Canadian cable-tech vendor Vecima Networks is joining the vCMTS fray, competing in an emerging market that, early on, has been dominated by upstart Harmonic. 

Vecima this week introduced its Entra virtualized cable modem termination system, which is part of the cloud-native Entra Cloud software suite designed to transform expensive, power-hungry physical appliances on cable networks into applications running on garden-variety x86 servers. 

Entra is interoperable with Vecima’s widely deployed Remote PHY devices. 

Also read: Harmonic Reports 20% Broadband Segment Revenue Growth in Q4 as CableOS Customer Base Expands to 108

Harmonic has already signed deals with major tier-1 cable companies including Comcast and Charter Communications in the U.S., as well as Rogers Communications and Vodafone in Canada, to deploy its market-leading CableOS vCMTS platform. 

But with the vast majority of smaller cable operators (i.e. those not as big as Comcast and Charter) just ramping up on their upgrades to virtualized DOCSIS 4.0 configurations, the market is still young. Casa Systems and CommScope have also recently introduced vCMTS products. 

“Through over a decade of pioneering investment and development of Distributed Access Architecture, Vecima has built the comprehensive Entra portfolio with the singular purpose of supporting our operator partners as they transform their world-leading networks to the multigigabit era,” Vecima president and CEO Sumit Kumar said in a statement.

PHILADELPHIA — Comcast held an upfront-style event on Tuesday showing off home-technology improvements coming to Xfinity customers sooner or later, including motion-detection services in the home, speed boosts to outdoor Wi-Fi hot spots and a new home gateway device that could be connected to hundreds of home devices.

The cable company, parent to NBCUniversal, brought in Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson as a celebrity emcee and screened a commercial touting the Paris 2024 Olympics for analysts, reporters and other guests. Also shown was a spot directed by Kathryn Bigelow that depicts a reunion of aging military pilots who relive their aerial exploits using virtual-reality headsets. The latter ad’s tagline was, “Comcast 10G WiFi Built to Wow.”

“Our mission is simple: we’re going to connect people with what they need and love now and in the future,” Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said during the gathering, called Comcast Converge and held at the Comcast Technology Center super-tall building in downtown Philadelphia.

Demonstrations included big-screen displays of English professional soccer presented in “high fidelity video,” combining high-resolution 4K video that looked far superior to 720p high-definition TV in a side-by-side display. The technology, which officials said was recently tested in trials for Comcast employees, also included high-dynamic-range audio and trimmed the latency delay in pre-recorded soccer action by about 20 seconds in the demonstration. During demos, Comcast said the goal was "10 seconds from the moment something happens in the stadium until you are experiencing it in your home." No timetable was offered for when it might be rolled out to customers.

A new home gateway device, the XB10, which officials said was being introduced today, includes Wi-Fi 7 and DOCSIS 4.0 technology that can connect to 300 different devices in the home. It's expected to be introduced in the second half of the year, officials said. Watson said the average Xfinity home now has 30 devices connected to WiFi, an increase of 40% over five years, and the forecast is for bandwidth consumption to keep on rising.

Officials said speed boosts are being rolled out to Xfinity Mobile WiFi hotspots that will enable 1 gigabit-per-second speeds. And motion detection will be added to Xfinity home gateways that will allow, for example, a parent at work to know when their children come home from school and then remotely manage what WiFi-connected devices the kids are allowed to use while they are supposed to be doing their homework. 

This story was updated to correct the speed enabled by the speed boosts.

Cable’s “10G” era will officially begin next week in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Comcast will begin deploying its new DOCSIS 4.0-enabled network services. 

Colorado Springs Xfinity Internet users will have access to new service tiers with symmetrical speeds of 300 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps. The new products will be branded under a new name, “X-Class Internet.” (Comcast had been using the X-Class moniker to market its own smart TVs, but is now using the Xumo brand for its TV-related initiatives.)

The deployment is only a start for Comcast, which aims to connect 40 million users to symmetrical multi-gig broadband services within the next several years using technology based on the latest iteration of “Full Duplex DOCSIS” cable-network technology. (Comcast published a cool document time-lining the evolution of DOCSIS tech, which we included below.)

Also read: Comcast Just Used Its Virtualized 10G Network to Test a New Targeted FTTP Scheme

Comcast has also invested hundreds of millions of dollars to “virtualize” its broadband network, moving the work of bulky, power-hungry proprietary appliances, such as cable modem termination systems, to server farms. The cable company said its new network tech will one day provide customers with symmetrical (upstream and downstream) speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. This would be separate from the pricey 10 Gbps “Gigabit Pro” fiber-to-the-home service Comcast already offers. 

Comcast also said it hopes to extend its DOCSIS 4.0 rollout to Atlanta and Philadelphia by the end of the year.

“The ubiquity of our network, which is already accessible to tens of millions of homes, provides us with an incredible opportunity to bring multi-gigabit upload and download speeds to communities across the country with the scale and efficiency that no other provider can replicate,” Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson said in a statement.

 “Our connectivity experience, powered by the Xfinity 10G Network, will allow us to deliver speeds up to 10 Gbps over our traditional network to virtually all our customers, plus even better reliability, lower latency and the best in-home Wi-Fi coverage,” Watson added. “We’re entering the next phase of this industry leadership with DOCSIS 4.0 technology to introduce X-Class Internet products that will revolutionize the way our customers get online today and many years into the future.” 

Cable-technology consortium CableLabs and its subsidiary Kyrio will start their certification process for cable modems using the new DOCSIS 4.0 network standard on June 26. 

DOCSIS 4.0 is the successor technology to DOCSIS 3.1, which was hoisted upon the cable industry a decade ago by CableLabs. It’s a broad grouping of technologies needed to deliver the cable industry's promise of a “10G” future — download speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second, and upload speeds as high as 6 Gbps. 

And testing ain't cheap. According to FierceTelecom, modem certification starts at around $200,000 to test a single device in one iteration of DOCSIS 4.0 — either the Full Duplex (FDX) variety preferred by Comcast, or the Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD) version adopted by Charter and Cox. It cost more if you want to test using both technologies. 

To manage costs for operators, CableLabs and Kyrio are introducing “success-based testing” — devices can be updated during the certification process without additional fees until they are successfully certified.

CableLabs and Kyrio are also not charging extra to test DOCSIS 4.0 modems for verified DOCSIS 3.1 interoperability. 

The consortium is hosting a Zoom session on Wednesday, June 28 at 11 a.m. MT to provide more details about its certification program. More information can be found on this page.

Comcast said it has received prototypes of a crucial component needed for its next-generation "10G" network.

Prototypes of Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX) amplifiers from cable tech vendor CommScope will enable Comcast to build a multi-gigabit-speed network, delivering symmetrical downstream and upstream speeds, based on FDX DOCSIS 4.0 technology. 

Comcast, which is leading the cable industry's network-evolution into a catch-all marketing slogan called "10G," wants to deploy this multi-gig network across most of its footprint by 2025. Comcast's next-generation network will also be one of the first to be based on Distributed Access Architecture (DAA), which virtualizes expensive proprietary core network hardware including the Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS).

The cable operator recently said it would have "foundational upgrades" completed by the end of February needed to reach 10 million customers with its shiny new FDX DOCSIS 4.0 network.

Comcast said it would begin immediately lab testing the CommScope amps, which offset a key limitation for FDX. Previous iterations of the scheme required a "node+0" configuration to avoid echo interference on non-fiber portion of the network, meaning there could be no amplifiers between the last fiber node in the network and the customer. 

This required operators to extend fiber very deep into their networks -- not quite to the home, but close enough so that the economics of keeping hybrid-fiber/coax were pretty much negated. 

Previous generation amplifiers didn't have the echo-cancellation capabilities needed for symmetrical delivery of the upstream and the downstream signals, so there couldn't be any amps between where the fiber ends and the end point of the network. 

Comcast already successfully tested a reference design of the new tech used by the CommScope amps last fall and describes it as the missing link needed to make its FDX plan work. 

 “CommScope has been a key partner in our work and deploying their FDX amplifiers across our network is a critical next step," said Elad Nafshi, executive VP and chief network officer at Comcast Cable, in a statement. "We’re excited to harden this technology and begin rolling them out across our network, so that we can continue to deliver the best connectivity experience to our customers.”

Comcast announced a new detail in the deployment timeline for “10G” DOCSIS 4.0 service, making what it calls "foundational upgrades" for 10 million homes and businesses in 40 markets by the end of February. 

Comcast recently finished development of a new network standard built around Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 technology, delivering symmetrical speeds of up to 4 gigabits per second. It wants to deploy the tech across a national base of 50 million homes and business by the end of 2025.

The cable operator said the first upgrades to its hybrid fiber-coax plant finishing this month put it in place to establish multi-gigabit speeds in the coming months.

The impetus is clear: Comcast’s broadband subscriber growth has stalled, and wireless companies are now undercutting it with fixed wireless access home broadband services.

“Streaming live sports, 4K gaming, hybrid work, and virtual reality have gone mainstream in just a few years, and gig speeds, capacity, reliability, and low latency are key factors making our connectivity experience superior to the competition,” Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said in a statement. “Our definition of reliability has to shift from merely being always-on, to powering multiple data-intensive applications across dozens of devices, and the investments we are making in our network are creating immediate benefits for our customers.” ■

Comcast said it has successfully tested the final component need to begin trials of its next-generation cable network. 

The No. 1 U.S. cable operator will now begin formal trials of its “10G” Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 network tech, with the aim of starting deployment late next year. Comcast hopes to have the technology distributed into 50 million customer homes and businesses by the end of 2025.

The announcement was made coinciding with the cable industry’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo trade show, which resumed a live format this week in Comcast's hometown of Philadelphia. (Our own Mike Farrell is on the ground covering the event for Multichannel News.)

With Full Duplex (FDX) DOCSIS 4.0, Comcast said it can now deliver symmetrical speeds of 4 gigabits per second, vastly improving the performance of latency-sensitive applications including gaming, videoconferencing and telehealth.

The tech falls into a catchall marketing umbrella that the cable industry has been calling “10G” — a kind of Nigel Tufnel-esque response to the wireless business' 5G push.  

Also: SCTE Cable-Tec Expo: Home Networks Are the New Industry Battleground, Panel Says

For the final test, Comcast said it used FDX amplifiers built on a reference design developed by Broadcom. The test successfully demonstrated the ability to conduct download speeds of 6 Gbps and upload speeds of 4 Gbps across a configuration that places six amps between the home and the node, otherwise known as a “N+6” setup.

This is quite improvement over FDX iterations a few years back that required N+0 configurations to work effectively. Cable operators largely balked at the feasibility of dense node configurations extending so far out into the network. 

“With this test, we’ve gone beyond proof of concept. We know we can use this technology to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical services throughout our network and, in fact, we’re confident we have the potential to go even faster,” said Elad Nafshi, executive VP and chief network officer at Comcast Cable. “With the key components of 10G tested and proven — and our digital, virtualized network architecture ready to support them — we turn our attention to extending the full benefit of 10G directly to our customers, including lower latency, greater reliability, and enhanced security.”

At Cable-Tec Expo this week, Comcast has also been touting advanced progress with virtual “Distributed Access Architecture” (DAA) network tech, as it builds its FDX DOCSIS 4.0 apparatus over a largely software-driven infrastructure. 

Comcast said it has recently accelerated deployment of configurations that turn its network’s bulky CMTS backbone appliances into software running on generic x86 servers. ■

Frontier Communications CEO Nick Jeffery said he believes his company's fiber-based networks will ultimately win the battle with cheaper fixed wireless offerings from competing telcos, adding that measuring the differences between the two technologies is like "comparing a Ferrari to a horse."

Fixed wireless access (FWA) has emerged as a viable broadband alternative, especially in rural markets where building fiber is costly. In Q2, T-Mobile said it added 565,000 FWA subscribers, beating analyst predictions soundly.

Also: Charter Says Fixed Wireless Was a Factor in Q2 Subscriber Declines 

Cable operators have criticized FWA service as an inferior technology, adding that while it may be an alternative to even slower copper-based digital subscriber line service from telcos, it hasn’t been a major factor in the overall broadband subscriber slowdown.  

Frontier embarked on its "Gigabit America" initiative — its plan to bring fiber to 10 million homes by 2025 — shortly after emerging from bankruptcy protection in 2021. So far, the company has extended the network to about 4.4 million homes and expects to build out 1.1 million to 1.2 million new locations this year. 

At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference Tuesday, Jeffery said that data usage among its customers is just too high — fiber customers average 1 Terabyte per month of data usage, with top tier subscribers consuming 2 Terabytes — for fixed wireless to make a dent.

Also: Fixed Wireless Could Add 10 million Subscribers By 2027, Analysts Say  

“If you had a choice between high-speed symmetrical fiber and FWA, you’d always choose fiber,” Jeffery said at the conference. “Which means FWA is probably picking up segments of younger people in shared homes that move, and they’re a very difficult segment to make money out of. And eventually those customers, once they settle into their homes, they will flip to fiber. I think FWA will grow, it will have some impact on our copper base, we’re watching it closely, but at the end of the day we’re really comparing a Ferrari to a horse.”

Jeffery was equally confident about Frontier’s position versus cable operators, who until recently, have dominated the broadband market. He added that Frontier has three sources of growth — movers, copper-to-fiber migration and winning share from cable. 

“It’s very, very clear that we are taking the majority of our customers from cable, no doubt about that,” he said. “It’s based on the underlying truth that fiber is a fundamentally better product than cable.”

Jeffery expects that momentum to continue as cable operators build out DOCSIS 4.0 networks. DOCSIS 4.0 is expected to deliver up to 10 Gigabit per second speeds over hybrid fiber-coax networks. The Frontier CEO said DOCSIS 4.0 is too expensive, will take years to fully deploy and still would be inferior to existing fiber networks.

“Frontier’s fiber network is 10-gig capable end-to-end today to the home,” Jeffery said.

Jeffery joined Frontier in 2020 after serving as CEO of European telecom giant Vodafone UK, which went through its own problems in the past. When he took the helm of Vodafone UK in 2016, Jeffery said the company had a terrible brand reputation, negative NPS scores and poor employee engagement. Five years later Vodafone UK is taking market share from every segment, has the highest NPS scores in its markets and has the highest employee engagement among its peers. 

“It’s winning left, right and center,” Jeffery said, adding he sees Frontier moving along the same path.

“If I map that across into Frontier’s early experience, we are already taking share against every competitor in every geography that we work, the brand is repairing, NPS is going up, internal engagement is accelerating,” Jeffery added. “All of those things are happening. It does take a number of years for those things to fully embed in the market, but when they do, customers will come to us because they want the best product, they want the best service. They want to be associated with a modern, fun, agile tech company and that’s what we’re setting out to build.” ■ 

“Nothing” is faster than fiber. Literally.

Comcast said it's proving the point with new “hollowcore fiber” technology that it said transmits data 150% faster than traditional fiber with a 33% improvement in latency. 

Hollowcore fiber is, well, hollow at the center and takes advantage of the fact that light travels 50% faster through air than glass. 

Comcast is claiming to be first in the field with the new tech, partnering with United Kingdom-based fiber vendor Lumenisity to transmit data at symmetrical speeds ranging from 10 gigabits per second to a mind-boggling 400 Gbps over a 40 kilometer hybrid span of hollowcore and traditional fiber between two locations in Philadelphia. 

The new fiber tech is blended with a range of so-called DOCSIS 4.0 schemes, and all of it is placed under the catch-all "10G" marketing umbrella that the cable industry has applied to its next-generation network technology development. 

The wireless industry's got “10-Minute Abs?” Well, the cable industry wants to cut your workout time in half. 

“Hollowcore fiber is a leap forward in how we deliver ultra-fast, ultra-low latency and ultra-reliable services to customers,” Comcast Cable executive VP and chief network officer Elad Nafshi said. 

“As we continue to develop and deploy technology to deliver 10G, multi-gigabit performance to tens of millions of homes, hollowcore fiber will help to ensure that the network powering those experiences is among the most advanced and highest performing in the world,” he added. ▪️

Comcast isn‘t moving ones and zeroes at speeds approaching 10 gigabits per second yet, but it just announced achievement of the latest benchmark in the broader cable industry's so-called ”10G“ effort — and it‘s pretty fast. 

In what the biggest U.S. cable company calls a “first-ever lab test,” Comcast successfully delivered both download and upload speeds in excess of 4Gbps to a Broadcom modem, using a system-on-a-chip configuration of Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 technology. 

The benchmark follows Comcast‘s successful demo in October at the SCTE‘s virtual Cable-Tec Expo of a virtualized cable-modem termination system (vCMTS) powered by Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0.

Since FDX-based DOCSIS 4.0 uses traditional hybrid fiber-coax cable, the cable industry is touting the next-gen network technology as a way to not have to dig up roads, sidewalks and back yards to install fiber. 

“With each new milestone, we get a clearer picture of how 10G technologies will unlock the next generation of speed and performance for millions of people worldwide,” said Elad Nafshi, senior VP of next generation access networks for Comcast Cable.

During the recent public health emergency, broadband established itself as the runtime of the world (or at least the world that has access to it). Now, as we start returning to some semblance of normalcy, the role of broadband in powering the massive digital acceleration that is underway is coming into sharper focus. This is particularly true in the residential market, where the cable industry is a major connectivity provider in many parts of the world. Not only existing services such as video streaming and gaming grew, but the home became the point of delivery of new services, some of them mission critical, such as age in place, remote patient monitoring, and even home hospital. 

This new reality is energizing the cable industry, as was clear in the recent SCTE Cable-Tec Expo virtual event. Although the conference had to be delivered over — what else — broadband, the vitality was palpable and it is clear the cable industry is gearing up to meet market demands. A few highlights worth noting:

• Upstream: Although bandwidth consumption continues to grow, upstream consumption is increasing even more quickly, which is causing operators to allocate more spectrum to upstream, either via mid-split or high-split of the spectrum. To that end, some operators are turning on existing but largely unused DOCSIS 3.1 capabilities such as orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), and exploring other measures. 

• Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC): Some technologies (for example, augmented reality) and applications (for example, home healthcare) are driving the need for compute resources in the access network. Operators are beginning to locate compute resources in their headends and hubs, particularly as space is alleviated with the introduction of distributed access architectures (DAAs).

• DOCSIS 4.0: Published by CableLabs in March 2020, this spec is generally viewed as the stepping stone toward 10G. It supports two alternatives: Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, generally requiring augmenting the spectrum to 1.8 GHz, and Full Duplex DOCSIS, which can operate within the 1.2 GHz spectrum but requires either N+0, or N+X, X being a special type of amplifier. Although DOCSIS 4.0 won’t see the field for some time, major operators have announced successful lab trials of both approaches.

• Low Latency DOCSIS: for latency intolerant applications such as gaming and wireless backhaul.

• Distributed Access Architecture (DAA): The subject of much debate, planning and limited deployments to date, DAAs gain momentum, largely for two reasons:

> The traditional methods for adding capacity in the access network are running their course. Capacity has been typically added via node splits or by augmenting the spectrum. Node splits require more equipment (and power consumption) in the headends and hubs. 

> Flex MAC Architecture (FMA) is becoming a reality. For some time, operators had to make an upfront decision regarding where to place the Media Access Controller (MAC) function in a DAA configuration, namely whether to consider a Remote PHY or a Remote MACPHY configuration. Among its many capabilities, the FMA provides operators with flexibility as to where to locate the MAC. CommScope is seeing significant traction for FMA, and Harmonic announced an FMA solution just before Cable-Tec Expo.

• Passive Optical Networking: This technology is growing in importance for the industry, driven by the massive need for capacity and the increasing focus on bringing broadband to currently underserved markets, such as rural areas. 

• Predictive Network Management: As more critical applications are delivered over broadband networks and as operators strive to deliver a superior customer experience, data analytics and machine learning are enabling more sophisticated capabilities for predicting and remediating failures before they escalate into network outages.

• Next-Gen Network Management: With network disaggregation (particularly with DAAs), network management becomes exponentially more complex and requires state-of-the-art tools with automation and increasingly less human dependence.

These are just a few of the highlights of SCTE. To discuss this important industry event engage with me on Twitter at @offredo.

Comcast has established a successful 10 Gbps network-to-modem connection using virtualized CMTS and the Full Duplex version of the new DOCSIS 4.0 standard, the cable company announced Thursday from the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers‘ once-again-virtualized Cable-Tec Expo conference. 

"Our team implemented Full Duplex (FDX) DOCSIS 4.0 capabilities into a CMTS, or 'virtualized' vCMTS, which is an essential component of our network and will be a critical link to delivering 10G," said Elad Nafshi, senior VP of next generation access network technology at Comcast. 

Also read: Comcast Touts Symmetrical 1.25 Gbps Speeds in Utah

Nafshi said that In order to complete the full connection, DOCSIS 3.1 modems were configured to operate in the FDX band. 

"What makes this accomplishment truly groundbreaking is that it proves our ability to upgrade our existing vCMTS platform via a software upgrade to DOCSIS 4.0 Full Duplex and gives us the ability to deliver multi-gig upload and download speeds," he added. "We are continuing to work on our next breakthrough which will be the development of a full 10G cable modem. 

At last October‘s Cable-Tec Expo, Comcast announced successful 1.25 Gbps symmetrical transmission using a virtualized cable modem termination system and Full Duplex.

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.

The year that was…

2020 was a year like no other. The pandemic drove an unprecedented acceleration of digital enablement, as companies and organizations of all types adopted virtual substitutions to in-person experiences, such as remote work, online education, and telehealth. This drove a massive consumption of bandwidth, upstream and downstream, and led cable operators to add 1.32 million subscribers in 3Q 2020 alone.

Broadband service providers have added capacity at a furious rate in 2020 to meet the exploding demand. Due to the short-term circumstances, some broadband providers, and more specifically cable operators, had to temporarily put aside their longer-term plans, such as virtualization and the re-architecture of the access network, and use more traditional tools to add capacity. 

The massive need for capacity in the upstream has prompted operators to reconsider tools they had in their arsenal, such as mid-split, which allocates 85 MHz of spectrum to upstream, and high-split, which allocates up to 204 MHz but may require the spectrum to be extended to 1.2 GHz to preserve downstream capacity. Another technology that received renewed attention in 2020 is orthogonal frequency division multiple access, which is part of the DOCSIS 3.1 specifications and improves spectral efficiencies, resulting in added capacity.

The year ahead

High levels of bandwidth consumptions will continue

Although the level of growth will taper off in 2021, high levels of bandwidth consumption will continue in 2021 as some of the digitally enabled business models will persist and evolve to become an essential part of the strategic framework. For example, many companies will retain some version of flexible work arrangements well beyond the pandemic, and some predict that about 20% of remote work will never return to in-person; another example is healthcare where the limits on in-person treatment drove almost a five-fold increase in telehealth-based treatment. Healthcare regulation is expected to continue to be relaxed in 2021, and telehealth utilization is expected to persist, and indeed grow, as the industry evolves business models toward more comprehensive virtual care modalities that include solutions such as remote patient monitoring and age in place. In addition to driving bandwidth consumption, these solutions will over time accelerate the comprehensive re-planning of the communications and computing infrastructures.

Technologies that gain traction in 2021

Mid-split and high-split: The trend that started in 2020 will continue, as the need for capacity in the upstream will exceed the capacity of most existing cable access infrastructures.

Low latency DOCSIS: More and more applications, such as gaming, are demanding latency as low as 5–10ms. New applications are emerging where continuous remote health monitoring of patients in their homes complemented by real-time remote data analytics that inform medical treatment may also require low latency data in the near future. Furthermore, augmented reality and virtual reality (VR) applications are increasingly finding important applications in medicine. For example, at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Beverly Hills, California, a study is focused on using VR for a nondrug approach to treating lower back pain.

The Distributed Access Architecture (DAA): DAA took a relative backseat in 2020 as operators used largely proven methodologies to meet capacity demands. However, continuing to add capacity with node splits and more hardware in the headends is not sustainable over the long term. Therefore, DAA remains the most viable architecture over the long term, with fiber moving ever closer to the customer. The debate between Remote-PHY and Remote MACPHY seems to have subsided somewhat, and the recently introduced Flexible MAC architecture, which gives operators flexibility in the location of the MAC, is gaining industry traction. 

Virtualization and cloud native implementations: As operators raced to meet the capacity surge, a clear shortcoming they faced is their inability to elastically scale capacity with demand. If the level of demand does not sustain at the level for which they planned, some of the capacity added will not be utilized, resulting in stranded capital. One of the main advantages of virtualization is the velocity and flexibility that operators gain in introducing new services and features, in scaling capacity with demand, and in gaining more visibility into their networks, leading to fault mitigation and better reliability. The move toward a virtualized headend, already under way, will continue and even gain momentum as the operators exit fire-fighting mode. 

DOCSIS 4.0: As demand for upstream bandwidth continues to grow, operators will need capacity beyond mid-split and even high-split. The DOCSIS 4.0 specifications, released in early 2020, enable operators to increase upstream capacity to 6 Gb/s. Although field implementations are still years out, operators will begin to decide their DOCSIS 4.0 strategy. Operators have two approaches to consider: Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, which involves increasing the highest plant frequency from 1.2 GHz to 1.8 GHz and later to 3.0 GHz; and Full Duplex DOCSIS, which works within 1.2 GHz using overlapping frequencies for upstream and downstream but may impose restrictions on the number of amplifiers and other legacy equipment between the node and the subscriber.

Passive Optical Networks (PON): Another approach that operators are considering for achieving 10G capacity is FTTx implementations via PON solutions, which allows them to build on their HFC investments to deliver even higher speeds. 

WiFi 6 and 6E: The need for more capacity and performance will continue to drive deployments of WiFi 6, and as WiFi 6E is introduced in 2021, which delivers even more capacity, operators will start supporting the new technology.

Automation: The recent pandemic, social distancing requirements, the increasing complexity of the networks, for example DAA deployments and 5G backhaul densification, will drive operators to implement more automation in the networks.

New business models will be explored

As bandwidth consumption shifts to homes and other locations, and as bandwidth is increasingly used to replace in-person activities, new frameworks around who pays for broadband will start to be explored, as discussed in a prior blog.

Beyond broadband networks

Although the focus has been on bandwidth capacity, and justifiably so, major currents are underway in the broader telecom industry. As digital enablement accelerates, companies in many verticals and consumers in their homes will need increasingly complex applications. Delivering connectivity, while essential, will no longer be sufficient. Offering complex solutions that include connectivity, computation, automation, and generic and vertical-specific application modules will emerge; service providers have the opportunity to play a major role in this emerging area. However, this will require investments, new partnerships, and innovative business models.

Guest blog author Liliane Offredo-Zreik is a principal analyst at ACG Research, where she is responsible for cable access infrastructure market research and consulting practice. Offered-Zreik is also president and founder of boutique advisory firm The Sannine Group.

CableLabs has published the anticipated specifications for DOCSIS 4.0, the next technology standard for moving data across the cable industry’s hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) networks.

The new specifications, an upgrade over the industry’s current DOCSIS 3.1 standard, will enable cable systems to deliver download speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. Upstream speeds can approach speeds of 6 Gbps.

Importantly, DOCSIS 4.0 unifies two competing technologies for moving HFC networks to 10-gig speeds. Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX) would combine downstream and upstream signals on a single frequency, delivering symmetrical speeds up to 10 Gbps. FDX is favored by Comcast, but its stringent network technology requirements made it economically infeasible for many operators.

Extended Spectrum DOCSIS keeps upstream and downstream traffic separate. But it would increase the spectrum of HFC networks to 1.8 GHz from a current level of 1.2 GHz found on the fastest networks.

Working Towards 10G

CableLabs is the technology consortium for the major U.S. cable companies. And it’s serving a broader cable industry initiative called “10G,” an effort to migrate cable networks to a future in which 10 Gbps speeds power increased cloud applications, video conferencing, smart homes and distance learning — a future that is, well, here today for many of us.

DOCSIS 4.0 gives cable industry engineers in purchasing roles clarity on how to move forward in a network technology realm being disrupted by virtualization and Distributed Access Architecture (DAA).

“With the DOCSIS 4.0 specification establishing a clear path forward, giving cable operators the flexibility to pursue either Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD) or Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX), operators can move ahead with their remote PHY and remote MAC-PHY deployments to solve immediate headend and power consumption issues,” Dell’Oro Group analyst Jeff Heynen wrote in a March blog post.

But don’t look for commercial deployments of DOCSIS 4.0 networks by operators in the months to come. Cable operators still have a glut of network capacity from huge investments made over the last five years in DOCSIS 3.1 infrastructure. These buildups enabled them to offer customers 1 Gbps speeds, the ceiling for which consumers are nowhere near bumping into just yet.

Cable's Net Holds Fast

And the networks are holding up well to current capacity strains wrought by homebound social distancing. Comcast’s top technologist, president of technology and product Tony Werner, said the No. 1 cable company’s networks are holding up just fine in locations like San Francisco and Seattle, which have seen traffic increases as high as 60% in peak weekend usage hours recently.

“Usage is on the rise as more people are working, learning and doing all their entertaining at home,” Werner said on a March 30 call with reporters. “But it’s all within the capability of the network.”

The essential role of broadband networks in the current Covid-19 crisis is well established. A recent article in Multichannel Newsvery well described how cable operators are stepping up to meet demand despite enormous challenges. But what are the short-term and long-term implications of the pandemic on the evolution of the cable infrastructure? We see this play out in three phases on a broad level but with notable differences among operators and in different geographies:

Mitigation

In the near term, operators will resort to short-term measures to meet growing demand. They are freeing up capacity in the downstream spectrum by reallocating QAMs to DOCSIS, increasing compression, continuing node splits and other moves. In the upstream, operators who have deployed DOCSIS 3.1 can leverage the Profile Management Applications and add subcarriers. At the same time, content providers are playing a role by downgrading their content, for example, Netflix and YouTube, or staggering the release of their games, such as Sony and Microsoft.

Cautious investment

The health crisis will inevitably lead to some economic contraction despite the massive recent stimulus package. This crisis will impact small and medium businesses as well as consumers, the sweet market spot for cable operators. At the same time, the recent online spike will not completely go away once the crisis is over. Virtual engagement is here for the long term, and cable operators need to add capacity, particularly in the upstream, to meet new demand characteristics. At the same time, MSOs will not lose track of their 10G vision and will continue to plan for massive capacity expansion, including trialing DAA and virtualization.

Recovery

Over the longer term, this crisis has highlighted the importance of broadband networks, and the utilization patterns will even exceed current projections. Cable operators will need to update their playbooks to ramp up capacity expansion. Such scaling will need a new architecture, and the distributed access architecture and virtualization will be at the heart of these playbooks, along with emerging plans to deploy the recently ratified DOCSIS 4.0 specification for much expanded upstream capacity and low latency.

CableLabs has published the anticipated specifications for DOCSIS 4.0, the next technology standard for moving data across the cable industry’s hybrid fiber/coaxial (HFC) networks. 

The new specification, which is an upgrade over the cable industry’s current DOCSIS 3.1 standard, will enable operators to deliver download speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. Upstream speeds can approach speeds of 6 Gbps. 

Importantly, DOCSIS 4.0 provides a unification of two competing technologies for moving HFC networks to 10-gig speeds. Explained here in detail in a 2017 CableLabs blog post, Full Duplex DOCSIS would combine downstream and upstream signals on a single frequency, delivering symmetrical speeds up to 10 Gbps. Full Duplex is favored by the leading U.S. cable operator, Comcast, but its stringent network technology requirements made it economically infeasible for many operators.

Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (blogged about by CableLabs in September here) keeps upstream and downstream traffic separate. But it would increase the spectrum of HFC networks to 1.8Ghz from a current level of 1.2Ghz found on the fastest networks. 

CableLabs is the technology consortium for the major U.S. cable companies. And it’s serving a broader cable industry initiative called “10G,” an effort to migrate cable networks to a future in which 10 Gbps speeds power increased cloud applications, video conferencing, smart homes and distance learning—a future that is, well, here to today for many of us. 

But don’t look for commercial deployments of DOCSIS 4.0 networks by operators in the months to come. Cable operators still have a glut of network capacity from huge investments made over the last five years in DOCSIS 3.1 infrastructure. These buildups enabled them to offer customers the 1 Gbps speeds, the ceiling for which consumers are no where near bumping into just yet. 

But DOCSIS 4.0 does give cable industry engineers in purchasing roles clarity on how to move forward in a network technology realm being disrupted by virtualization and Distributed Access Architecture (DAA). 

“With the DOCSIS 4.0 specification establishing a clear path forward, giving cable operators the flexibility to pursue either Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD) or Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX), operators can move ahead with their remote PHY and remote MACPHY deployments to solve immediate head-end and power consumption issues,” wrote Dell’Oro Group analyst Jeff Heynen, in a blog post published two weeks ago. 

CableLabs has published the anticipated specifications for DOCSIS 4.0, the next technology standard for moving data across the cable industry’s hybrid fiber/coaxial (HFC) networks.

The new specification, which is an upgrade over the cable industry’s current DOCSIS 3.1 standard, will enable operators to deliver download speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. Upstream speeds can approach speeds of 6 Gbps.

Importantly, DOCSIS 4.0 provides a unification of two competing technologies for moving HFC networks to 10-gig speeds. Explained here in detail in a 2017 CableLabs blog post, Full Duplex DOCSIS would combine downstream and upstream signals on a single frequency, delivering symmetrical speeds up to 10 Gbps. Full Duplex is favored by the leading U.S. cable operator, Comcast, but its stringent network technology requirements made it economically infeasible for many operators.

Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (blogged about by CableLabs in September here) keeps upstream and downstream traffic separate. But it would increase the spectrum of HFC networks to 1.8Ghz from a current level of 1.2Ghz found on the fastest networks.

CableLabs is the technology consortium for the major U.S. cable companies. And it’s serving a broader cable industry initiative called “10G,” an effort to migrate cable networks to a future in which 10 Gbps speeds power increased cloud applications, video conferencing, smart homes and distance learning—a future that is, well, here to today for many of us.

But don’t look for commercial deployments of DOCSIS 4.0 networks by operators in the months to come. Cable operators still have a glut of network capacity from huge investments made over the last five years in DOCSIS 3.1 infrastructure. These buildups enabled them to offer customers the 1 Gbps speeds, the ceiling for which consumers are no where near bumping into just yet.

But DOCSIS 4.0 does give cable industry engineers in purchasing roles clarity on how to move forward in a network technology realm being disrupted by virtualization and Distributed Access Architecture (DAA).

“With the DOCSIS 4.0 specification establishing a clear path forward, giving cable operators the flexibility to pursue either Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD) or Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX), operators can move ahead with their remote PHY and remote MACPHY deployments to solve immediate head-end and power consumption issues,” wrote Dell’Oro Group analyst Jeff Heynen, in a blog post published two weeks ago. 

Business dynamics remain healthy

Despite headwinds from so-called cord cutting because of the increasing consumption of online video content and attrition from myriad and growing SVOD and other online video competitors, cable operators had a good year in 2019 as growth in the broadband business continues unabated, and business services become a major contributor to revenue. In fact, the stocks of the two largest MSOs Comcast and Charter, posted sequentially 60% and 25% growth through December 2019 (albeit in a buoyant stock market).

According to a recent report by analyst firm MoffettNathanson, cable operators are projected to continue to grow their broadband business for the foreseeable future, grabbing more share from the telcos. At the same time, business services remain a healthy and growing revenue contributor, and the more innovative MSOs have created vibrant business offerings with services such as SD-WAN to the SMB market. Comcast’s revenue from business services was 13.4% of cable revenue for the nine months ending September 30, 2019.

It is true that there are rumblings in the industry about the potential competitive threat from 5G in the form of fixed wireless access; although 5G might over the long term become competitive with cable both in the forms of wireless broadband substitution and fixed wireless access, the state of the technology and cost parameters do not make such solutions economically viable in the near term, and furthermore, cable may indeed reap economic value from 5G (more on this later).

Software-based solutions will gain field traction

Although it is true that 2019 through end of September was not a good year for CCAP vendors in aggregate, with the nine months revenue declining about 30% over the same period in 2018, a closer examination of the revenue make-up tells a different story. The revenue of vendors whose solutions are primarily hardware-based declined about 33% in that period; vendors with software-based solutions saw about 11% in revenue growth, with 41% revenue increasing in the third quarter. Although it is true that some operators slowed down capital investments as their DOCSIS 3.1 rollouts tapered off and as they deployed already purchased equipment, but as they look ahead, many operators are also assessing whether their traditional playbook will continue to sustain their future growth and competitiveness or if they should explore more forward looking alternatives. 2020 will see more meaningful growth in deployments of software-based solutions, particularly as more solutions come in the market. Looking back, 2019 may have been a transition year.

Remote-PHY, Remote-MACPHY or Remote-X

It is unquestionable that the distributed access architecture (DAA) has been getting some traction, led by Comcast’s public commitment to Remote-PHY. This technology, based on the CableLabs specifications issued in 2015, has gained a beachhead over its cousin, Remote-MACPHY, whose spec is under development at CableLabs. Although some operators and vendors have settled on an architecture, there is a growing trend toward flexibility with vendors offering the option to locate the MAC either centrally or on a remove device. DAA will get more traction in 2020, as deployments are now real, and the new technologies are field proven and showing clear benefits.

DOCSIS 4.0 will inch closer to reality

CableLabs is expected to issue the DOCSIS 4.0 specifications, which include Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX) and Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD), for spectrum up to 1.8GHz to enable symmetrical upstream and downstream bandwidth. This will help the vendor community chart its way forward on meeting the need for significantly increased upstream bandwidth. Deployments of this technology are well beyond 2020.

Business services

Cable operators will continue to generate an increasing share of their revenue from lucrative business services. Having established a beachhead in the SMB market where they have a natural affinity, they are putting more emphasis on the middle market and the enterprise market. SD-WAN is a particular area of promise for cable operator. Comcast, which entered this market early and aggressively, will continue to grow its momentum. Other operators have started their deployments and will grow from there. Other promising services include WIFI and security.

5G will progressively materialize as an opportunity for MSOs

It is undeniable that cable operators have become a force to be reckoned with in wireless, largely through their MVNO based service offering. However, it is also well understood that a business largely built on reselling a competitor’s service is not the best way to create long-term value, and indeed MSOs have been exploring a number of alternative business models. Charter has made no secret of its plans to use CBRS to supplement its HFC reach in some areas and may well introduce this solution in 2020. An even more intriguing opportunity is the use the extensive HFC network to backhaul 5G traffic. 5G will require a dense infrastructure of small cells; the cable HFC network, with assets and power in the local access network, may prove to have the right infrastructure for the 5G small cells backhaul. This said, 5G will require very low latency, which today’s DOCSIS technology cannot provide but a new industry effort, Low Latency X-Haul (LLX), is striving to resolve this limitation. Much progress will be made on this front in 2020, potentially setting the stage for an exciting opportunity for MSOs for years to come as 5G becomes a market reality.

Liliane Offredo-Zreik (@offredo) is principal analyst atACG Research.