And it appears that Comcast is well on the path of achieving its 80 percent penetration goal. The MSO’s DOCSIS 3.0-based service is currently available in 11 U.S. cities, including: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, parts of Connecticut, Fort Wayne, parts of New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, the Twin Cities and Seattle. Subscribers can choose from two DOCSIS 3.0 service sets.

Cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 race is certainly on. Comcast’s fellow cable brothers Cox Communications, Canadian operator Rogers and the U.K.’s Virgin Media have been making DOCSIS 3.0 waves lately. Similar to Comcast, Cox has also taken a tactical approach to its DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts by launching its wideband service in not only Verizon’s FiOS territories (Fairfax County, Virginia and Rhode Island), but more recently Qwest’s FTTN territories in Phoenix. Meanwhile, Rogers launched its wideband service in parts of Toronto last week.

Of course, DOCSIS 3.0 is not just a large MSO’s game. With its conversion to all-digital video complete in its major metro markets, competitive cable operator RCN said it will begin rolling out DOCSIS 3.0-based services initially in its New York and Boston markets this fall.
source: fiercetelecom

The MSO says it’s already starting to migrate some analog channels to the digital domain in Winder, Ga., with plans to do the same in nearby North Fulton County in the next month or so, according to Comcast spokeswoman Alana Davis. The MSO will continue doing that in the Atlanta area on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.

Comcast isn’t that far along yet in the Boston area, but it has started the “marination” process in Newburyport. In that early, preparatory phase, the MSO is proactively installing digital boxes and simpler, one-way digital terminal adapters (DTAs) during routine truck rolls before the market is “on the clock” for the analog-to-digital channel migration.

Marination is also underway in the MSO’s Philadelphia region. The initiative, dubbed internally as “Project Cavalry,” is already started or completed in the Bay Area; Portland and Salem, Ore.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Seattle and other parts of Washington. (See Comcast Sends In the All-Digital ‘Cavalry’ and Comcast ‘Cavalry’ Rides Into NoCal .)

A key goal of Cavalry is to move about 40 analog channels from the operator’s expanded basic programming tier to digital, while leaving its basic “B1″ tier (about 20 channels, depending on the market) in analog. In those markets, the MSO is giving each expanded basic customer two DTAs and one entry-level, interactive set-top (so it supports the MSO’s interactive program guide and video-on-demand apps) for no additional cost for as long as they remain Comcast customers. (See Comcast Seeds Digital Shift With Free Boxes.)

Comcast, responding to pressure from the likes of DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE: DTV) and Dish Network Corp. (Nasdaq: DISH), is already starting to beef up its HD lineup using reclaimed analog spectrum capacity. In Salem and Eugene, for example, the MSO launched 30 new hi-def networks last month after it completed the digital migration there. In Chattanooga, meanwhile, the MSO is starting off by packing in 22 new hi-def channels and booting up a 50 Mbit/s (downstream) Docsis 3.0 service.

source: lightreading.com