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
Even more interesting, Cablevision is now saying it will be ready to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 service tiers within months. The new fixed-line broadband offerings are part of a Cablevision project that also includes providing free Wi-Fi to its customers over the next year or so.
After what seemed like a lot of hurry up and wait, suddenly DOCSIS 3.0 services are popping up everywhere. Comcast has sped up deployments to make its goal of having DOCSIS 3.0 rolled out across 20% of its footprint by the end of this year. The latest market additions include the Baltimore metro area and northern and northwestern Chicago suburbs. Comcast promises that more of metro Chicago, parts of Indiana, new Atlanta communities, and the rest of the Baltimore region will follow in the next six months. And we heard word not long ago that parts of Washington and Oregon are also coming up on the DOCSIS 3.0 roadmap.
Remarkably, we haven’t yet seen a slowdown in DOCSIS 3.0 deployments despite the state of the economy. There’s reason to like the investment. Data services bring in higher margins than traditional video.
source: connectedhome2go.com
Every once in a while I find it useful to do a status check of Internet speed tiers. With that in mind, here’s a look at what major operators across the US are promoting, along with a nod to a few noteworthy international players.
Cox Communications: Currently has a premier speed tier with 15 Mbps downstream (20 Mbps with PowerBoost), but has upgraded many of its systems to 1GHz, giving it room for speed increases
Comcast: Launched DOCSIS 3.0-based “Extreme Tier” last year with 50 Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream, and plans to have 65% of markets upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 by the end of 2009
Charter: Broke the US speed tier record with announcement of new 60 Mbps downstream service
Verizon: Introduced FTTH-based high-speed tier across its entire customer footprint with 50 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream
Time Warner Cable: Offers 20 Mbps downstream in some places, but has not yet clarified timing on DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts
Cablevision: Currently has a speed tier with 30 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream, but has imminent plans to introduce DOCSIS 3.0-enabled services
source: connectedhome2go.com
Multichannel News notes this morning that we’re closing in on the 10th anniversary of the DOCSIS standard. That doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but it’s worth a moment of reflection. We have DOCSIS to thank for the way we access cable Internet today. The standard makes cable equipment (including modems) interoperable, and the continued development of the standard is bringing to market 50-Mbps services and higher.
There are questions about where DOCSIS will go from here. Will there be a DOCSIS 4.0? Will DOCSIS lose importance in a cable rush to fiber? For now, however, DOCSIS is the foundation for all cable data delivery, and DOCSIS 3.0 is just hitting its stride.
A few Motorola DOCSIS stats:
Motorola DOCSIS modems are deployed by more cable operators than any other DOCSIS modems around the globe
Motorola was the first to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 equipment in cable systems
Motorola is one of a select few vendors to have CPE (modems and eMTAs) DOCSIS 3.0 certified/qualified by CableLabs
source: connectedhome2go.com
It always stinks when another site beats you to the punch with company news, but sometimes that’s the way it is. As Karl Bode over at Broadband Reports posted yesterday, Motorola DOCSIS 3.0 modems are now available from Fry’s Electronics. This is the first time DOCSIS 3.0 modems have been available at retail.
If you’ve got DOCSIS 3.0 service in your area (and more and more folks do), you can now buy your own modem as an alternative to leasing one from your cable provider. Many folks are comfortable with the lease model, but – as evidenced in the years Motorola has been selling modems at retail – there are a substantial number of consumers who like the option of owning their own modems and striking the monthly lease fee off their cable bills.
The Motorola DOCSIS 3.0 modems support speeds up to 160 Mbps. Motorola DOCSIS modems are deployed by more cable operators than any other DOCSIS modems around the world. Stay tuned for news of more retail availability…
source: connectedhome2go.com
I’ve been collecting content from panels, conversations, and demos, but it takes time to turn that raw information into coherent posts. So in the meantime, here’s a selection of photos from the Motorola booth on The Cable Show floor: 3D TV, new DOCSIS 3.0 retail modems, Internet apps on the set-top, and more.
source: connectedhome2go.com
While I was caught up in Cable Show activities, a couple of news announcements of note hit the wire internationally. First, Motorola let drop that the company has deployed Taiwan’s first DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) with Taiwan Broadband Communications (TBC). The Asian market has been quite keen on D3 technology. Last year Motorola signed customers in both Korea and Japan.
Second, Motorola announced at Expo Canitec 2009 that its GPON and DOCSIS 3.0 solutions are ready for the Mexican market. The company has already deployed D3 gear in Brazil, but Mexico represents an entirely new opportunity. It will be interesting to watch how different broadband technologies (D3, PON, wireless, etc.) are utilized across Latin America in the coming years.
Meanwhile, DOCSIS 3.0 deployments stateside have continued apace. Analyst firm Pike and Fischer put a stake in the ground last month predicting we’ll have nearly 100% of homes passed with DOCSIS 3.0 here in the states by 2013.
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
It looks like the folks at TWC are bad losers. They are now considering dropping the planned rollout of DOCSIS 3.0high speed citing that it was part of their plan for consumption based billing.
In other words, if they are not going to get the blood money they planned from CBB, they might not feel the need to roll out wideband (even though they are not implicitly tied). Alex Dudley, VP of public relations for Time Warner explains via his twitter feed:
@gigastacey it was scheduled as part of cbb trial, but we all know how you feel about that.
@netpro2k It doesn’t…just that the rollout was scheduled with the trial and now all of it is on hold.
@Stryph Biggest cost is actually bandwidth allocation.
Obviously, if they are concerned about another major public backlash, they had damn well better come through with this. As a TWC customer, I will definitely be one of those people shaking my fist. [PCMag]
source: gizmodo.com
It’s no surprise that cable operators face competition. That’s a good thing. As we wrote in our 2008 Industry Overview:
Competition is the lifeblood of a successful and thriving marketplace, and the cable industry faces stiff competition across all the markets it serves. The consumer is the beneficiary, enjoying more choice, greater convenience and better value than ever before.
Other companies come out with new products and services and we do likewise. But it may be that Verizon is feeling the heat a bit. I’m assuming that’s why they felt the need last week to launch an attack on the cable industry’s new DOCSIS 3.0 specification, which enables wideband Internet access.
Last year, we tracked Comcast’s deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 in a number of markets. Last week, Charter Communications joined in with the launch of its Ultra60 service. Later that same day, on Verizon’s PolicyBlog, came this post: Behind Cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 Broadband Claims. Let’s break down Verizon’s arguments.
Citing many analyses – yet linking only to a report prepared by the Fiber to the Home Council (hardly an unbiased source) – Verizon states that higher speeds on cable will decrease the customer experience and will require cable to upgrade.
In fact, the cable hybrid fiber-coax plant offers a great deal of capacity and flexibility in how nodes are combined to provide optimal service levels based on subscriber penetration and demand. But also unstated is the fact that FiOS also multiplexes (or combines the signals) to customers onto a shared trunk — they just do so in a different portion of their network. In other words, even though the link to customers might be very fast, there is still a choke point where customers have to compete for bandwidth. Too many customers trying to access the Internet at the same time can have the same effect on a FiOS network as it could on a DOCSIS network. Funnily enough, the blog post makes it sound as if Verizon doesn’t have to employ any network management at all!
Verizon makes a broad assumption regarding cable operator deployment plans for DOCSIS 3.0 services, somehow minimizing the technology because it is just now being deployed, and citing “indicators” that it won’t be deployed to all customers.
In contrast, cable’s investment to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 is modest. And with the channel bonding that DOCSIS 3.0 permits, network speeds of 100 Mbps, 160 Mbps, and even higher will be possible. In fact, a 750 MHz cable plant (90% of the country’s cable network miles) has a digital equivalent capacity of approximately 5 Gbps of bandwidth.
source: cabletechtalk.com