DOCSIS 3.0 moves the shared upstream from 6-28 megabits to 120 megabits. It’s already built in to all DOCSIS 3.0 modems DOCSIS is designed to deliver 50 up 50 down 95+% of the time. 4-12+ times as fast in raw speed. The real difference is likely to be higher, as congestion peaks tend to even out with more raw speed. Few really need that speed, but nobody really needs a BMW either. The evidence is overwhelming that almost all customers prefer high speeds if the price is similar, while a significant minority will pay substantially more.
Cablecos fighting DSL will have a huge advantage. Cablecos facing Verizon will need 3.0 upstream to compete with GPON designed to go up to 200 meg symmetrical, and even BPON is 155 meg shared. Ivan Seidenberg is spending $23B for FIOS. He’s told me “we need to get cable out of the house.”
He’s already selling 20 meg upstreams when few cablecos even offer 5 meg. In New York City, it will be almost exclusively GPON and he’ll rapidly offer higher speeds.
Facing AT&T, Qwest, and Bell Canada, the 50 meg of 3.0 upstream will provide an enormous advantage compared to the 1 meg of DSL from the node. 100 meg DOCSIS is selling for $25-40 in Japan and France as part of the bundle. Any cableco who prices like that should knock out a telco without fiber. Other carriers will decide to reserve the high speeds for more expensive tiers, directly improving profit.
Besides blowing away DSL 1 meg upstream, it also should essentially solve the congestion on the cable upstream. That’s a far better solution than throttling or capping.
The tech community has realized DOCSIS 3.0 is much faster than DSL since about 2003. DSL like AT&T is delivering 1 up, 10 down, 50-98% slower. The telcos sticking with DSL for the last mile will have a major technical disadvantage for the next decade. If customers desert in droves for the higher speeds (unproven, especially if they are priced high,) it would take years to move to full fiber.
source: dslprime.com
At an earnings conference on Wednesday, Time Warner Cable COO Landel Hobbs said that the cable provider will begin using the newer, multi-channel DOCSIS 3.0 standard to provide Internet and data access to homes and businesses this summer, although it will be limited to New York City only. Time Warner Cable is currently testing DOCSIS 3.0 in NYC, Hobbs says. Testing has netted 138Mbps download speeds and and 18Mbps upload speeds, the COO says, adding that these won’t be offered initially.
Once Time Warner completes the DOCSIS rollout in New York City by year’s end, deployments of the infrastructure in other markets will be “surgical.” New York City is an important market, as competitor Verizon has recently signed a franchise agreement with the city to fully outfit the city with its FiOS fiber-optic infrastructure by 2014.
source: electronista.com
To compete with Verizon’s FiOS service, the New York-based ISP intends on doubling the speed of its Wi-Fi wireless Internet service to 3Mbps, which will be free for Cablevision subscribers. As a comparison, the FiOS service runs about $140 per month, while other competing companies such as Comcast and Charter only offer a more costly 50Mbps.
Cablevision announced today a plan that will bring speeds of 101Mb/s downstream and 15Mbps upstream to its 3 million customers. To take advantage of the new service, subscribers will be given the option to upgrade their cable Internet to DOCSIS 3.0 for $99.95 per month. The high-speed Internet access is expected to deliver full-length high-definition movies in less than 10 minutes or upload 750 digital photos or 150 songs in one minute.
source: techspot.com
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