Wideband is a game-changer for the industry. With wideband running over our next-generation fiber-optic network, we can greatly enhance our customers’ online experience immediately. And these speeds are only a preview of what’s to come—wideband will provide the capability of delivering dramatically faster speeds in excess of 160 Mbps in the future,” said Mitch Bowling, SVP and General Manager, Comcast Online Services.
Comcast is officially launching DOCSIS 3.0 service in some Northeast markets. The cable industry refers to DOCSIS 3.0 as wideband. Comcast quotes the era of DOCSIS 3.0 as the evolution of broadband to wideband. Wideband is a direct shot across the bow of Verizon FiOS and other FTTH providers. It also hopes to put the nail in the coffin of DSL, which will have a hard time competing with it. Comcast will offer the service in its Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, and Southern New Hampshire markets. “Comcast plans to continue to roll out wideband across its footprint and expects to reach more than 10 major markets and pass nearly 10 million homes and businesses in the next several months,” says Comcast in a company statement.
source: telecompetitor.com
Here in the U.S., DOCSIS 3.0 modems are going on sale at retailers. Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S. has already announced plans to upgrade some markets it serves to DOCSIS 3.0 service by the end of 2009, offering speeds up to 50 Mbps downstream. Other cable operators have followed suit – Charter Communications is rolling out a 60 Mbps service and a Canadian cable company is offering a 100 Mbps tier.
The second largest cable company in Japan, Japan Cablenet Ltd., has announced a new DOCSIS 3.0 speed tier that appears to offer speeds up to 160 Mbps downstream, based on the product’s name. They’re calling it “Speed Star 160,” and it goes on sale to customers there later this month. While the downstream speed alone would be remarkable, this article implies that Cablenet may be planning to offer an upstream speed of 120 Mbps with the product.
Here at Insight, we’re following the DOCSIS 3.0 deployment very closely and already are doing some preparatory work on our network to prepare for DOCSIS 3.0 speeds.
source: michaelsinsight.com
TWC No Bandwidth Cap, No Wideband!
I am twice happy that I do not live in an area where Time Warner Rules. But Even if I did, I think I will not be having their internet service that they call broadband. In any case 5GB monthly cap they suggested while back was the crux of road runner crap!
But now they seem to be laying more crap so their customers can stp on. According to Alex Dudley, VP of public relations for Time Warner, the wideband service, DOCSIS 3.0, is on hold because they could not launch tiered pricing. Time Warner planned to roll out both the services at the same time, therefore they are both on hold now.
Dudley on his twitter feed;
“@netpro2k It doesn’t…just that the rollout was scheduled with the trial and now all of it is on hold”
@AlexTWC
He has also mentioned that the biggest cost associated with wideband roll-out is bandwidth allocation. Are sure it is not per house passed? I read some where that it costs us some where around $750 per house passed USA while Japanese do it for $20. I think what they refer to as bandwidth allocation is the infrastructure upgrade. They want you to pay for their network setup? I think the wolf is catching up! source: snapvoip.blogspot.com
All the while, Comcast started rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 last year, announcing this Tuesday that it had expanded into the San Francisco Peninsula. Yes Show them how it is done!
source: snapvoip.blogspot.com
Comcast announced Thursday that it has rolled out its DOCSIS 3.0 service to four more markets: Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The company now offers wideband services in 10 cities. Comcast claims it now reaches 20 percent of its customer base with the addition of those four markets and by the end of December, 10 million homes and businesses in each of the cities will be able to sign up for the service.
MapQuest was busy Thursday announcing the launch of two new widgets for Twitter and CareerBuilder users. According to the company, its Twitter widget on MapQuest Local will allow users to see what Twitter users are talking about in their city or town. For any city a user displays on the MapQuest site, a Twitter link will be displayed showing Twitter entries made by people in that area and a link to reply to or follow that person’s stream. MapQuest’s new Careers widget will store up to five different sets of search keywords and pull in job matches in an area the person is mapping. Both widgets are available now on MapQuest Local.
Online casual gaming service Outspark announced Thursday that it has officially launched a portal on its page that will allow its community of users to interact with each other by creating profiles and become friends to share user-generated videos. The company also announced that it’s now using the open application programming interface from YouTube to host and embed user-generated videos directly on its own site.
Blog publishing service Tumblr announced Thursday that it raised $4.5 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. The company’s executives said they will use the funding to bolster cash reserves over the next few years and deploy paid features to increase revenue.
Domain squatters acquired the domain name GeorgeWBushLibrary.com recently and sold it back to Yuma Solutions, the Web development company that forgot to renew it, for a profit of $34,990. Yuma originally purchased the domain name in 2007 for $3,000.
source: news.cnet.com
After months of watching news on Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.0 deployments, it finally occurred to me to troll around online to see how subscribers are responding to the new higher-speed service tiers. I didn’t find much, but what I did find was promising. Check out this post from a Broadband Reports forum:
The modem has a gigabit ethernet port and also shows channel bonding for download. Upload speed is single channel.
It’s quite fast. I was able to get 9GB (yes GB) downloaded in about 50 mins downloading some video…
Comcast hasn’t said much publicly about when and where it’s deploying DOCSIS 3.0, but so far you can find D3-enabled service tiers running in the Twin Cities, Boston and Philadelphia. Jeff Baumgartner reported last week that Comcast still plans to have 20% of its network upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 by the end of the year. Parts of Washington and Oregon are next on the list.
I called up to have my speeds increased to Ultra in Northeastern MA. They said no problem, but my SB5100 wasn’t going to work and I needed a new modem. They sent me a [Motorola] SB6120 DOCSIS 3 modem via UPS the next day as part of a self-install kit… With the new D3 modem, I am seeing 30+ on powerboost down and a steady 5 up. The new modem definitely makes a difference.
source: connectedhome2go.com
Comcast today announced it is offering DOCSIS 3.0 in Oregon and Southwest Washington. In December, Comcast’s new cable modem services will be available to residential homes and businesses throughout the communities that Comcast serves.
Comcast will offer a range of services including the Extreme 50 tier with download speeds of up to 50 Mbps. Comcast says Extreme 50 can download a 6 GB movie in about 16 minutes. DOCSIS 3.0 uses channel bonding, which enables multiple downstream and upstream channels to be used together by a single subscriber.
“We’ll have the capability to deliver even faster speeds in excess of 160 Mbps,” said Curt Henninger, Senior Vice President of Comcast Oregon and SW Washington. “Today’s announcement reaffirms Comcast’s commitment to offering nearly every customer in the Northwest the ability to enjoy some of the fastest Internet speeds available today.”
source: dailywireless.org
Happiness for Comcast’s high-speed craving broadband customers translates to speeds of up to 50 Mbps with the roll-out of DOCSIS 3.0. The company’s Extreme 50 service has been turned up fairly smoothly and is winning over speed junkies.
Gartner is predicting broadband users subscribing to 25 Mbps or faster service will increase from 1 percent of total users in 2008 to 27 percent by 2012. Comcast, driven Verizon’s 50 Mbps FiOS Internet service, is aggressively expanding its roll-out of DOCSIS 3.0. The cable provider claims it can offer up to 50 Mbps connectivity to some 10 million homes passed in markets including Philadelphia, New Jersey, Boston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Seattle and Portland, Ore. It expects to be able to offer “wideband” speeds to 50 million of its households nationwide before the end of 2010.
Doing some legwork, Multichannel News interviewed about a dozen of Comcast’s speed-demon customers using the company’s 22 and 50 Mbps services. Most are thrilled with the service, but there seems to be more attraction to the 22 Mbps service because it’s only $62.95 and only $10 more per month (with a triple-play bundle) than the basic 16 Mbps service; Extreme 50 with 50 Mbps download speeds costs an extreme $139.95 per month.
Analysts point out that few people are going to pay the price premium for 50 Mbps service, as typical broadband customers are satisfied with speeds of around 5 Mbps, according to a recent In-Stat survey.
For those that want it, the speed enables download of an HD movie from Apple’s iTunes store in about 15 minutes, and smoking people when playing Halo 3 on Xbox Live without even a hint of lag.
Deploying DOCSIS 3.0 also gives cable companies the ability to enhance their baseline tiers of service for no extra charge, enabling them to keep customers who might be tempted to take the leap to FiOS.
source: fiercetelecom.com
Comcast gave a bit more detail on the state of their DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades at the CableNEXT Conference this week in Santa Clara, California. Comcast CTO Tony Werner told attendees that the company hopes to have Docsis 3.0 technology in place in around 20 percent of the company’s footprint by the end of next year. DOCSIS 3.0, as we’ve frequently noted, should allow the operator to eventually offer speeds in excess of 100Mbps.
Werner wouldn’t elaborate on which markets will see deployment first, but you can be sure they’ll mirror FiOS deployment. You can also be sure that users won’t see full capacity at first, the initial offerings being in the 20-50Mbps range. What about upstream speeds? Light Reading says the upgrades will focus on downstream bandwidth at first:
Although the full Docsis 3.0 specification calls for the bonding of at least four upstream and four downstream channels, initial Comcast deployments will be a downstream-only affair. That’s more a reflection of the status of upstream channel bonding technology than one of Comcast’s Docsis 3.0 service strategy. Docsis 3.0 upstream channel bonding won’t likely won’t be ready for prime time until late next year or possibly 2009.
That’s definitely going to initially hurt Comcast’s fight against FiOS, as Verizon just started offering symmetrical 15Mbps and 20Mbps service wherever FiOS is available.
source: dslreports.com
Less than a month ago, I wrote about Comcast’s deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 in New England and areas of Philadelphia and New Jersey, following up on the Minneapolis/St. Paul market. I mentioned that they expected to reach more than 10 major markets in the coming months.
Here we go: Comcast launches DOCSIS 3.0 in Oregon and Southwest Washington, including such communities as Aberdeen, Spokane, Beaverton, and Eugene. The Extreme 50 tier offers download speeds of up to 50 Mbps. Comcast will also double speeds for the majority of existing high-speed Internet customers at no additional cost.
The company has a web page which allows you to check if wideband is available in your area or to sign up for e-mail updates when it is rolled out to you.
source: cabletechtalk.com
For about a year now, NCTA has been shining a light on the DOCSIS 3.0 specification. Thanks to channel bonding, cable operators will be able to offer wideband service to consumers, with speeds exceeding 100 Mbps downstream. About a month ago, we noted the first deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 in the U.S.
A new article in CED Magazine (”DOCSIS 3.0 arrives“) takes a look at deployments by Videotron and Comcast.
The article notes that, although Videotron didn’t need to do so, some operators may need to use Switched Digital Bandwidth to free up additional DOCSIS channels.
Comcast also picked a system where it wouldn’t need to clear room for more spectrum when it unveiled its first wideband deployment last month in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area with speeds of 50 Mbps on the downstream and 5 Mbps on the upstream.
The service is available to residential customers for $149.95 a month while small to medium-sized businesses can get the increased speeds for $199.95 a month.
source: cabletechtalk.com