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
Bresnan Communications, the nation’s thirteen largest MSO with 300k subscribers, is preparing for DOCSIS 3.0, but is in no rush. Speaking at Light Reading’s Cable Next-Gen Broadband Strategies Conference, Bresnan VP of strategic engineering Pragash Pillai said DOCSIS 3.0 “is an insurance policy right now.” According to Jeff Baumgartner’s blog, Bresnan is installing a Cisco cable modem termination system (CMTS), the uBR10012, in some of its larger markets with DOCSIS 3.0 capabilities already on board. Pillai cited the high cost of wideband modems as one contributing factor to their cautious approach. Bresnan’s current top broadband speed is 15 Mbps and they seem content with that for now. But competitors beware – they’re baking in the capability and will launch it when the time is right.
source: telecompetitor.com
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
Comcast has announced it will be deploying the new DOCSIS 3.0 wideband standard in more areas: the Baltimore market, including areas in Anne Arundel County, Annapolis and Howard County; Atlanta’s North Fulton County; and Chicago’s northern and northwestern suburbs, including northern Cook County, Lake County, McHenry County and the northern edge of Kane County.
Those deployments will actually be expanded soon, reaching the city of Chicago, western and southern Chicago suburbs, northwestern Indiana, additional Atlanta communities, and the remainder of the Baltimore region in the first half of 2009.
By the end of 2008, about 10 million homes and businesses will be able to sign up for wideband service. Customers can enter their zip codes at www.comcast.com/fastestfast to find out if they live in a serviceable area.
source: cabletechtalk.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
In January, I wrote about Brian Roberts’ CES keynote, in which he talked about wideband. In the spring, Comcast deployed DOCSIS 3.0 in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market. This week, Comcast deployed wideband service to residential homes and businesses in parts of New England, including the Boston Metropolitan region and Southern New Hampshire, as well as areas of Philadelphia and New Jersey. In addition to the new speed tiers, Comcast also is increasing speeds for most of its existing customers.
I walk though all this because many of the technology deployments we discuss on this blog are all part of a larger pattern. DOCSIS 3.0 uses channel bonding to join 6 MHz channels together to provide greater bandwidth. In order to free up channels to provide such services, cable operators have to manage their networks.That’s why you see analog channels moved to the digital tier, as I discussed again recently.
Comcast expects to reach more than 10 major markets and pass nearly 10 million homes and businesses in the next several months.
source: cabletechtalk.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
I’ve been to CES a few times over the last five years. On my first few trips, it did seem a little odd to notice cable’s absence. Comcast Chairman & CEO Brian Roberts described a very similar experience in his keynote this morning, talking about walking the show floor a few years ago with Time Warner Cable’s Glenn Britt. As Roberts put it, “Cable was almost invisible.”
Following that experience, the cable industry reached out to the consumer electronics industry. He said that they heard complaints that cable was a regional business that operated in silos, that cable set-top boxes are closed and proprietary, and that, in general, cable made it too tough to innovate and to create products and services that could be sold in the retail environment. This morning’s address seemed a valuable pay-off to those efforts, with Roberts describing cable as a real partner to consumer electronics and retail.
He went on to describe the latest stage of his company’s development: Comcast 3.0. As part of the new Comcast, he said they were committing to a series of issues:
Having the best fiber optic networks and IP infrastructure
Delivering superior experience in hi-def and interactive
Providing new levels of excellence in customer service
Being a leader in innovation by providing “products and services that are converged, plug-and-play, user-friendly, and most important, easily open for third-party innovation.”
Many in the cable industry have debated over whether content is king or distribution. Roberts said that today the answer is clear: The consumer is king. The best way to serve consumers is by offering a wide array of choice.
He went on to profile such new services as wideband, Fancast, Project Infinity, the AnyPlay portable DVR, and the SmartZone communications center. You can read about the details elsewhere, but the important feature was that Comcast was preparing to offer more video that could be consumed in a more flexible fashion, more bandwidth and more features on its communications services. In a word: more.
source: cabletechtalk.com