&T Inc. with its DSL/DVS and VDSL/FTTN strategies. Craddock said DOCSIS 3.0 can be used to blanket the United States for a couple billion dollars. Verizon is spending 10 times that and will cover only about 14 percent of the country.

“FiOS is something my grandson needs to worry about, not me,” he said.

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