Charter is also moving ahead with a bandwidth management plan that will involve both switched digital video (SDV) and analog reclamation to make room for high-definition television (HDTV) and Docsis 3.0 services.
Today, Charter’s top-end 16 Mbit/s service is available to about 80 percent of its Docsis footprint. Docsis 3.0 uses channel bonding techniques to produce shared speeds in excess of 100 Mbit/s.
“We are rolling [Docsis 3.0] out in the second half of the year, [but] we haven’t yet announced which markets,” Smit said, noting that Charter has already rolled those dollars into its overall capex number for 2008, estimated to reach $1.2 billion.
Charter is already testing SDV in Los Angeles using the BigBand Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: BBND) platform and expects to begin broader deployments later this year. (See Charter Charts First SDV Course .)
Smit said Charter will use “low-cost set-tops” to aid its all-digital effort, but he did not specify whether it will use DTAs.
Smit said the MSO also expects to migrate to all-digital in markets with the highest digital penetration. Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), by way of example, expects to enlist its all-digital strategy in 20 percent of its markets by year’s end. Comcast is using simple digital terminal adapters (DTAs) to help with the strategy. (See DTAs on Parade .)
source: lightreading.com