As it plunges billions of dollars into its main hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network to upgrade it to a 10 gigabit-per-second transom, Comcast has already welcomed the elite cadre of well-heeled customers who can afford its $300-a-month Gigabit Pro fiber-to-the-home service into the 10G future. 

In a company blog post published Tuesday, Elad Nafshi, Comcast executive VP and chief network officer, announced that the Gigabit Pro service has been upgraded from 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream to a symmetrical 10-Gbps offering. 

It's unclear as to how many of Comcast's 32.3 million broadband customers have access to the fiber-to-the-home tier — you need to live within 1,760 feet from a fiber node to be able to subscribe to it. Also unclear is how many customers have actually signed up for the offering. 

It’s prohibitively expensive. Beyond the $300 monthly bill, installation, activation and equipment rental fees total over $1,000. 

But if you need a reliable, low-latency symmetrical 10-Gbps connection today, it might be available. 

“Our network is architected to give us options to deliver a great experience over both HFC and fiber-to-the-home technologies,” Nafshi wrote. “For our customers who are on the bleeding edge of tech adoption, we recently increased the speeds of our symmetrical FTTH service, Gigabit Pro, to 10Gbps/10Gbps, and that is available in all the markets we serve.”

A Silicon Valley tech worker has made national headlines following his response to Comcast's unreasonable $210,000 charge to connect broadband to his Los Altos, Calif. home.

Sasha Zbrozek, an electrical engineer working for a company that makes self-operating boats, described in an Ars Technica story published earlier this week how he led the creation of a co-op that built a fiber-to-the-home network. Los Altos Hills Community Fiber is currently delivering 10 gigabits-per-second internet to 17 homes in his affluent area.

"Before I bought my home [in 2019], I checked with Comcast -- by phone -- to see if service was available at the address. They said yes," Zbrozek told the tech pub. "After moving in, I called to buy service. The technician came out and left a note saying that service was not available."

The nearest Comcast connection was 167 feet from Zbrozek's home. Regulations required that the rift be bridged via trench as opposed to above-ground wire. Comcast told Ars that trenching is a particularly difficult prospect, given the "heaviness" of the road Zbrozek lives on -- special concrete-cutting hardware would have had to have been used.

Comcast also refused to allow Zbrozek to piggyback on a neighbor's Comcast connection, which would have required only 40 feet of trenching.

"The spirit of the franchise agreement is that I'm supposed to be able to get service because I'm on a public road, but in practice that just wasn't the case," Zbrozek said.

The young engineer and his wife, who live just five miles down the road from Google's headquarters, initially got by using a bridge from their mobile network.

Eventually, Zbrozek got to work on finding a solution, and he began working with some of his neighbors, who were also not connected to Comcast's network.

They looked at AT&T fiber, but it would have costs between $28,000 - $44,000 per home to connect to service.

So, Zbrozek formed the co-op, with participating residents kicking in $12,000 a head. Next Level Networks was contracted to help build the network, which has been up and running since early last year. Customers pay $155 a month to use the network.

This isn't the first time Ars has spun this populists yarn.

In August, the tech blog reported on Michigan resident Jared Mauch, who received $2.6 million to build a FTTH after Comcast wanted to charge him a $50,000 connection charge. ■

Brightspeed says its purchase of some assets from local exchange carrier Lumen Technologies should close in the fourth quarter now that the FCC has signed off on the deal.

Brightspeed says it secured all the state regulatory approvals as of the end of June for what it says will be a $2 billion investment in fiber-delivered internet and Wi-FI in the Midwest and Southeast, as well as some parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

It predicts that it will deliver fiber to an additional 3 million homes and businesses within the next five years thanks to the purchase, including many where fiber will be a new option.

It has been over a year since Lumen said it would be selling its operations in 20 states to Brightspeed.

Lumen retains operations in 16 states and its national fiber and networks in those states, as well as its current international business.

"The FCC's approval paves the way for Brightspeed to help close the digital divide in communities across the country that are most in need of high-quality broadband," said Tom Dailey, Brightspeed VP of public policy and government affairs, in a statement.

Brightspeed said it had been working on design and construction while it awaited FCC approval, and can now "hit the ground running."

While cable operators grapple with the slowdown of broadband subscriber additions expected in the third quarter and beyond, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino said that telcos, long the butt of jokes about the sluggish speeds and poor service inherent in their core digital subscriber line service, have streamlined operations and are positioning themselves to take back significant market share. 

In a research note, Supino pointed to AT&T’s spinoff of DirecTV, Frontier Communications’ emergence from bankruptcy, Lumen’s (formerly Century Communications’) sale of about 7 million passings to Apollo Global Management and T-Mobile’s successful integration of Sprint, and how those moves have freed up their respective balance sheets to invest in fiber-to-the-home networks and technology to bring faster, more reliable broadband to residential customers. Tack on investment in C-band spectrum by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to extend fixed wireless broadband to harder to reach areas, and the outlook for telco service looks a lot better than it has in the past. 

“During 2021, each of AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, Lumen, and T-Mobile, in different ways, became a more viable contender for residential broadband subscribers,” Supino wrote, adding that he expects telco fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband passings to rise 50% from 51.1 million in 2021 to 77.1 million homes by 2025.     

AT&T is expected to lead the pack, with 1.8 million FTTH passings by 2025, up from 411,000 this year, according to Supino. Total FTTH penetration from the four telcos is expected rise from -0.7% in 2021 to 3.1% by 2025, the analyst wrote.

Cable companies have dominated the broadband business for more than a decade, accounting for the lion’s share of additions by offering  higher speeds and better quality compared to telcos’ inferior DSL service. But as cable operators have warned that the record-setting growth pace of the past few years will slow down in the third quarter, AT&T and others have committed to building out their fiber networks and lowering prices to capture share. 

Also Read: How Slow Will the Broadband Slowdown Be?  

Last month, Comcast said broadband customer additions would be slower than expected in the third quarter. On Sept. 23, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei warned that his cable company expected to lose between 15,000 and 20,000 broadband customers in Q3, and could possibly end the year with flat net additions. 

Also Read: Broadband Slowdown Forces Analyst o Go Negative on Cable Sector 

That sent cable stocks into a tailspin, with Altice USA losing about 28% of its share value in two weeks. Other stocks like Comcast, Charter and Cable One, were down less dramatically, but the shift caused a few analysts to rethink their outlooks on the stocks. 

Altice USA fell another 3% on Oct. 12 (it closed at $17.63 down 49 cents each) after Deutsche Bank analyst Bryan Kraft lowered his rating on the stock to “Hold” from “Buy,” and reduced his price target to $22 per share from $40 each. 

Also Read: Broadband Slowdown Forces Analyst to Go Negative on Cable Sector 

That downgrade came a day after Raymond James analyst Frank Louthan downgraded the cable sector, saying operators could lose as many as 11 million broadband customers in the next four years. In his note, Louthan wrote that telcos could make “a significant change to the communications landscape that is set to shift the balance of power that has favored the cable companies for the past 20 years,” according to Bloomberg. 

Barclays Group media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar believes that telcos have more short-term visibility than cable due to new device launches, tailwinds from the EBB program and successes bundling streaming and wireline broadband offerings.

“We also believe that the industry in some ways is seeing more stable promotional activity than last year because of the structure of promotions,” Venkateshwar wrote. “In addition, T-Mobile’s focus on higher end pricing plans and ARPA growth should also provide some stability to the competitive environment near-term. Telecom companies also appear to be getting better at bundling wireline and wireless as organization structures are better aligned.”

AT&T has notified its existing DSL customers that they can’t transfer their service to a new address, and effective Oct. 1, the telecom is no longer even selling new DSL-based internet service.

AT&T said at the end of the second quarter that it has only 463,000 DSL customers. With a top-end downstream speed of only around 45 Mbps, the copper-based technology is now firmly classified as obsolete. 

"We are focused on enhancing our network with more advanced, higher speed technologies like fiber and wireless, which consumers are demanding," AT&T said in a statement. "We're beginning to phase out outdated services like DSL and new orders for the service will no longer be supported after October 1. Current DSL customers will be able to continue their existing service or where possible upgrade to our 100% fiber network.”

The news about DSL’s imminent demise comes as AT&T announces new promotional pricing for fixed fiber-to-the-home internet. Effective Oct. 4, the company’s 100 Mbps FTTH service is priced at $35 a month for a year (plus taxes and a $10 monthly equipment ding). Internet 300 is promo priced at $45 a month, while the 1-gig plan is priced at $60. 

AT&T finished Q2 with 4.3 million FTTH customers, adding 220,000 subscribers from April - June. 

The company also said in May that it had 880,000 LTE fixed wireless customers. 

Altice USA said its fiber-to-the-home network is now reaching more than 500,000 homes, covering about 10% of its Optimum-branded footprint.

“We view fiber-to-the-home as an end state of the network which is superior to other future cable DOCSIS network upgrades,” said Dexter Goei, CEO of Altice USA, to investment analysts on Tuesday during the cable operator’s third-quarter earnings call.

“We believe future iterations of DOCSIS will end up with a fiber deep node+0 architecture anyway,” Goei added.

Related: Altice USA Revenue, Cash Flow Flat in Q3

Altice USA’s network evolution comes as a direct correlation develops between customers taking faster internet speeds and those using more data. Goes said that customers with 200 Mbps speeds and higher use an average of 290 GB per month of data, a rate that was up 20% in the third quarter and that was 75% higher than those who take less than 200 Mbps.

“Given the proliferation of new streaming services, we feel very well positioned to benefit from continued growth in demand for our broadband services which is at the heart of everything we do,” Goei said.

Altice USA saw its broadband customer base rise by 15,000 users in Q3, comparable to a year-ago performance of 14,000.

Slow start for Altice Mobile

The company reported customer growth of just 15,000 subscriber lines for its new consumer wireless service, Altice Mobile.

Goes said it’s “a little too early” to be concerned about that, "given that we're just about two months into the launch. And we still haven't opened up all of our channels and we still haven't really targeted non-customers. I think as we go broader which is really let's call it Black Friday into Christmas season and going into the first quarter of next year that's going to be something that I'm happy to share with them.”

Harmonic announced a version of its CableOS virtualized software solution that includes containerized DOCSIS CMTS and PON applications, enabling converged delivery of broadband-over-cable and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services.

The San Jose, California-based technology company made the announcement entering the Cable-Tec Expo event in New Orleans.

The debut of the new version comes as Harmonic’s broadband service provider clients are weighing myriad technology options, including virtualized Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) and Distributed Access Architecture (DAA), as well as fiber-deep strategies that enable standards like Full Duplex DOCSIS.

In fact, as some operators look at options like fiber-deep, the prospect of taking fiber all the way to the residence comes to mind.

“A lot of the operators out there are going fiber-deep. The next transition is go FTTH. What we’re trying to say is, here’s a platform for you to bet on all those infrastructure plans,” said Asaf Matatyaou, VP of solutions and product management for Harmonic’s cable edge business.

CableOS uses a cloud-native platform to support converged DOCSIS CMTS and FTTH Passive Optional Network (PON) Optical Line Termination (OLT) applications, and additional containerized access applications such as DOCSIS 4.0 in the future.

The new version includes both 10G EPON and 10G XGS-PON, as is a remote CableOS OLT module that has the same footprint as Harmonic’s Pebble Remote PHY device. Through a single CableOS instance running in a centralized data center, operators can simultaneously deliver Remote PHY DOCSIS and Remote OLT FTTH services, dramatically simplifying the operational complexity of managing and scaling multiple broadband access applications.

Harmonic last week announced that South Carolina operator Comporium will use CableOS in a new DAA configuration. Over the summer, the tech vendor announced a multi-year, $175 million deal with Comcast for the solution, as well as a separate $55 million arrangement with a European client widely believed to be Liberty Global. 

If AT&T makes good on its recent suggestion that it will have 50% U.S. market penetration for fiber-to-the-home services by 2023, it could poach around 1 million customers each from both Comcast and Charter, and another 200,000 from Altice USA.

This is the conclusion put forth in a report this morning by equity research company Cowen, which suggested that such a hit could also impact Comcast’s earnings before taxes, interest and depreciation (EBITDA) by around $1.1 billion. Charter would take an $885 million EBITDA hit, while Altice USA would be down $162 million under the model.

AT&T has deployed FTTH to around 3 million homes in each of the past two years, and company management recently suggested it could reach 50% market penetration in three years.

Of course, Cowen’s dire prediction entails there being no response by the cable industry.

Cable, Cowen noted, has a “solid track record” vs. fiber overbuilds. There will also be coming speed upgrades driven by new DOCSIS technologies; and an improved focus on the customer experience and in-home IoT.

“As we keep a watchful eye on broadband trends through the year, we remain confident that cable will manage the AT&T fiber pressure,” the firm said in its report.

Altice USA today said that the first wave of symmetrical gigabit-speed fiber-to-the-home deployments have launched in select parts of Long Island.

According to an Altice press rep, the cable operator is delivering 940 Mbps upstream/940 Mbps downstream service, priced at $79.99 a month unbundled, to a select group of Long Islanders.

Altice didn't disclose what parts of its Long Island Optimum footprint the FTTH services are available in.

Related: Altice USA to Skip DOCSIS 3.1, Roll Out All-Fiber Network

Alice also said that it’s enhancing DOCSIS 3.0-powered HFC speeds in its Optimum footprint to 400 Mbps, with gigabit speeds scheduled to be available over HFC in 2019.

"Altice USA is focused on offering the best network and connectivity experience, and the activation of our full-fiber network with smart WiFi, the most advanced of its kind in the nation, demonstrates our commitment to creating converged customer experiences,” said Hakim Boubazine, Altice USA co-president and chief operating officer, in a statement. “Delivering our symmetrical Altice Gigabit fiber service is just the start as we continue to scale our fiber network to bring our customers up to 10 gigabit internet speeds to support the explosive growth of data usage while laying the groundwork for the future of the connected universe.”

Alice USA announced in November 2016 that it would eschew DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades across Optimum in favor of a five-year, FTTH deployment plan. 

Fiber-based ISP GigaMonster, a specialist in providing gigabit-speed broadband services to the MDU market, announced that it has secured a $45 million investment from Post Road Group.

The Atlanta-based company also announced a merger with Portland, Ore. MDU specialist Fibersphere Communications.

Related: GigaMonster Takes a Bite Out of ISPs

“The $45 million in new capital provides us with the fuel to expand even faster through both future acquisitions and organic growth,” said Bill Dodd, chairman and CEO of GigaMonster, in a statement. “It also allows us to further enhance our standard-setting product offerings as the industry undergoes rapid change. The combination of GigaMonster and Fibersphere significantly increases our West Coast presence and was in perfect alignment with our vision to be the absolute best multifamily internet solution in the market.”

Launching in 2015, GigaMonster has acquired a significant market share in the multi-unit dwelling market, connecting building to its metro fiber rings—a mix of its own dark fiber and fiber acquired from other companies. It has now reached more than 25 markets nationwide with its Scary Fast 1-gig service.

The company did not release an financial specifics on the acquisition of fiber-to-the-home specialist Fibersphere, which was founded in 2002 and is also focused on the MDU market.

“Big cable consistently ranks at the bottom of the worst customer service industry in the country," said Craig Weaver, GigaMonster's customer experience director, in an interview with Multichannel News back in 2016. "As a result, being the best provider as compared to cable is not a worthy goal. We strive to deliver an experience on par with the likes of Amazon and Apple, where customers are the center of our universe and not a necessary evil as they are viewed by our competitors. We are clearly not your parents' Internet service, something we can all be grateful for."

The National Advertising Division, a unit administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, announced last week that it has recommended that AT&T modify advertising in a way that clarifies the availability of AT&T Fiber, an FTTP-based product that delivers gigabit speeds.

RELATED: AT&T Expands Fiber to 17 More Metros

The recommendation follows a challenge lodged by Charter Communications, which complained about several AT&T Fiber ad claims, including: “With internet this fast, it must be the future,” “Internet speeds twenty times faster. Introducing AT&T Fiber,” “Speeds 20x faster than the average cable customer,” “Internet 1000,” and “AT&T has the largest fiber network.”

In coming to its conclusion, NAD said it considered whether the advertising at issue implied that AT&T has upgraded all, or substantially all, of its network to deliver fiber-to-the-home services, or that AT&T Fiber is available to most customers in the areas where the company offers residential broadband service.

AT&T, which is appealing the NAD’s recommendation, countered that consumers understand that AT&T Fiber has limited availability because ads include qualifying language such as “coming soon” and “introducing.”

NAD noted that in previous cases that limited service availability “is a material fast that must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed to consumers. Given that AT&T offers internet service using other technology, the decision states, it is especially important that AT&T communicate the limited availability of its AT&T Fiber.”

NAD’s recommendation is for AT&T Fiber ads to be modified to make clear that AT&T Fiber “is more unavailable than available.”

Regarding AT&T’s claim that AT&T Fiber is the largest FTTH network, NAD suggests that the company discontinue using that claim or modify it to “make clear that it refers to fiber across AT&T’s network, not to its fiber-to-the-home network.”

NAD backed its recommendation by finding that a coverage map on AT&T’s web site “did not reasonably communicate the message that AT&T Fiber was generally available in an area designated on the map.”

As for the “Internet 1000” ad claim, NAD said the “name itself is expressly false,” as AT&T discloses that max download speeds for AT&T Fiber is 940 Mbps.

NAD noted that AT&T “strongly disagrees with this recommendation” in part because the “coming soon” statement clearly communicates that the advertised service is not yet available and thus, additional limited availability disclosures are unnecessary, contradictory and confusing.”

Charter, meanwhile, said it would NAD’s finding that AT&T can advertise AT&T Fiber services on a market-wide basis in markets where the service is not yet available to 20% (or more) of the marketplace,” and NAD’s finding that AT&T can advertise that customers will receive a “gigabit” or “1000 Mbps connection” with AT&T’s “Internet 1000” tier of service, so long as it discloses that the service delivers speeds up to 940 Mbps.

Antietam Cable Television said it has launched Phase 2 of its 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home/business network by expanding it to the entire town of Boonsboro, Md.

That network, branded as Flight Gigabit, will pass an additional 5,000 homes and businesses in Boonsboro and additional areas of Washington County to be announced when it’s completed by this fall, the company said.

With Phase 2, Antietam Cable is adding $3 million of private equity, expanding its total investment to $6 million for Flight Internet, and a plan to extend access to more than 11,000 homes and businesses in 2017. Last year, the operator launched Phase 1 of Flight Gigabit to 6,000 homes and residences in Hagerstown. Antietam Cable has been asked about pricing on the operator's symmetrical 1-Gig product.

Update: Promotional pricing on the residential is $99 per month for the first year, and $199 per month for businesses for the first two years, a company official said. 

“We’re pleased to expand Flight Gigabit to all of Boonsboro and additional areas of Washington County. This is the right investment at the right time and will have a positive impact in the communities we serve,” Brian Lynch, president Antietam Cable, said in a statement. “Phase 2 is a continuation of Antietam’s commitment to enhance the lives of our customers with state of the art technology and the best customer experience."

WideOpenWest (WOW) will be joining the gigabit club when it lights up those speeds in five U.S. markets by the end of 2016 – Huntsville and Auburn, Ala.; Evansville, Ind.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich.

Those markets represent about 10% of WOW’s footprint, said Steven Cochran, WOW’s CEO, noting that the plan is to expand access to 1-Gig speeds to additional markets in 2017.

“We have a plan over the next couple of years to continue to increase speeds,” he said. WOW is also rolling out a new 600 Mbps service next week (more details on that further below).

WOW will announce pricing on the new 1-Gig service in those markets closer to launch (the MSO will be offering it as a standalone service and as a service bundle). WOW is using the “Gigtopia” brand for its new, speedier offering, and has launched a website where customers can register to be alerted when 1-Gig becomes available to them.

WOW will be using DOCSIS 3.1 technology to deliver 1 Gbps down by 50 Mbps up on its HFC networks in those initial markets. The operator’s primary network platform for D3.1 will be the Arris E6000 Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP), and is currently evaluating modem vendors.  Six modem vendors have achieved DOCSIS 3.1 certification – Arris (for a retail model), Askey, CastleNet, Netgear, Sagemcom, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive.

In Grosse Point Shores, WOW is expanding its footprint using GPON-based fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technology, and will be offering symmetrical 1-Gig capabilities on that portion of its network. WOW said Grosse Point Shores represents its largest investing to date in FTTH.

Notably, WOW is not implementing usage-based pricing for broadband on any of its speed tiers, including the coming 1-Gig offerings.

“For the time being, we don’t see a lot of value in it,” Cochran said. “Somewhere down the road it may make sense, but, from where we stand right now, we've been able to have a pretty compelling offering to our customers without having to put that in.”

Cochran said WOW’s HFC plant in markets such as Evansville, Knoxville and Auburn were already built out to 860 MHz or 1 GHz, so they already had capacity required to accommodate a 1-Gig service. WOW’s launch of 1-Gig in Huntsville is more of a competitive response – there, AT&T is expanding its fiber-based GigaPower platform, and Google Fiber is preparing to offer gigabit broadband and TV services that will ride a new muni-owned network. Comcast also serves Huntsville. 

WOW said it will be the first provider in Evansville and Auburn to bring 1-Gig to residential and small business customers.

Because most consumers don’t need 1-Gig yet, Cochran doesn’t expect it to generate a big take rate early on.

“To us, at least initially, it's a signal of the quality of offering we're able to provide…We're not going down a path of trying to force everyone into a gig if that's not what they need at this time,” he said, noting that home automation and other IP-based apps and services will continue to drive up speed requirements.

WOW also has plans to replace its current high-end DOCSIS 3.0-based 300 Mbps service with a 600 Mbps offering starting next Tuesday (August 16) across about 90% of its footprint. That will complement WOW’s existing tiers that deliver downstream speeds of 30 Mbps, 60 Mbps and 110 Mbps.

Cochran said 60 Mbps is currently the speed tier with the highest sell-in. 

Gigabit Internet speeds are right around the corner and about to release technological potential that has been constrained for far too long. Fueled by consumer demand for ever faster and more reliable broadband and Internet, cable operators are getting ready for mass deployment of Gigabit speeds to cable subscribers throughout the country.

Capable of delivering a dramatic increases in speed, Gigabit broadband which will radically alter how consumers currently apply and interact with Internet technology, and create avenues to innovation and applications that have yet to be explored. Gigabit speeds have the potential to improve education and distance learning, close the digital divide by providing equal access to all and extend online healthcare to remote areas, all while accelerating economic development.

So what’s driving the demand for Gigabit broadband? Just a few short years ago, the average household had an average of two or three devices connected to the home network. Today, in the Internet of Things (IoT) era, the number of “connected” devices is growing at an astounding rate, resulting in a substantial increase in the average number of connections per household. In addition, the use of the Internet has evolved. Gone are the days of viewing simple web pages, consumers now leverage the Internet for streaming over-the-top video content, cloud storage, sharing high resolution images, interactive online gaming and more. Suddenly, the average U.S. Internet connection of 11.5 Mbps is no longer enough.

Yet enhancing Internet speeds for consumers is only part of the story. The real excitement comes from removing the bottleneck for developers, without the confines of a typical 11.5 Mbps connection. Although some question the need for a 100x increase in speed, our inability to wrap our minds around the potential for Gigabit Broadband is understandable. Thomas Watson, the legendary IBM CEO, is quoted in 1943 as stating “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”. Gigabit broadband is like that. Super-fast lines will allow us to do things that we couldn’t imagine doing with today’s Internet.

Stars Aligned for Gigabit Services

The stars started to align in December of 2012, when Google’s Eric Schmidt announced a shift of the company’s Google Fiber program from being an “experiment” to being run as a business. Within weeks, in January of 2013, then-FCC chairman Julius Genachowski issued the “Gigabit City Challenge” to establish at least one Gigabit community in all 50 states by the close of 2015.

Google’s Fiber program may have been the spark to light the fuse — Gigabit services have fostered healthy competition among Internet and telecommunications providers, who are now in a position to consider not “if” but “when and how” to deploy Gigabit broadband in order to meet consumer’s perceived “need for speed” and maintain their competitive edge.

The combination of federal support for faster Internet speeds and ISP competition is good news for home and small-business users who are just beginning to grasp the potential of Gigabit Internet speeds. AT&T, Comcast, Cox Communications and Liberty Global have each pledged Gigabit coax rollouts within the coming year. And Comcast has gone so far as to offer speeds of 2 Gbps in certain areas. For cable operators, what makes this possible is DOCSIS 3.1 technology, which provides service providers with the tools to offer multi-Gigabit speeds, traditionally associated with fiber, quickly and easily – and without tearing up the ground in front of homes or city streets.

Communities and municipalities are now using their Gigabit broadband speeds as a competitive advantage in selling homes and attracting new businesses. According to a recent study from the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council found that communities with widely-available gigabit access have experienced a positive impact on economic activity where gigabit services are widely available.

A Rush for Consumers & Developers

For the average home user numb to the effects of traditional broadband and Internet speeds, Gigabit rates will come as a satisfying rush. Of course, any bandwidth improvement is subject to more data, so the move to Gigabit networks comes just in time for the rollout of Ultra High Definition (Ultra HD) broadcasts and content. With Gigabit broadband, multiple streams of 4K video will be possible, with plenty of bandwidth to spare.

4K content may have to share the limelight with more intriguing and imaginative applications of high-bandwidth pipes to the home. A good oracle as to what those applications might be the Pew Research Center’s 2014 report, Killer Apps in the Gigabit Age. The Center asked thousands of experts and Internet builders to share their thoughts on applications and activities that might emerge in the Gigabit age, here are some of their thoughts:

-New forms of gaming, such as ones integrating daily life

-Remote medicine and distance learning

-Telepresence (Thanksgiving shared remotely)

-Virtual conferencing; ability to be “anywhere, anytime”

-More sensor data being collected and stored; cloud apps offering richer services

-Two-way, persistent, high-quality video to replace recorded video

-Interactions with doctors, educators and merchants becoming more lifelike

-Augmented reality, virtual environments and life logging

In an era in which consumers demand both high-quality broadcasts and high-bandwidth streaming television content, real-time interactive gaming, and remote home monitoring, Gigabit broadband is arriving right on cue.

About the author:Rich Nelson serves as Senior Vice President of Marketing, Broadband & Connectivity Group at Broadcom Corporation. In this role he is responsible for driving the company’s system-on-chip (SoC) strategies for the worldwide set-top box (STB), digital television (DTV) and cable modem end markets. Nelson holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Masters of Business Administration degree from Pepperdine University. Reach the author @broadcom.

Arris, amplifying that it’s no longer largely cable-focused shop more than a year after closing its acquisition of Motorola Home, has launched a new line of DSL and fiber-to-the-home gateways.

Its new product family – the NVG340 and NVG370 series – delivers voice, video, and data services, and will be on show at the Broadband World Forum, slated for Oct. 21-23 in Amsterdam.

The new gateway lineup, to be commercially available early next year, features WiFi, traffic management components and remote management elements, Arris said.

By access network category, here’s the new lineup:

NVG340 Series ADSL2+/VDSL2 gateways

-NVG341 - with 2.4GHz 802.11n WiFi

-NVG343 - with dual band 2.4GHz 802.11n and 5GHz 802.11ac WiFi

-NVG346 - with 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and VoIP

-NVG348 - with dual band 2.4GHz 802.11n and 5GHz 802.11ac WiFi and VoIP

NVG370 Series FTTH/Ethernet gateways

-NVG371 - with 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi

-NVG373 - with dual band 2.4GHz 802.11n and 5GHz 802.11ac Wi-Fi

-NVG376 - with 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and VoIP

-NVG378 - with dual band 2.4GHz 802.11n and 5GHz 802.11acWi-Fi VoIP