Comcast said it has conducted the first ever lab test of a device it said will allow it to deliver multi-gigabit upload and download speeds over a hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC) cable.

It said the test demonstrated the ability to deliver upload and download speeds of more than 4 Gbps, with even higher speeds possible with future optimization.

NCTA-the Internet & Television Association has cautioned against putting all the government's eggs in the fiber-to-the-home basket, as the recently announced Biden infrastructure plan appears to do, long suggesting, as it did at the rollout of its 10G initiative, that HFC can deliver multi-gigabit speeds.

Now Comcast said it has the test results to back that up.

The "full Duplex DOCSIS system-on-chip (SOC) device" was built by broadcom and Comcast said it is expected to be the first production chip using the the Docsis 4.0 full duplex standard, which will allow broadband operators to maximize download spectrum while increasing upload speeds.

It also means saving on infrastructure upgrade spending, although the Biden Administration is not skimping on the broadband billions, because it reduces the need for "massive digging and construction projects," Comcast said.

The Broadcom SOC test exceeded expectations, said Elad Nafshi, SVP of Next Generation Access Networks at Comcast, adding that expanding testing will be conducted later this year.

It is Comcast's latest step toward the cable broadband industry's 10G initiative, which was launched in January 2019 to take some of the steam out of the wireless 5G juggernaut.

Serving up a potential breakthrough that could factor heavily into cable’s future deployments of small cell networks, CableLabs and Cisco Systems said recent tests of a proposed technique called the “Bandwidth Report” (BWR) prove that super-low latencies can be achieved by extending a technical bridge between DOCSIS and LTE.

While the goal of the BWR test was to achieve upstream latencies of sub-5 milliseconds, the test, following some manual tuning of this “pipelining” of the DOCSIS and LTE schedulers, reduced latency to about 1.1 milliseconds.

“So, it worked,” John Chapman, a fellow at Cisco Systems who is also CTO of the company’s  Cable Access unit, proclaimed Thursday during a CableLabs-hosted webinar entitled Enabling Cable Networks for Mobile Backhaul.

The test, they said, shows that DOCSIS can become a viable backhaul for LTE and could play a major role as cable operators start to develop LTE-based small cell networks, and as they also look to complement their mobile and wireless strategies using the CBRS [Citizens Broadband Radio Service] 3.5 GHz band.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

Notably, the BWR proposal is also extensible to future 5G networks, Chapman explained.

But the issue that’s being solved with BWR is to reduce inherent upstream latency in DOCSIS networks to a level that is required for 4G and 5G small cells – certainly beneath the 5 millisecond mark.

So, in order to play that key backhaul role, DOCSIS must provide a low latency path between neighboring small cells, Jennifer Andreoli-Fang, a distinguished technologist at CableLabs, said.

BWR, a method that was described in detail at last fall’s SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, aims to overcome a mismatch between the schedulers for DOCSIS and LTE by having them work together and hit the latency goal.

And there’s quite a chasm to overcome.

For the DOCSIS upstream, 5 milliseconds has been the “minimum latency,” though it’s typical to see it at 11 milliseconds, and grow to 30 milliseconds or 50 milliseconds if there is contention in the upstream, Chapman said.

The goal with the BWR proposal is to shrink that number down 2 milliseconds or lower.

Fundamentally, BWR enables the DOCSIS and LTE schedulers to talk to each other through a technique called “pipelining,” with BWR serving as a request into the DOCSIS system.

“It’s fundamentally an API into the DOCSIS scheduler” that allows an external component, like a small cell, to ask for a certain number of bytes at some future point in time, Chapman explained.

While this allows the LTE and DOCSIS scheduling systems to communicate, the BWR method essentially “hides” the DOCSIS latency beneath LTE and reduces the latency by taking advantage of the predictive nature of the LTE scheduler, he said.

For the trial, CableLabs and Cisco set up a physical LTE and DOCSIS test bed that includes a commercial LTE user device talking to an open source LTE small cell that was being backhauled on a commercial DOCSIS 3.1 modem and a Cisco cBR-8 CCAP/CMTS.

A small amount of code was inserted into the LTE MAC layer, which didn’t change the scheduler, but instead sent out a scheduling decision that is put into the form of a BWR message, Andreoli-Fang explained.

That message was then sent out on the DOCSIS uplink and received by an API on the cBR-8. A series of packets were then sent from the LTE user device to the CMTS, and the results showed that the method provided a clear latency advantage.

The results showed that “DOCSIS is well positioned as a viable backhaul technology for LTE,” Chapman claimed. “The path to success is actually having mobile and DOCSIS technologies working together as one."

The proof-of-concept is now moving to the next phase, as CableLabs has kicked off a committee that will explore the possible specification of the BWR protocol and have it become part of the DOCSIS scheduling system, Andreoli-Fang said.

“It’s something we can define at CableLabs,” Chapman said, adding that LTE will also have the ability to write to that API.

What’s not known is when BWR might become a more formal piece of the puzzle.

Fellow webinar panelist, Craig Cowden, SVP of wireless technology at Charter Communications, stressed that there’s time for that to develop, noting that the FCC is still working out rules for the use of CBRS and that the broader product ecosystem still needs to come together.

RELATED: Charter Puts Wireless Broadband to the Test (subscription required)

“There is some time, for us anyway, to see this evolve,” he said.

But the underlying work is “incredibly important as we talk about how we could be able to enable our DOCSIS HFC networks for true fixed mobile convergence, particularly as we talk about 4G, and especially 5G, where those lower latency requirements are essential,” Cowden said earlier in the webinar.

Shedding more light on Charter Communications’s wireless activity, the MSO and Samsung Electronics announced Tuesday that they are working together on 5G and 4G LTE lab and field trials in various U.S. locations.

They said the 5G trial is trying out fixed use cases that use Samsung’s pre-commercial 28 GHz (mmWave) system and devices, while the 4G trials are running at 3.5 GHz (CBRS, licensed spectrum), using Samsung’s small cell technology in an outdoor environment to evaluate mobile use cases, they said.

RELATED: Charter Adds Wireless Exec Manish Jindal

Charter, which has activated its MVNO agreement with Verizon Communications, announced some details about its 5G test ambitions in February, noting then that it would possibly launch a mobile/wireless product in 2018.

Charter applied for experimental licenses to test 5G late last year. RCR Wireless News reported earlier this year that Charter was also working with Ericsson for 5G trials scoped out in Florida.

RELATED: Charter Eyes 5G, Wireless Offerings

Samsung said it’s one of the companies selected by Charter and the company progresses towards its MVNO launch sometime next year.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Samsung on these trials, which provide Charter better insight into how our advanced, powered,  high speed network—which currently passes 49 million homes and businesses—can be used to enable 5G services,” Craig Cowden, SVP, wireless technology at Charter, said in a statement. “In addition, as we move closer to the launch of a Spectrum wireless service in 2018, our work with Samsung on trials of 4G small cell technology will support our overall wireless strategy.”

“As a pioneer in small cell networks technologies, Samsung is excited to partner with Charter as they evaluate their next-generation 5G and 4G wireless network technologies,” added Mark Louison, SVP and General Manager, Networks, Samsung Electronics America. “These projects, with communications leaders such as Charter, will continue to lay the foundation for future business models and customer applications that tap the full potential of both 4G LTE and 5G.”

Samsung and Charter timed the announcement with this week’s Mobile World Congress Americas show in San Francisco.

Samsung also introduced a new small cell product portfolio for home, enterprise and outdoor service scenarios that will support CBRS (up to 150 MHz of shared spectrum in 3.5 GHz), Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), as well as a cloud managed service for deployment of small cell products.

As cellular networks pack on more capacity and become increasingly reliable, the shift to unlimited wireless service models pose a small, but still concerning, threat to cable operators and other providers of wired broadband services, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett concludes in a report published Wednesday.

RELATED: AT&T Expands Unlimited Wireless Plan

While emerging 5G-based fixed wireless options are considered a long-term risk as a substitution for wireline broadband, there are “more proximate risks” posed by current LTE services that are attached to unlimited wireless data plans, he explained.

RELATED: Verizon Exec: ‘Meaningful’ 5G Deployments to Start in 2018

Currently, there’s not much for cable operators and other traditional ISPs to worry about, as 2015 U.S. Census Bureau data shows that just 6% of total households or about 7% of Internet homes relied exclusively on mobile broadband services, Moffett found, noting that those numbers haven’t budged since 2013.

While there’s no question that some homes will “cut the cord” for broadband as some have done with pay TV, the big question is how many?

“We concluded that the risk (to wired broadband providers) of wireless substitution from the wireless industry’s new unlimited LTE data plans is lower than intuition might suggest,” Moffett wrote.

However, he added, it likewise “reasonable to expect at least some substitution around the edges from light users.”

But Moffett doesn’t expect a mass movement to wireless-only broadband, even if LTE is a sufficient option for a subset of consumers.

Though there are gaps between average speeds and average usage volumes with cellular options, “there are perhaps some customers – light users who are particularly price sensitive – for whom going ‘wireless only’ will have at least intuitive appeal.”

Based on somewhat recent usage models, Moffett said homes for which cellular broadband makes the most sense are those in which no single member uses more than 10 gigabytes of data per month on traditional PCs, and no more than 22 to 30 GB cumulatively between their traditional computers and smartphones.

That model assumes that a consumer would require 23 GB of hotspot data and 14 GB of cellular data to match their ideal bandwidth usage, the report holds, citing a somewhat recent report from Comcast that the median broadband home used 88 GB of data, with the typical person using 34 GB using Census data showing that the average home contains 2.6 people.

The rub is that most unlimited plans include just 10 GB of hotspot data and 22 to 30 GB of cellular data. “That’s about the right total amount, but the wrong distribution,” Moffett wrote.

So, to make cellular broadband a viable substitute for an average user, the consumer would have to shift a large swath of Internet usage to the mobile device.

The other tricky part with the model, Moffett explained, is determining the savings a home could achieve by dropping wireline broadband for a wireless-only play, as one would need to know the incremental cost of upgrading to an unlimited wireless plan alongside the current cost of the wired broadband service.

As for the risk posed, cable operators appear to be the least exposed, given their robust wired networks and wireless options, Moffett said.

RELATED: Comcast Unveils Xfinity Mobile

The telcos are more vulnerable especially where they have not upgraded to fiber-based offerings, and are more exposed based on how heavily they currently lean on wired broadband.

“If you believe that wireless substitution is a risk to wireline operators, CenturyLink would be the name to watch,” Moffett wrote.

Generally, he expects that lower income customers are the most likely to consider a wireless-only play.

“The very narrative of wireless substation poses a risk, even if it is a tiny issue for the actual numbers,” Moffett wrote, but stressed that “the risk is not zero.”

Sprint said Monday that it will cut 2,000 jobs as the wireless company looks to trim costs, announcing the cuts as the company reported a wider-than-expected loss in its fiscal second quarter.

Sprint said it expects to save $400 million annually on total labor costs as a result of the layoff, applying it toward the $1.5 billion in total cost reductions it’s trying to eliminate.

Sprint posted a second quarter loss of $765 million (19 cents per share) on revenues of $8.5 billion. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 6 cents per share.

Sprint said the results came amid a “transitional quarter” following the appointment of Marcelo Claure as CEO in mid-August.  Claire, on board to turn Sprint around, is the former CEO of Brightstar Corp.,  a wireless distributor and subsidiary of Japan’s SoftBank, which has a controlling stake in Sprint.

“We have started a transformational journey,” Claure said, in a statement. “While the company continues to face headwinds, we have begun the first phase of our plan and are encouraged with the early results. Every day we are focused on improving our standing with consumers, improving our network and controlling our costs.”

Sprint disclosed last month that it would take a $160 million charge in its fiscal second quarter to cover costs for an ongoing workforce reduction that began on September 30. At the time, Sprint employed about 33,000 people.

Sprint said its 4G LTE network now covers 260 million people, while its 2.5 GHz LTE deployment, a an enhanced LTE effort called “Spark,”  now covers 92 million people, and is on track to reach 100 million by the end of the year.

Sprint said it drove 590,000 net additions in the quarter, coming way of 35,000 prepaid net adds and 827,000 wholesale net adds (thanks to MVNO deals), offset by postpaid net losses of 272,000.