Altice USA said it will launch a 5 Gigabit per second broadband service in parts of its Long Island, New York footprint in June, along with a lower-priced 2Gbps product, more than twice the speeds offered by its competition in the market. 

The 5Gbps service will be priced for new customers at $180 per month, with the 2Gbps offering costing new subscribers $120 per month. Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said in a press release that the multi-gig offering will be available across its New York, New Jersey and Connecticut fiber footprint by the end of the year.    

Altice USA said it would speed up the build out of its fiber network throughout its footprint earlier this year, aimed at bringing faster speeds to customers. The  company lost about 13,000 broadband subscribers in Q1 -- the only major cable operator to do so -- and has made some big changes in the past few months including rebranding its service, to win them back. 

Other operators have offered multi-gig service -- Comcast currently offers a 3Gbps service (Gigabit Pro) in all its markets for $299 per month and recently tested a 400Gbps service -- but offerings generally top out at about 1Gbps. And CableLabs’  DOCSIS 4.0 standard is supposed to enable speeds of up to 10Gbps once it is deployed.  

There are critics that have said most users don’t need speeds that fast -- most can stream video and access the internet with speeds as low as 100 Megabits per second -- but as bandwidth hogging applications like virtual reality, 4K TVs and multiple connected devices proliferate, they may  benefit from faster service. According to researcher OpenVault, average data usage for US consumers has doubled since 2018.  

In a press release, Altice USA said the multi-gig services are symmetrical, meaning customers will receive the same upload and download speeds. The higher speeds also will allow customers to access higher resolution video streaming up to 8K; lower latency which helps in data intensive applications like virtual reality and gaming; greater reliability and Smart WiFi6 for greater whole home coverage. 

“As we continue to expand our new 100% Optimum Fiber Internet network across our footprint, we are pleased to bring the fastest residential fiber internet service to the tri-state area,” Goei said in a press release. “Customers on our Optimum Fiber network are already enjoying fast, symmetrical speeds and a reliable connectivity experience, and we look forward to bringing even faster service with more bandwidth than ever before with our 5 Gig and 2 Gig Optimum Fiber Internet speeds.”   

GCI, the largest telecom company in Alaska, said Tuesday that it will deliver 2 Gigabit per second internet access to 77% of residents of that state in 2022, and is on track to provide 10 Gbps speeds in the next five years. 

With that commitment, GCI said it would be the first in Alaska and one of the first in the country to make 2 Gbps speeds widely available to its customers. The company began making 1 Gbps speeds available to its customers in 2015, when it launched 1GIG Red service in Anchorage. Today, 77% of Alaskans live within GCI’s 1 Gbps footprint.

“When I started GCI more than 40 years ago, Alaska lagged far behind the rest of the nation in basic connectivity,” GCI CEO Ron Duncan said in a press release. “Today I’m pleased to announce that when upgrades are complete in 2022, Alaska will lead the nation in 2 gig speeds. And it will be our turn, once again, to wait for the rest of the country to catch up.” 

Also Read: Liberty Broadband, GCI Liberty to Merge 

GCI said communities that currently have access to its 1 Gbps service will be the first to receive the 2 Gbps service when it becomes available. Customers on GCI+ red plans will automatically be upgraded to 2 gig service, doubling their current speeds at no additional cost. 

Other Alaskan communities that will have access to 2 Gbps speeds when the service launches next year include: Anchorage, Eagle River, Girdwood, Fairbanks, Fort Greely, Homer, Juneau, Kenai, Ketchikan, Kodiak, North Pole, Palmer, Petersburg, Seward, Soldotna, Sitka, Valdez, Wasilla and Wrangell. 

GCI also plans to launch 1 Gbps service later this year in Nome and Kotzebue, and as part of its ambitious AU-Aleutians Fiber Project, will deliver 1 Gbps speeds to the remote Western Alaska communities of Unalaska, King Cove, Akutan, Sand Point, Chignik Bay and Larsen Bay.

Also Read: Cable’s Last Frontier

GCI’s 2 gig speeds will be available in these communities in a future phase of the upgrade project.

“Nome, Kotzebue and communities in the Aleutians are among the most remote in the nation, but will soon have urban-level internet comparable to Anchorage, Chicago and Los Angeles,” Duncan said in the press release. “It’s another example of GCI’s commitment to closing the digital divide and turning the Last Frontier into the First Frontier for connectivity.” 

GCI also said that it is developing a business and technical plan to build fiber to Bethel, the largest city in the western part of the state, to provide 1 Gbps, 2 Gbps and eventually 10 Gbps speeds. 

“For decades, GCI has pioneered ground-breaking connectivity solutions for rural Alaska,” GCI President Greg Chapados said in the release. “TERRA, our hybrid fiber-microwave network, which brought terrestrial broadband service to Western Alaska for the first time; the AU-Aleutians Fiber Project, which should be substantially complete by the end of next year; and the launch of 1 gig in Kotzebue and Nome later this year illustrates our longstanding commitment to serving rural Alaskans. We are working to finalize a comprehensive plan for the next evolution of data communications in rural Alaska. Bringing fiber to Bethel is a top priority in that plan.”

Looking to spark sales of gigabit-speed service, Verizon Fios will be throwing in 12 months of free premium Netflix service for those who commit to two years for its Gigabit Connection Internet packages.

With Netflix recently upping the price of its premium tier to $15.99 a month, that shakes out to a $192 a year value.

Related: Netflix Loses 8% of Consumers with $1 Price Increase: Study

Tiers included in the promotion include the Gigabit Connection Triple Play package, with bundles 940 Mbps up/880 Mbps down internet service, the Custom TV skinny bundle and landline phone for $79.99 a month.

Verizon will also provide the promotion for existing customers who re-up for two years.

Verizon integrated Netflix into its Fios TV user interface last year. 

Verizon added 47,000 Fios Internet customers in the fourth quarter, with total revenue from its wireline business flat year over year. The company did not disclose how many subscribers are using gigabit-speed services at this point. Verizon said the service is currently available to “millions of homes in the Mid-Atlantic, including residences in select areas of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.”

Arris is set to launch a new WiFi system that it says can deliver multi-gigabit speeds throughout homes as large as 6,000 square feet.

Targeted for availability in the first half of 2019, and set to be previewed at next week’s CES Show in Las Vegas, the SURFboard mAX Pro Sri-Band 4x4 WiFi 6 system supports 400% faster speeds and four times the range of WiFi 5 (802.11ac), according to Arris.

While most current mesh systems commonly use dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) technology, the SURFboard mAX Pro System uses a third, 5 GHz band that enables more connected devices in a single router configuration.

Using WiFi 6, the Alexa-compatible SURFboard mAX Pro System has a usable range of up to 6,000 square feet--or up to 3,000 sure feet with a single SURFboard mAX Pro Router.

"It is the answer to consumer demand for the fastest speeds throughout the entire home,” said Evan Groat, senior VP and GM of Arris’ consumer products group. “Gigabit is becoming table stakes, and we've combined the best networking technology available to ensure that consumers can use all the speed they pay for, on every device, in every room, for years to come."

“Arris’ continued foray into WiFi 6 comes at an opportune time in the wireless market,” added Andrew Zignani, senior analyst for ABI Research, shilling for Arris in the company’s product announcement. “Specifically, the growing number of connected devices in the home is creating a surge in network traffic and driving demand for more reliable and higher-capacity WiFi.”

In 1970, cable MSOs served about 4 million homes, a small percentage of the U.S. residences they would ultimately reach in the decades to follow; The Brady Bunch was airing its second season, Abbey Road topped the charts; and three Corning scientists had just invented the first low-loss optical fiber, transforming the way the world connects.

Since then, enough fiber has been deployed to circle the globe 25,000 times and, according to the Cisco Virtual Networking Index, by 2021 the number of devices connected to an internet protocol network will be three times as high as the global population. Connectivity matters. From the life-enhancing power of information moving at the speed of light, to freeing the fundamental human need for connection from the boundaries of distance, we’ve only just begun to realize the rich potential of optical connectivity.

MSOs have long been at the forefront of network migration to deliver cutting-edge services and applications. They were among the earliest adopters of fiber in their networks, with TelePrompTer having first trialed optical fiber in 1976 for its “super-trunk” distribution in Manhattan. Less than two decades later in 1992, the first fiber-to-the-node designs were tested and trialed and hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) networks were born.

Shortly thereafter, in the early 2000s, telecommunications service providers began significant optical network investment, passing 35 million homes with fiber in the United States and connecting about 15 million fiber to the home (FTTH) subscribers. Fiber deployment to the network’s edge continues today at a feverish pace. Many of these operators are now further investing in fiber plant for 4G densification and 5G, driving substantial fiber density in urban environments to support new millimeter wave spectrum and lower-powered small cells.

Throughout these periods of fiber penetration into the access network, MSOs continued to expand their HFC network, now passing approximately tens of millions of U.S. homes. Services also expanded as video delivery on coax evolved into a primary broadband access medium, and HFC demonstrated continued ability to deliver a competitive advantage against legacy wireline alternatives. It is a tale of two cities in one rapidly changing market: legacy copper — sometimes over 100 years old and built at a time when telephony was its singular purpose — facing focused, necessary leaps to all-fiber; and the younger, robust HFC plant built for video broadcast and revolutionized by DOCSIS, facing more rapidly decrementing coax lengths to make use of higher frequencies and deliver faster downstream and upstream speeds.

Regardless of architecture, all operators in the industry are at an inflection point.

The combination of evolving consumer connectivity expectations, competitive landscapes in key markets, and the underlying macrotrend of fiber penetration deep into the network, suggest it is now more critical than ever to architect a quantified, detailed, and tactically-relevant transformation plan.

Decision-makers with vision and an eye on operating expenses are pursuing sustainable network transformation that grows their leadership position for the next decade in a rapidly evolving market. Given the wide range of options and the scale of investment at stake in this upgrade cycle, the network architects at Corning believe that now is the opportunity for leaders in the industry to challenge their teams, stakeholders, and advisors on topics such as:

• “Where, when, and how can the enterprise leverage gains in fiber access network efficiencies as a complementary investment to HFC upgrades such that we maximize competitive advantage and minimize regrettable spend?”

• “What factors in the plan ensure maximum return on investment (ROI) across business units for every capex dollar spent?”

• “Are the transformation plans(s) implementable at the necessary scale, and with what resources?”

• “What is the magnitude of operational savings made possible with optical plant that can be applied toward revenue-growing expansions of services, subscribers, and service areas?”

As industry leaders explore responses within the context of their individual business models, here are three considerations to bear in mind.

1. The Evolution of the Connected Experience Creates Opportunity for a Converged Business Case

Connectivity is increasingly transforming from static wireline to mobile or wireless delivery. As reported by Cisco, smartphone traffic will exceed PC traffic by 2020 and account for 30 percent of the total global IP traffic. While the 5G business case remains nascent, it is clear the competitive landscape is changing along with customer expectations.

Today, most operators structure their businesses around functional service silos: content, residential, business and wireless. Given wireless densification, upcoming opportunities in Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum, continued proliferation of Wi-Fi access points, mobile virtual network operator structures (MVNOs), and the revenue opportunities in business and residential services, a combined approach to building target services areas is too worthwhile to ignore. The savvy operator is considering the competitive power of a converged investment in the outside plant.

Our experience in the deployment of fiber access networks over the past 15-plus years shows that 50% to 75% of the cost associated with building new plant is attributed to labor — a nonfixed asset. Corning’s forward-analyzed converged architectures based on the same true costs indicate savings potential between 15 and 50 percent when service providers build a single optical network for multiple uses. Capital invested in scalable infrastructure can more advantageously serve the MSO when applied to a single, multiuse network rather than to multiple, purpose-built networks within a common service area. Consistent with these trends, modern connectivity solutions enable isolation between service types within the same optical layer while reducing total cost and easing service provider access to the converged access business case.

2. Millions of Homes Passed is a Long-Term Transformation and a Heavy Lift Worthy of Actionable Consideration

Coax gets short to go long: Many architectures supporting node+0, remote PHY and full-duplex DOCSIS place the node within a few thousand feet of residences. Service areas are shrinking from what was 500 or 1,000-plus homes per parent node to an average of fewer than 100 homes per child node. Depending on the service area density, this node split may result in as many as five to 20 child nodes. Some operators estimate all-in capex at $20,000 to $50,000 per fiber deep node. Quick division easily places anticipated capex as high as $500 per home passed, not including the additional plant conditioning necessary to support mid and high splits. In addition to upfront costs, the plant requires further investment in power supplies and batteries as the reduction of centralized powering at the headend, hub, or parent node is exchanged for less efficient distributed powering in the field.

With child nodes within 1,000 feet of the home, and costs between a few to several hundred dollars per home in child node service areas, a cost comparison to FTTH is both relevant and timely. Major communications providers have consistently averaged at scale all-in FTTH deployment costs at or below $700 per home passed across their service area footprints, and the figures continue to drop. The upfront cost similarity is striking; however a notable difference could involve the cost to connect a fiber subscriber, which is an additional expense not incurred in brownfield HFC when a coax drop is present.

The costs to pass and connect homes with fiber continue to decrease due to economies of scale and the labor-reducing efficiencies created by integrated optical solutions. With comparable first-installed costs, the advantaged opex for fiber networks, and with the maturation of linear IPTV offerings, MSOs now have line of sight to a compelling FTTH business case even in overbuild environments.

Preserve and leap with HFC-enabled passing gear: While traditional FTTH architectures were built to connect wide service areas in large-scale, fast-paced overbuilds, CATV operators face that constraint only by exception. The luxury of robust plant in traditional node+x architectures enables MSOs to much more strategically invest in scalable infrastructure. Two such examples are converged optical plant investment in select markets and residential FTTH designed around small node service areas that ease the operational lift and offer greater total cost-efficiencies as compared to historical mass-overbuild architectures.

Integrated connectivity solutions designed to service sub-256 home pockets allow for easy and phased use of transformation concepts:

(1) Preserve legacy HFC by splitting nodes only as needed and apply saved CapEx to full FTTH at scale in present day node-sized or larger pockets.

(2) Continue traditional node splits all the way down to sub-256 homes, then build FTTH node-by-node either (A) on-demand (surgical FTTH), or (B) with full-service area coverage.

(3) Node+0 with Remote PHY where node splits offer insufficient service improvement and FTTH is impractical to implement

3. Choices Made Today Impact Tomorrow’s Growth Potential – and Costs

When Hurricane Sandy tore through the Northeast, service areas around entire central offices had to be rebuilt. Rather than spend regrettably and brace themselves to repeat the cycle with the next big storm, operators replaced legacy copper with a fully passive, optical plant. The results have been a proof point for the industry, with the new networks being 70% to 90% more reliable, consuming 40% to 60% less energy, and ultimately delivering annual operational savings of nearly 60% since that transformation. More recently, Hurricane Harvey flooded huge areas of Houston in 2017, and in many instances, full optical communications infrastructure remained largely unaffected due to the inherent advantages that fiber has over copper in wet conditions. Once power was restored to homes and businesses — either over the power grid or through subscriber use of generators — connectivity immediately resumed.

To that end, industry contacts estimate that a powered HFC plant costs cable operators between $1,000 and $3,000 per route mile per year to power and maintain. With representative figures between 100 and 150 homes per route mile, the cost to maintain residential broadband service over coax can be between $15 and $50 per residence per year. While powered plant is an enormous strategic asset, it may most powerfully serve the MSO when optimized for applications that maximize competitive advantage and increase or diversify revenue. These opex considerations are significant contributors to the long-term value of optical transformation. Perhaps the FTTH ROI — better still, a converged optical access ROI — is shorter than once believed and within this upgrade cycle for specific service area demographics. Quantified and tactically relevant transformation plans will identify those demographics and phase their transformation.

Forty eight years after the first low-loss optical fiber was invented, the connected experience continues to amaze people and enrich lives, making it increasingly necessary to expand the reach of fiber in our always-on world. As we enter the Gigabit era, CATV operators face the opportunity to apply scalable infrastructure spend in a powerfully impactful and competitive manner. Collaboration that both challenges conventional perspective and delivers scale may be of far greater value than in years past, and can offer alternatives that may just bring a far greater return.

Cate McNaught is emerging applications market development manager at Corning Optical Communications. 

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. 

Mozilla (Firefox) is adding two cities to its Gigabit Community fund.

The fund is awarding $300,000 in grants to leverage gigabit fiber networks in Eugene, Ore., and Lafayette, La., the company said.

The money will go to things like ultra-high definition in the classroom and VR field trips, taking a page or two from existing Mozilla gigabit cities Austin, Tex.;Chattanooga, Tenn., and Kansas City.

The fund is a collaboration with the National Science Foundation and U.S. Ignite.

The two cities were added based on various criteria, including widely deployed high=speed broadband and a "critical mass" of anchor institutions.

“Mozilla is committed to supporting promising projects in gigabit-enabled U.S. cities — projects that use connectivity 250-times normal speeds to make learning more engaging, equitable and impactful," said Chris Lawrence, VP, leadership network, for Mozilla.

Google Fiber is considering Dallas as an expansion city for its 1-Gig broadband and pay TV services, possibly setting the stage for more competition there with Charter Communications, Grande Communications and AT&T.  

Google Fiber, which offers service in parts of Austin and has a buildout underway in San Antonio, has not made a firm commitment to deploy in Big D, but said it’s begun a joint planning process with the city, similar to the process it started last year with Chicago and Los Angeles.

“Bringing Google Fiber to Dallas would be a huge undertaking, so we want to make sure we’re prepared," Jill Szuchmacher, Google Fiber’s director of expansion, noted in this blog post. “Google Fiber Working alongside Mayor Mike Rawlings and local leaders, we’ll use our Fiber checklist to learn more about local topography, existing infrastructure, and other factors that may impact construction. Building a fiber optic network through a dense and complex urban environment like Dallas is challenging—these discussions will help us deploy our network efficiently and responsibly.”

In Dallas, Google will face off with Charter (via its acquisition of Time Warner Cable, which started its all-digital “Maxx” upgrades there back in 2015, and AT&T, which launched its fiber-based GigaPower service to parts of Dallas/Ft. Worth in 2014; and Grande Communications, which has also been pushing 1-Gig into several of its markets.

Google Fiber has also launched service in Nashville, Tenn.; Atlanta; Kansas City; and Provo, Utah; and has committed to deploy in Salt Lake City; San Antonio; and Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, N.C.

In addition to Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas, Google Fiber is also mulling expansions in Portland, Ore.; San Jose, Irvine and San Diego, Calif.; Phoenix; Oklahoma City; Louisville, Ky.; and Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.

Arris said Altice will deploy its flagship cable access platform, the E6000, to enable gigabit broadband services in multiple parts of the globe.

Altice will deploy the E6000, a DOCSIS 3.1-facing converged cable access platform (CCAP), via SFR in France, Orange-Tricom in The Dominican Republic, along with an expansion of the E6000 footprint at Suddenlink Communications, the U.S.-based MSO Altice acquired late last year.

Arris announced the deal ahead of an investor meeting being held today in New York. 

In February, Altice, which is in the process of acquiring Cablevision Systems, said it was committed to Operation GigaSpeed, a Suddenlink initiative announced in 2014 aimed at bringing 1-Gig broadband to 90% of the MSO’s footprint by 2017.

“Altice is fast-becoming a major player in the global pay TV market, and it's an exciting time for ARRIS to be collaborating with operators from the Altice Group around the world. Selecting the ARRIS E6000 CER is a strategic technology investment for Altice that benefits its global operations today and into the future,” said Bruce McClelland, president of Network & Cloud, Global Services at Arris, in a statement.

“Working with ARRIS assures us from both a technological and operational perspective as the ARRIS E6000 CER is a proven, global platform with a clear roadmap for the future,” added Max Blumberg, CTO of Altice. “We look forward to deploying the platform across the Altice properties as we strive to deliver the broadband speeds and services our customers demand from us.”

Arris isn’t the only network vendor factoring into Altice’s gigabit plans. Last April, Altice announced it would also tap Cisco Systems’s CCAP products as it poured its foundation for DOCSIS 3.1, a new platform that will bring multi-gigabit speeds to HFC networks. Cisco formally launched its flagship cable access network platform, the cBR-8, at last year’s INTX show.

AT&T said it has expanded the reach of GigaPower, its fiber-based 1-Gig platform for residential and business customers, to additional parts of five more markets:

-Chicago: Hampshire, Munster and St. John  (standalone 1-Gig starts at $110 per month)

-Miami: Coral Springs, North Miami and Tamarac (standalone 1-Gig starts at $110 per month)

-Dallas/Fort Worth: Richardson (standalone 1-Gig starts at $110 per month)

-Houston: Friendswood, Pearland, Manvel and Missouri City (standalone 1-Gig starts at $110 per month)

-San Antonio: Converse (standalone 1-Gig starts at $70 per month)

AT&T originally debuted GigaPower in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area on Aug. 14, 2014;  in Houston on April 6, 2015; in Chicago on April 20, 2015; in Miami on May 4, 2015; and in San Antonio on Sept. 28, 2015. 

AT&T, which acquired DirecTV last July, said it currently offers GigaPower to parts of 20 metros, with plans to expand it to 36 more.

Comcast has booted up an “advanced consumer trial” of a DOCSIS 3.1-powered 1 Gbps broadband service for early adopters in select parts of Atlanta ahead of an expected wider rollout in the city and in other markets around the country.  

Comcast said the service being tested in Atlanta, which pairs a 1-Gig downstream with an upstream that maxes out at 35 Mbps, is being offered under two pricing options – a promotional contract price of $70 per month for 36 months and unlimited data, and a no-contract price that runs $139.95 per month.  Comcast has been testing usage-based broadband policies in several markets, including Atlanta, but has not announced if it intends to make it a company-wide, commercial policy. Among the policies being tested is an "Unlimited Data Option" that costs an additional fee of $30 to $35 per month, depending on the market. 

Comcast said it intends to roll out 1-Gig services at addition price points in other markets as it tries to gauge consumer interest for gigabit speeds.

Last month, Comcast announced that it would rollout residential and business-class gigabit broadband using DOCSIS 3.1 in Atlanta and Nashville in “early 2016,” and follow with launches in Chicago, Detroit and Miami in the second half of the year.

Comcast said new and current customers in Atlanta can visit Xfinity.com/gig to learn about the new gigabit service and to request additional information on the trial as the service becomes more broadly available. Those selected will be among the first to kick the tires on a service that uses DOCSIS 3.1, a new multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks, and will be encouraged to provide Comcast with feedback on the service.

According to a WSB-TV, Atlanta neighborhoods that will be part of the trial include Brookhaven, Avondale Estates, Dunwoody, Decatur, Chamblee, Doraville, Sandy Springs, East Point, College Park, Midtown Atlanta, Buckhead, Alpharetta, English Avenue, Carver Hills and Roswell.

Comcast didn’t announce which modem vendors are taking part in the Atlanta D3.1 trial. However, five vendors -- Askey, Castle Net, Netgear, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive -- have achieved DOCSIS 3.1 certification from CableLabs for their respective cable modem products. Last month, Arris announced via its blog that the supplier's flagship cable access platform, the E6000 Converged Edge Router, is supporting Comcast D3.1 rollout in four of the five markets already identified by the cable operator. 

“Our Atlanta customers will be among the first in the world to enjoy this new Gigabit technology, and we’re looking forward to learning more from these early adopters about how they take advantage of these ultra-fast speeds,” Bill Connors, president of Comcast’s Central Division, said in a statement. “The capabilities of DOCSIS 3.1 are incredibly exciting, and we are the first to market with a Gigabit offering that runs over our existing cable infrastructure.”

Comcast also sells a symmetrical 2 Gbps residential service called Gigabit Pro that uses fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology. That uncapped service, which costs $299.95 per month, is currently available to 18 million homes (eligible homes must be within one-third of a mile of Comcast’s fiber network).

From a competitive standpoint, Google Fiber has begun to use some existing fiber infrastructure in the Atlanta area to deliver service to select apartment buildings in the city’s suburbs to seed the market ahead of a planned, broader network deployment in the area.  AT&T has also rolled out its fiber-based "GigaPower" service to parts of the Atlanta area ($70 per month for standalone 1-Gig, $120 when bundled with TV service, and $150 when combined with TV and U-verse voice).

Cox Communications said it has begun to roll out “G1GABLAST,” its 1 Gbps residential broadband service, in Tucson, Ariz., with an initial deployment set for The Place @ Presidio Trails, a new development with one- two- and three bedroom apartment homes.

Update: Cox will sell G1GABLAST in Tucson for  $119.99 per month as a standalone, and $99.99 per month when bundled with other Cox services. The offering includes a WiFi router, one terabyte of cloud storage, the Cox Security Suite and Family Protection service, and 10 email boxes (15 gigabytes of storage for each address).

Cox, which launched 1-Gig in Phoenix in 2014, said G1GABLAST is now live in parts of ten states, and that it’s on track to offer gigabit broadband in all markets by the end of 2016. Cox has also deployed G1GABLAST in parts of Oklahoma; Rhode Island; Las Vegas; Omaha; San Diego; Orange County; Baton Rouge; Hampton Roads, Va.; Northwest Arkansas; Wichita;  and Tulsa.

In the early going, Cox is using FTTP to deliver residential 1-Gig in select areas, but will also deliver those faster speeds on its more widely deployed HFC network using DOCSIS 3.1 technology.

 “We are excited to deliver the choice of gigabit speeds to our customers,” said Cox Communications president Pat Esser, in a statement. “Coupled with our 250 employees in southern Arizona and more than 24,000 nationwide, our latest investments and the deployment of the fastest speeds available are powering economic growth and development for businesses and residents of the communities we serve.”

Taking a similar path it first paved in Atlanta, Google Fiber said it is accelerating its move into San Francisco by using existing fiber there to deliver services to certain apartments, condos and housing properties in the market.

“To date, we’ve focused mostly on building fiber-optic networks from scratch. Now, as Google Fiber grows, we’re looking for more ways to serve cities of different shapes and sizes,” Michael Slinger, director of business operations, Google Fiber, said in this blog post.

Also of note, Google Fiber announced this week that it will offer services on a planned municipal fiber network being built in Huntsville, Ala.

“By using existing fiber to connect some apartments and condos, as we’ve done before, we can bring service to residents more quickly. This approach will allow us to serve a portion of San Francisco, complementing the City’s ongoing efforts to bring abundant, high-speed Internet to the City by the Bay,” Slinger wrote.

Google Fiber has not announced details on service and the launch timeline in San Francisco, where it will compete with Comcast, which offers a symmetrical 2 Gbps residential service called Gigabit Pro that uses FTTP, and AT&T, which has tagged S.F. for expansion of its fiber-based GigaPower service. However, Google Fiber has set up a website where area residents can keep tabs on service deployment developments.

With San Francisco added in, Google Fiber said it has committed to bring its mix of gigabit and pay TV services to ten metro areas. Others on that list include parts of Kansas City; Provo, and Salt Lake City, Utah; Atlanta;  Austin and San  Antonio, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; and Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, N.C.

Google Fiber is also exploring expansions in Chicago; Portland, Ore.; Los Angeles, San Jose, Irvine and San Diego, Calif.; Phoenix; Oklahoma City; Louisville, Ky.; and Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.

AT&T said it has extended the reach of its fiber-based  GigaPower platform to more Nashville-area cities, including portions of Berry Hill, Brentwood and Hendersonville.

AT&T has already launched GigaPower and its 1-Gig capabiltires in other nearby cities and towns, including Clarksville, Franklin, Gallatin, Lebanon, Murfreesboro, Nashville, Smyrna, and Spring Hill.

In Nashville, AT&T competes with Comcast, which intends to launch DOCSIS 3.1-powered gigabit broadband service there later this year, and currently offers a symmetrical 2 Gbps offering called Gigabit Pro in the market using FTTP. Google Fiber is also deploying a network network there that will deliver a mix of gigabit broadband and pay TV services. 

GigaPower subs in these additional areas can also pair their broadband service with pay TV from U-verse or DirecTV, though AT&T, of late, has been steering new subs toward the lower-cost satellite TV platform. Those that opt for DirecTV will get immediate access to select TV content on compatible mobile devices via the DirecTV app – before installation – via the company’s “Walk out Watching” program.

Here’s how GigaPower pricing and packaging stacks up in this market:

•U-verse High Speed Internet Premier: Internet speeds up to 1Gbps starting at $70 a month.

•U-verse High Speed Internet Premier + TV: Up to 1Gbps, plus TV service starting at $120 per month.

•U-verse High Speed Internet Premier + TV + Voice: 1Gbps, plus TV and U-verse voice starting at $150 per month.

Subs who take the Premier plans agree to participate in AT&T Internet Preferences, the company's targeted Web advertising program.

AT&T said its GigaPower network currently spans more than 1 million “locations,” and that it expects to double availability by the end of 2016.

Moving ahead on plan to trial DOCSIS 3.1 technology in Q4 2015, Comcast announced on its corporate blog Tuesday that it reached a milestone when it installed a D3.1-based modem on a “customer-facing network” in late November in its hometown of Philadelphia, and has since expanded those tests to a set of other markets.

“The next-generation technology that will deliver gigabit Internet speeds moved from the laboratory to the living room late last month when we installed what we believe to be the world’s first DOCSIS 3.1 modem on a customer-facing network,” Tony  Werner, Comcast’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, noted in the blog post. “Since installing the first live DOCSIS 3.1 modem here in Philadelphia, we’ve continued to expand the trials to additional locations in Pennsylvania, Northern California and Atlanta, Georgia,”

DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging CableLabs specification, has been designed to support capacities of up to 10 Gbps down and at least 1 Gbps upstream, but the first wave of D3.1 modems, which will support both DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 3.0 traffic, will be capable of supporting about 5 Gbps down and 1 Gbps upstream when fully loaded. Comcast is currently offering residential gigabit speeds in several markets in a targeted fashion via Gigabit Pro, a symmetrical 2 Gbps service that relies on fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technologies. Comcast will greatly expand the reach of residential gigabit broadband when it rolls out DOCSIS 3.1 via its widely deployed hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network.

“The test used the standard cable connections that we have in homes across the country,” Werner wrote. “All we needed was a new modem, a software upgrade to the device that serves that neighborhood, and a few good engineers.”

The initial batch of trials, currently being targeted to an undisclosed number of employee homes in the aforementioned markets, is delivering downstream speeds of about 1 Gbps. 

Comcast previewed a D3.1-based “Gigabit Home Gateway” (pictured) in May at the INTX show in Chicago, noting that the new device was expected to go into production sometime this year. Werner’s blog post did not mention whose equipment Comcast is using for the trials. However, Arris and Taiwan’s Compal Electronics were the manufacturing partners involved in the D3.1-based device shown at INTX earlier this year, according to Light Reading.

Werner said Comcast will continue to test DOCSIS 3.1 in the “coming months, as we get ready to start delivering DOCSIS 3.1-powered service to our customers. Before the end of 2016, we will begin offering a new gigabit speed choice that works over the existing connections in our customers’ homes in several parts of the country.”

In the meantime, he said Comcast plans to activate more homes with DOCSIS 3.1 technology so the MSO “can observe how it performs in multiple real-world environments and make whatever minor modifications necessary to get it ready for deployment to our customers…We still have a lot of work to do, but these tests confirm that DOCSIS 3.1 will work over our existing network as currently configured.” 

Bernstein Research has been outspoken in its bullishness on Google Fiber’s prospects compared to other Wall Street analysts, and in the wake of potential expansions into Los Angeles and Chicago, the investment research firm now wonders if it’s not being bullish enough.

“We have never said that Google Fiber will certainly be large or profitable," Bernstein Research held in a research note issued Thursday under the title: Google Fiber - Have We Been Too Bearish? "Instead, we think it could very well be profitable, which is in stark contrast to the Street's unambiguously negative view,”

Historically, the research group has held that Google Fiber faces a lengthy buildout process that won’t reach more than 10 million homes passed in the next few years, unless it goes after some major cities and surrounding metro areas.

That’s exactly what Google Fiber is now contemplating as it explores (but has yet to commit to) deployments in L.A. and Chicago – the biggest possible undertaking for Google Fiber so far.

If Google Fiber were to go full-throttle build out 75% of those markets over the next five years, it would pass 6.3 million homes and 1.6 million business locations there alone, Bernstein Research said, noting that the move would still limit Google’s exposure to FiOS, which is only deployed to a small piece of L.A.

Google has not formally entered either of those markets, but the prospect is giving Bernstein Research some second thoughts about its future scale. “Our high end estimate of 20-25 million homes passed by Google Fiber may prove less aggressive than we thought,” it said.

In October, the firm estimated that Google Fiber’s network passed about 427,000 homes and 96,000 business locations, primarily in Kansas City and Provo, Utah, and that it had signed up as many as 120,000 paid subs.

Despite AT&T’s recent, more aggressive commitment for GigaPower, its fiber-based gigabit platform, Bernstein Research still thinks Google Fiber poses a bigger threat to cable’s broadband business.

While DOCSIS 3.1 will enable MSOs to deliver “comparable headline speeds” to Google Fiber via widely deployed HFC networks, the greater concern is that “Google's entry will make it difficult to raise broadband prices to the extent possible when competing against a more cooperative telco provider.”

Comcast confirmed that the MSO has expanded the availability of Gigabit Pro, its FTTP-based symmetrical 2 Gbps residential broadband service, to the Northeast Division, which serves about 8 million customers across more than a dozen states, including Maine, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

A user on the DSL Reports message board posted a revised Gigabit Pro coverage map illustrating the expansion.

Comcast’s current (older) Gigabit Pro availability map identifies other towns and cities that have access in parts of California, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Washington, Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, and Oregon.

Comcast started to sell Gigabit Pro in July for a promotional price of $159 per month; the general price for the up-capped service is $299.95 per month. It’s subject to a two-year agreement and fees of up to $500 for installation and $500 for activation.

Comcast introduced Gigabit Pro in April, announcing then that it would make it available to 18 million customers by the end of 2015. To get it, customers must be within a third of a mile of the MSO’s fiber network.

Comcast is deploying Gigabit Pro on a demand-driven basis, only pulling fiber and installing the necessary home-side gear to customers who sign up for it. The operator is also looking to offer gigabit speeds on broader basis on its HFC network using the emerging DOCSIS 3.1 platform. 

It's been a big week for gigabit expansions. AT&T announced yesterday it was expanding GigaPower to parts of 38 metros, while Google Fiber revealed plans today to explore buildouts in two major U.S. cities -- Chicago and Los Angeles. 

In an announcement that could boost competition with incumbent providers such as Comcast and AT&T, Google Fiber said it’s exploring an expansion that would bring its 1-Gig and pay TV services to Chicago and Los Angeles.

Google Fiber has invited authorities in those cities to explore the idea after the provider refined its buildout checklist.

“Now, we’re ready to use that same process to work with two of the biggest cities in the country, Jill Szuchmacher, director of Google Fiber expansion, said Tuesday in this blog post.  "Home to a combined 6+ million people, Chicago and L.A. are the two largest metros we’ve engaged with to date.”

The exploration and reach out with those cities are a “big step” in the process, she added, but noted that there’s no guarantee that Google Fiber will launch in Chicago and/or L.A.

But if it does, it will amp up competition in those markets.

In L.A., Google Fiber would come up against Time Warner Cable, the area’s primary MSO incumbent that’s merging with Charter Communications, and AT&T, which recently identified Los Angeles as an expansion site for its fiber-fed GigaPower platform. In June, the city of Los Angeles approved a request for participants (RFP) as part of the CityLinkLA project  to identify one or more providers to commit to deploying wireline and WiFi networks that can deliver speeds of 1 Gbps, and complete the job within the next five years.

In Chicago, Google Fiber would tangle with overbuilder RCN, and Comcast, which has introduced its 2 Gbps “Gigabit Pro” FTTP offering in the Windy City. AT&T has also launched GigaPower to parts of Chicago.

Google Fiber currently offers service in three markets – Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas; and has buildouts underway in Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Nashville, Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte.

Google Fiber’s also exploring buildouts in Portland, Ore.; San Jose, Irvine and San Diego, Calif.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Oklahoma City; Louisville, Ky.; and Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.

Google Fiber has not released subscriber counts for its gigabit broadband and pay TV services, but Bernstein Researchestimated recently that it has between 100,000 to 120,000 paid subs, and that its network currently passes about 427,000 homes and 96,000 business locations.

With its merger with DirecTV long closed, AT&T has begun to apply more focus on its GigaPower platform, announcing Monday that it will expand the reach of its fiber-based network to homes, businesses and apartment buildings to parts of another 38 metros.

AT&T didn't detail the rollout timing, but said those additions will expand GigaPower’s footprint to 56 metros.

AT&T has expanded its live GigaPower footprint to portions of 20 metros with the addition of Los Angeles, Calif.; and West Palm Beach, Fla. AT&T has not revealed how many GigaPower subscribers have signed on, but Brad Bentley, AT&T Entertainment Group’s EVP and chief marketing officer, said in a statement that customer demand and sales of GigaPower “have exceeded expectations” since the initial launch in Austin, Texas, about two years ago. 

AT&T said its GigaPower network now passes 1 million “locations,” and that it expects to more than double that number by the end of 2016.

With the Los Angeles West Palm Beach rollouts factored in, here are the markets AT&T has identified for its latest GigaPower expansion wave:

-Alabama: Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery

-Arkansas: Fort Smith/Northwest Arkansas and Little Rock

-California: Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose

-Florida: Pensacola and West Palm Beach

-Georgia: Augusta

-Indiana: Indianapolis

-Kansas: Wichita

-Kentucky: Louisville

-Louisiana: Baton Rouge, Shreveport-Bossier, Jefferson Parish region and the Northshore

-Mississippi: Jackson

-Missouri: St. Louis

-Michigan: Detroit

-Nevada: Reno

-North Carolina: Asheville

-Ohio: Cleveland and Columbus

-Oklahoma: Oklahoma City and Tulsa

-South Carolina: Charleston, Columbia and Greenville

-Tennessee: Memphis

-Texas: El Paso and Lubbock

-Wisconsin: Milwaukee

AT&T has set up an online map that tracks deployments and availability of GigaPower.

AT&T noted that customers in the majority of its GigaPower markets looking to bundle pay TV service will have the option to choose between DirecTV or U-verse TV. 

Cox Communications’s residential 1-Gig march continued this week with the debut of the MSO’s “G1GABLAST” service in parts of Northern Virginia,  where the operator tangles with Verizon FiOS, a fiber-fed platform that currently tops out at 500 Mbps.

Cox billed the launch as the first gigabit service in the DC Metro area (Comcast has not yet made Gigabit Pro, its residential 2 Gbps FTTP offering, available in the Washington, D.C. area) .  Early on, Cox is offering 1-Gig residential broadband to residents at Timber Ridge at Discovery Square in Fairfax County.

Cox recently expanded G1GABLAST to parts of Providence, the service’s initial entry into the Rhode Island market, and has it deployed it to portions of Phoenix; Las Vegas; Omaha; San Diego; Orange County; Baton Rouge; Hampton Roads, Va.; Northwest Arkansas; Wichita; Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

In Northern Virginia, Cox is selling G1GABLAST for $99.99 per month when bundled with other Cox services.

Cox currently offers 1-Gig using fiber-to-the-premises technology, and has plans to deliver gigabit speeds using DOCSIS 3.1, cable’s next-gen IP platform for HFC networks as Cox fulfills its plan to begin market-wide deployment of 1-Gig broadband by the end of 2016.

 “We are excited to deliver the choice of gigabit speeds to our customers,” said Cox Communications president Pat Esser said in a statement. “Coupled with our 2,400 employees throughout Cox Virginia and more than 24,000 nationwide, our latest investments and the deployment of the fastest speeds available are powering economic growth and development for businesses and residents of the communities we serve.”

“Cox has invested $1.33 billion in our network in Virginia in the last ten years to meet the growing demands of our customers,” added Cox Virginia SVP and regional manager J.D. Myers II. “We are committed to keeping our residential and businesses customers in Northern Virginia connected to the things they care about most, today and in the years to come."     

AT&T said it has launched its fiber-based GigaPower platform to parts of several new areas in and around markets such as Atlanta, Chicago and Houston.

Here’s the latest batch of expansions and pricing on a market-by-market basis:

-Atlanta: Alpharetta, Cartersville, Duluth, East Point and Rome. Standalone 1-Gig for $70/month, 1-Gig+TV starting at $120/month, and 1-Gig, TV and voice starting at $150/month.

-Chicago: Bolingbrook, Mundelein, Shorewood and Volo. Standalone 1-Gig for $110/month; 1-Gig + TV starting at $150/month; and 1-Gig+TV+voice starting at $180/month.

-Clemmons, Holly Springs, Salisbury, and Garner, N.C. Standalone 1-Gig for $70/month, 1-Gig+TV starting at $120/month, and 1-Gig, TV and voice starting at $150/month.

-Nashville: Gallatin and Spring Hill. Standalone 1-Gig for $70/month, 1-Gig+TV starting at $120/month, and 1-Gig, TV and voice starting at $150/month.

-Houston: Hunters Creek Village and Rosenberg. Standalone 1-Gig for $110/month; 1-Gig + TV starting at $150/month; and 1-Gig+TV+voice starting at $180/month.

-Miami: Coral Gables, Homestead, Miami Gardens and Parkland. Standalone 1-Gig for $110/month; 1-Gig + TV starting at $150/month; and 1-Gig+TV+voice starting at $180/month.

-Orlando: Oviedo and Sanford. Standalone 1-Gig for $110/month; 1-Gig + TV starting at $150/month; and 1-Gig+TV+voice starting at $180/month.

AT&T also announced plans to offer service in parts of the St. Louis metro, in addition to the 18 metros where U-verse with GigaPower is already available.

In addition to the 18 metros where AT&T offers GigaPower, the telco also has plans to offer it in parts of the  St. Louis metro. AT&T recently launched an interactive map that tracks GigaPower’s progress.

Cable One is joining the gigabit club.

The MSO announced Thursday that it will offer a 1-Gig (downstream) residential broadband service in more than 200 cities next year.

That offering, branded as GigaONE, will initially be powered by DOCSIS 3.0, the platform that fellow mid-sized MSOs, Suddenlink Communications and Mediacom Communications, are using for their respective 1-Gig residential services. On the horizon is DOCSIS 3.1, a platform that will bring multi-gigabit capabilities to HFC networks. 

According to the FAQ for GigaONE, the service will provide max downstream speeds of 1 Gbps paired with a 50 Mbps upstream path. To receive that service, customers will need an approved DOCSIS 3.0 modem that can bond 32 downstream channels.

Pricing and the data plan for GigaONE will be announced in early January. Cable One’s current top residential broadband tier offers 200 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up, paired with a monthly consumption ceiling of 500 gigabytes.

Cable One will offer GigaONE across its network, and has set up a web site that will keep track of deployments. Customers can also register to be alerted when GigaONE is available to them.

The following Cable One markets will get GigaONE in Q1 2016: Altus and Duncan, Okla.; Borger, Texas; Emporia, Kan.; Bisbee and Cottonwood, Ariz.; and McCall, Idaho.    

“GigaONE will support the technology needs of the communities we serve, now and in the future,” said Joe Felbab, vice president of marketing for Cable One, said in a statement. “We are excited to be able to offer Gigabit service to nearly 1.5 million homes in the markets we serve.”

Cable One said it has invested more than $500 million over the past five years on network upgrades and enhancements.

"Unlike many of our competitors, Gigabit service will be available to all of our customers – not just a select few in certain areas,” Felbab noted in an apparent reference to the buildout model of  providers such as Google Fiber and AT&T (for GigaPower).

But even as Cable One puts more emphasis on broadband than video, the results haven’t shown it yet.

While larger MSOs had blowout Q3s with respect to broadband sub growth, Cable One’s year-over-year growth, at about 2.1% , was comparatively weak. The MSO added 9,259 residential data subs in Q3, extending its total to 457,973.

“The evidence for a stronger-than-expected link between broadband and video certainly isn’t conclusive, but it’s enough to raise legitimate questions about Cable One’s video-lite strategy,” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, who sees Cable One as an M&A candidate, said in a research note issued today. However, ARPU in the broadband category is growing (up 7.7%) thanks to  aggressive pricing paired with faster speed tiers.

Google Fiber said it is exploring an expansion into three markets – Oklahoma City, Okla.; and Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.

“Now we start our joint planning process, when we work side-by-side with local leaders to create detailed studies of each metro area,”  Jill Szuchmacher, director, Google Fiber Expansion, said in this blog post. “Constructing a brand-new fiber network is a big job—the more we learn about a city, the smoother our construction efforts will be. We’ll study factors that may impact construction, like local infrastructure and housing density.”

Google Fiber, she added, will decide whether to move ahead after it wraps up the vetting process in those areas.

If Google Fiber does push forward, it will compete in Oklahoma City with Cox Communications and AT&T; in Jacksonville with Comcast (Jacksonville is a site for the MSO's 2-Gig Gigabit Pro FTTP service) and AT&T, where the telco has deployed GigaPower; and in Tampa with Bright House Networks and Verizon FiOS (Verizon is selling that FiOS property to Frontier Communications).

Those explorations follow similar explorations Google Fiber has underway in Irvine and San Diego and San Jose, Calif.; Portland; and Louisville, Ky., setting up potential additional competition for Cox, AT&T and Time Warner Cable, depending on the market.

Google Fiber has also  committed to launch service in San Antonio, Texas, building on deployments in Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas, and buildouts underway in Salt Lake City; Nashville, Tenn.; Atlanta; Charlotte; and Raleigh-Durham.

Google Fiber has not released subscriber counts for its gigabit broadband and pay TV services, but Bernstein Research estimated recently that it has between 100,000 to 120,000 paid subs, and that its network currently passes about 427,000 homes and 96,000 business locations.

“We have increased conviction that Google’s main motivation to deploy Google Fiber is its belief that it has a better-than-good chance to build a profitable local-access competitor,” Carlos Kirjner, a senior analyst with the firm, noted in that study, which included fresh data from recent door-to-door surveys in some Google Fiber markets.

Atlantic Broadband said it has launched its service and brand in eastern Connecticut on the heels of its acquisition of the MetroCast Communications system there, and outlined plans to bring residential gigabit service to the area.

As part of its broader multi-million dollar investment plan, Atlantic Broadband has kicked off a “major commitment” in eastern Connecticut to bring “affordable Gigabit Internet service” utilizing DOCSIS 3.1, the emerging multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks. For more about D3.1 developments, please see this week's coverage of the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans. 

The MSO said it expects to launch residential gigabit Internet service “widely throughout its Connecticut footprint” next year.

“We understand the economic benefits of ultra-fast Internet service in today’s digital age and our broadband network is uniquely suited to enable customers on a wide scale,” said David Isenberg, Atlantic Broadband’s president and chief revenue officer. “That’s why we’re investing millions of dollars in the latest technology to launch Gigabit Internet service as soon as we possibly can.”

As for today, the MSO has launched a new suite of faster broadband services, including a new offering that tops out at 120 Mbps (down). Existing MetroCast subs will get automatic speed upgrades in the coming months.

On the video end, Atlantic Broadband is launching premium movie service EPIX, which will be included in all double-play and triple-play bundles, as well as its new Digital Plus service.

In June, Atlantic  Broadband agreed to purchase MetroCast  of Connecticut from Harron Communications for $200 million, a deal involving systems passing about 70,000 homes (and 23,000 TV subs) in New London, Waterford, East Lyme, Montville, Plainfield, Killingly, Sterling, Griswold, and Putnam. This system currently serves approximately 23,000 TV, 22,000 Internet and 8,000 Phone customers.

AT&T said it has expanded the availability of its fiber-based GigaPower service to additional residential and business locations in parts of Georgia, North Carolina, Kansas City, Florida and Chicago.

-Georgia: Parts of Athens, Covington, Johns Creek and Smyrna, complementing access in portions of Atlanta, Brookhaven, Decatur, Dunwoody, Newnan, Milton, Sandy Springs, and Woodstock. Standalone 1-Gig there starts at $70 per month, $120 when bundled with TV, and $150 when bundled with U-verse TV and U-verse voice.

-Kansas City: Parts of Belton, Blue Springs, Grain Valley, Lee’s Summit and Raymore, expanding on access in parts of Independence and Kansas City, Mo., and  Fairway, Leawood, Lenexa, Mission Hills, Olathe, Overland Park, Prairie Village and Shawnee, Kan.  Standalone 1-Gig service in these areas starts at $70 per month, $120 when bundled with TV, and $150 when bundled with U-verse TV and U-verse voice.

-Florida: Residential and small business customers in Coconut Creek, Davie, Doral and Oakland Park, expanding on builds in Fort Lauderdale, Hialeah, Hollywood, Miami, and Pompano Beach.  In those markets, standalone 1-Gig starts at $110 per month.

-North Carolina: Added access to Huntersville, expanding on access to parts of Apex, Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Durham, Gastonia, Greensboro, Morrisville, Raleigh,  and Winston-Salem . Standalone 1-gig starts at $70 per month.

-Chicago area: AT&T is bringing GigaPower to Aurora, Huntley and Joliet, expanding on its reach in the city of Chicago, Des Plaines, Elgin, Manhattan, Norridge, Oswego, Plainfield, Skokie, and Yorkville.  Standalone 1-Gig starts there for $110 per month.

AT&T has also been applying a monthly data consumption policy to GigaPower that caps usage at 1-terabyte before charging $10 for each additional bucket of 50 Gigabytes, with a maximum monthly overage charge of $30. 

AT&T said U-verse with AT&T GigaPower is currently available in 17 metros, with plans underway to expand to Jacksonville and St. Louis.

AT&T recently introduced an interactive map that tracks GigaPower rollouts.

While it remains questionable as to whether Google Fiber can scale up its network deployments and put the hurt on incumbents over the long term, a new study from Bernstein Research suggests that Wall Street “is too dismissive” of the initiative's true potential.

“We have increased conviction that Google’s main motivation to deploy Google Fiber is its belief that it has a better-than-good chance to build a profitable local-access competitor,” Carlos Kirjner, a senior analyst with the firm, noted in a study, which included fresh data from recent door-to-door surveys in some Google Fiber markets.

He also reiterated his view that Google Fiber’s primary aim is not to influence policy makers or to force cable operators and telcos to accelerate upgrades, but does acknowledge that incumbents such as AT&T, Comcast, CenturyLink and Cox Communications have moved ahead with targeted fiber-based gigabit offerings.

Kirjner is also aware that Google’s deployment so far “has been slow and limited,” estimating that Google Fiber currently passes about 427,000 homes, and 96,000 business locations, primarily in Kansas City and Provo, Utah.

 Even if Google were to build out in all cities it has committed to or considering, it would still only pass 4.3 million homes – “still a small portion of the total market," he wrote. 

The report also estimates that Google fiber has between 100,000 to 120,000 paid subs, “a very small number that likely plays into the incumbents' default belief that deploying and operating wireline networks at scale is much harder than commonly thought.”

But incumbents, Kirjner warned, should not get “too complacent” in the face of those figures, holding that Google Fiber could nab between 40% to 50% market share in its areas, which could have a deeper impact if Google does decide to expand aggressively.

Google Fiberrecently committed to launch service in San Antonio, Texas, building on deployments in Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas, and deployments that are underway in Salt Lake City; Nashville, Tenn.; Atlanta; Charlotte; and Raleigh-Durham. It’s also exploring expansions in three more cities – Irvine and San Diego, Calif., and  Louisville, Ky.

Kirjner also speculated a scenario in which Google Fiber could deploy to 15 million to 20 million homes within six to eight years, which would represent a “non-trivial commitment” that is “far from impossible” considering Google’s means.

Bernstein’s data also shows that Google Fiber has performed well in the markets where it has a presence.

Based on a past door-to-door survey in Google “Fiberhoods” in Kansas City, Bernstein estimates Google Fiber has achieved a penetration rate of about 20% of homes passed within one year of turning on service, “putting it well on the way to exceed 40% of homes passed and realize attractive ROIs.”

Bernstein repeated that test in Provo, via a survey of 850 households in all seven Fiberhoods in Provo, and found similar results (penetrations of 20% to 25% for paid Google Fiber services – a larger portion of homes take Google Fiber’s free high-speed Internet service that delivers 5 Mbps down and 1 Mbps upstream). The survey also found that 44% of Google Fiber subs in Provo were previously with Comcast, and 8% did not previously take a broadband service. Google Fiber entered that market in 2013 via its acquisition of iProvo's assets.

Those results, the analyst said, “reinforce our view that Google Fiber could generate attractive ROIs, that incumbents stand to lose significant market share where Fiber is deployed, and that Google’s continued expansion of Fiber…is a non-trivial possibility.”

Of the telcos, Kirjner sees AT&T and CenturyLink to be “particularly vulnerable to Google targeting” given their sizable wireline footprints and the difficulty they’ll have executing scaled gigabit rollouts.

Cable, he said, is better positioned to defend with the DOCSIS 3.1, which will bring multi-gigabit speeds to its widely deployed HFC networks. Rollouts of D3.1 are expected to start in 2016, and ramp up considerably in 2017.  But MSOs will be challenged to meet Google Fiber’s “disruptively low price” ($70 per month for the standalone 1-Gig offering).

Under the firm’s the "aggressive expansion" scenario for Google Fiber, Bernstein estimates that Comcast and New Charter (which includes the proposed acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House, could tangle with Google Fiber in 15% of their addressable market and be in position to lose about 10% of their current customer broadband subs -- “[a] material, although not ruinous, negative impact,” Kirjner wrote.

And incumbents are also dealing with a competitor that gets high satisfaction ratings. According to Bernstein, the median score for Google Fiber satisfaction was nine (on a 1-10 scale), and only 3% reported less than a five.

Looking ahead to the DOCSIS 3.1 era, Midcontinent Communications said the Fargo-Morehead West area in North Dakota will be its first market to offer residential gigabit broadband services.

The announcement comes soon after Midco said it would deliver gigabit Internet speeds to its entire footprint by the end of 2017. Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Bismarck and Grand Forks have been identified as Midco markets that would be among the first to get gigabit service.

MidCo noted in July that it would shift to DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks, using the cBR-8, a new Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) from Cisco Systems that combines the functions of the cable modem termination system and edge QAM. 

The MSO has not set a precise launch date for gigabit service in the Fargo metro area, noting that it must first deploy DOCSIS 3.1 modems, which will be hybrids that support both DOCSIS 3.0 and DOCSIS 3.1-based transport. As was shown at an interop at CableLabs earlier this week, CMTS, modem and chip vendors are making speedy progress with D3.1 as operators prepare to test the platform ahead of initial deployments that are expected to get underway in 2016.

In this week’s announcement, MidCo VP of technology Jon Pederson said in the release that the operator is “collaborating” with Cisco on the new modems (Cisco, by the way, is in the process of selling its CPE division, which includes set-tops and modems, to Technicolor).

Midco has been using fiber to deliver gig speeds, but said DOCSIS 3.1 will enable it to offer those speeds to a wider range of customers. The operator is going all-digital to free up spectrum for DOCSIS 3.1.

“We chose the Fargo metro area as the first area for Midco Gig because of the state-of-the-art technology we’ve been installing in the metro area during our Fargo build-out that started in 2014 and will continue through 2016,” says Pat McAdaragh, president and CEO of Midcontinent.

Midcontinent has more than 300,000 customers and serves parts of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Cox Communications is preparing to launch DOCSIS 3.1 lab and field trials next year and ramp up deployments in 2017, execs said Monday at a CableLabs-run presser in Louisville, Colo., that provided an update on the technology (Multichannel News will have a report with more details on that soon).

Cox, said Ony Anglade, the cable operator’s senior manager of access sustaining engineering, plans to start deploying DOCSIS 3.1 consumer premises equipment soon after products are certified. Deployments of those devices, which will be hybrids that support both DOCSIS 3.0- and DOCSIS 3.1-based IP traffic, will help the MSO seed the market for delivery of gigabit services via HFC “in widespread fashion,” Anglade told Multichannel News.

While DOCSIS 3.1 is aiming for capacities of up to 10 Gbps downstream and at least 1 Gbps upstream, the initial D3 .1 modems will support capacity configurations that will deliver about 5 Gbps/1Gbps when fully loaded. 

Ahead of that, he said Cox has begun to evaluate Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAPs), which are high-density platforms that combine the function of the cable modem termination system and the edge QAM. Vendors have rolled out and are developing different forms of CCAPs, including centralized, chassis-based versions as well as versions that support a more distributed architecture.

Cox’s interest in DOCSIS 3.1 comes as the operator moves ahead on a plan to bring 1-Gig capabilities to its entire footprint.  Cox is initially offer residential 1-Gi g service, under the “G1GABLAST” brand, using fiber-to-the-premises technology, and has been offering that in several markets, including parts of San Diego, Phoenix,  Omaha,  New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.; and Las Vegas.

Cox’s has previously outlined a plan to begin market- wide deployment of Gigabit services by the end of 2016, and is expected to use a mix of DOCSIS 3.0 and targeted FTTP (some overlay builds alongside new builds) to get there.

“HFC not only has a long life, but a long, useful life, and DOCSIS 3.1 is proof of that,” Jeff Finkelstein, Cox’s executive director of strategic architecture, said. 

GCI has booted up a residential 1-Gig broadband service in parts of  Anchorage that will run on DOCSIS 3.0 and require a Hitron-made modem that’s capable of bonding 32 downstream channels.

GCI’s new service called 1 GIG red, pumps out a max downstream of 1 Gbps. Pricing for the service and the capabilities of the tier’s upstream were not immediately known.

Update: GCI, an official said via email, is selling 1 GIG red for $174.99 per month, the same price as the MSO’s prior 250 Mbps service. The 1-Gig downstream is paired with an upstream that maxes at 50 Mbps, up from 10 Mbps with the prior red service ("red" is the brand assigned to GCI’s top Internet service tier. It also offers 100 Mbps, 50 Mbps and 10 Mbps services). 

The operator said it will make the new service available to “virtually all” of its cable subs in Anchorage by year-end. GCI serves about 100,000 homes in the city. 

It has not provided specific plans to offer 1-Gig to other markets other than to say that Juneau, Fairbanks and Mat-Su are among the markets in line, expecting to expand on rollouts in early 2016 . In the meantime, GCI said upgrades Mat-Su, Juneau, Fairbanks, Kenai/Soldotna, Sitka will enable downstream upgrades for the operator’s fastest tiers there – rising from 250 Mbps to 500 Mbps.

From a modem standpoint, GCI is following a similar game plan that’s being run by Suddenlink and Mediacomm Communications, which are also using the new Hitron D3.0 model (the CDA3-35) for their respective 1-Gig residential tiers. The GCI official noted that DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks, "is the next step in meeting technology needs of the future and GCI is getting ready for it."

According to an FAQ, GCI’s 1 GIG red service will be subject to the MSO’s new “No  Worries” data usage policy, setting a monthly ceiling of 750 GB (up from 600 GB for the prior "red" tier.  Once customers on the 1-Gig plan exceed that limit, they can purchase addition buckets of data (30 GB) for $10 each, upgrade to a different plan, or be set at a “basic level of service” (less than 1 Mbps) with no overages.

“Today we’re proud to begin the launch of 1 GIG red in Anchorage while many major Lower 48 cities like Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington D.C. wait for comparable 1-gigabit service,” said GCI president and CEO Ron Duncan, in a statement. ““With 1 GIG red, we’re quadrupling Internet speeds for our red customers and propelling Alaska to the forefront of technology, all without any increase in our red customers’ bills.”

GCI is also delivering 1-Gig service (branded as “fiber re:D”)  in select areas of cities such as Anchorage and Juneau using fiber-to-the-premises technology.

Cox Communications has filed a lawsuit against the city of Tempe, Ariz., claiming that the city’s license agreement with Google Fiber violates federal and state law.

In the complaint, filed Monday (Sept. 14) with the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona and reported on by Decaturish.com, Cox alleges that the city of Tempe is harming the incumbent cable provider by “establishing a discriminatory regulatory framework” with respect to a license that paves the way for Google Fiber to deliver broadband and TV services there. Google Fiber has yet to commit to build in Tempe and other areas of Arizona, including Phoenix and Scottsdale. Cox had complained earlier about the proposed Google Fiber terms in Tempe, DSL Reportsnoted.

Cox alleged that, in December 2014, the city of Tempe amended its City Code by creating a new category license for “video services providers” that included amendments that would exempt Google Fiber from “various rules and obligations that apply to cable operators.”

As an example, Cox said Tempe agreed to waive certain standard city requirements, including one for underground construction to accommodate Google Fiber.

The City of Tempe has been asked for a statement on the matter. Update: The city said it is not commenting on the lawsuit at this time. 

“Although state and local authorities may negotiate franchises…that vary from cable operator to cable operator within the bounds of the federal Cable Act, they are not free to alter the scope or applicability of the licensing scheme  – or the cable television regulatory regime as a whole – by exempting from its requirements a provider that meets the definition of a ‘cable operator’ providing ‘cable service’ under federal law,” Cox claimed.

The city’s “bald assertion that Google Fiber is not a cable operator is incorrect,” Cox said, noting that Google Fiber’s proposed video offering would include the same types of programming channels furnished by cable operators.  

Cox said Tempe has “unlawfully established two different regulatory frameworks” for cable service providers – one for Cox and other “cable operator licensees” and one for Google Fiber.

In the complaint, Cox also noted that it’s expanding its own gigabit broadband service (branded “G1GABLAST”) and has been seeking to provide it to Tempe residents, and alleges that, for 10 months, the city “has refused the grant necessary permissions to Cox” for requisite aerial construction. “Consequently, Cox’s plans to provide for gigabit-speed broadband service in Tempe have been significantly delayed.” A Cox spokesman, Todd Smith, said Cox has begun to offer G1GABLAST in Tempe in new-build multiple dwelling unit developments. Other Arizona markets where the service has been introduced are: Ahwautee, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Glendale, Chandler, Surprise and Mesa.

Cox has asked the court for a permanent injunction that prohibits the city and its mayor from implementing a “License for a Video Services System and Rights-of-way Use Agreement” with Google Fiber, and for the city to cover all costs and fees associated with the case.

Smith, the Cox spokesman, provided this statement: “While we normally don’t comment on active litigation, I will say that Cox believes that recent actions taken by the City of Tempe to license Google Fiber violate federal and state law. Tempe residents should have the opportunity to get television and internet service from providers who are willing and able to meet the same government rules and regulations, especially those that protect customer privacy and property rights. It is the City’s responsibility to ensure that happens. Unfortunately, Tempe created a different set of rules for a new provider that waived important customer privacy and property protections.” 

The city of Phoenix also has a new license agreement to bring in Google Fiber. Cox did not sue to block that rollout: in Phoenix the government stressed a need to treat existing providers Cox and CenturyLink fairly, and said those companies will have an opportunity to renegotiate their licenses with the city, the Arizona Republicreported.

CenturyLink said it has deployed its fiber-based, symmetrical 1-Gig broadband service to residences and businesses in parts of six more states, and is on track to its gigabit offering available to about 700,000 homes by the end of 2015.

With the latest state additions (parts of Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina and South Dakota), CenturyLink now offers the service in 17 states. Others include Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. CenturyLink kicked off gigabit services in Omaha in 2013.

CenturyLink’s 1-Gig network and service expansions come as it and other telcos come under more competitive pressure cable operators that are using a mix of DOCSIS 3.0- and fiber-based technologies to deliver gigabit speeds. On the horizon is DOCSIS 3.1, a multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks.

“We said from the very beginning that we weren’t going to just talk about bringing gigabit speeds to our customers, but that we were going to deliver these speeds now. That’s exactly what we’ve done,” Shirish Lal, CenturyLink chief marketing officer, said in a statement. “Consumers and small businesses are ready for a broadband service that is capable of keeping up with today’s bandwidth demands. With the proliferation of the Internet of Things and the connection of everyday objects to the Internet and to one another, we are pleased to deliver speeds that can support these new technologies.”

CenturyLink is also deploying its pay TV service, Prism TV, through its fiber optic network. It has launched Prism TV in Seattle, La Crosse and Platteville, Wis.; Columbia and Jefferson City, Mo.; Tallahassee and central and  southwest Florida;  Las Vegas; central N.C.; Phoenix; Omaha, Neb.; Denver and Colorado Springs, Colo.; Portland; Salt Lake City; and Minneapolis.

CenturyLink, which is developing an OTT service that can be offered in and out of wireline footprint, ended the second quarter with 258,000 Prism TV customers.

Mediacom Communications has joined a growing list of MSOs that are deploying a DOCSIS 3.0-powered cable modem from Hitron Technologies Americas that can provide downstream speed bursts of more than 1 Gbps. 

That model, the Hitron Gigabit Cable Modem (CDA-3-35), can bond 32 downstream channels and eight upstream channels, meaning it can handle up to 1.2 Gbps in North American systems that use 6MHz-wide channels, and up to 1.6 Gbps on EuroDOCSIS systems that utilize 8MHz-wide channels.

Mediacom’s deployment of the Hitron modem comes soon after the MSO announced it would introduce a 1-Gig residential broadband service in several areas of Missouri, including Jefferson City and Hots Summit and the counties of Boone, Cole and Callaway. That 1-Gig (downstream) offering that’s being paired with an upstream that maxes out at 50 Mbps, is set to become available Tuesday (Sept. 15), and initially retail for $149.99 per month. 

Suddenlink Communications and GCI are among other operators that are rolling out Hitron’s CDA3-35 model, which is equipped with Intel’s Puma 6-MG DOCSIS processor and MaxLinear’s 32-channel MxL268 tuner.   Hitron says it ships more than 3 million DOCSIS devices worldwide each year. 

“Deploying Hitron’s new Gigabit DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem provides us with the performance and bandwidth required to successfully deliver our advanced service offerings to maximize customer satisfaction and further set us apart from the competition,” JR Walden, CTO for Mediacom, said in a statement “The delivery of the state-of-the-art, differentiated services that Mediacom offers requires CPE that delivers fast speeds and reliable performance.”

“Cable operators are under increasing competitive pressure to deliver faster Internet speeds and differentiated multimedia and on-demand services to grow their customer bases and increase their revenues,” added Todd Babic, chief sales and marketing officer for Hitron Technologies Americas. “Mediacom is an ideal candidate for our new Gigabit cable modem as they are launching advanced integrated solutions that push the performance envelopes of most cable modems.”

Google Fiber said it is exploring expansions in three more cities – Irvine and San Diego, Calif., and  Louisville, Ky. – that could set up more broadband and TV competition for incumbent service providers such as Cox Communications, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable.

“Our next step is to begin a joint planning process with city leaders, just as we did when we began working with nine metro areas last year,” Jill Szuchmacher, director, Google Fiber expansion, explained in this blog post.

“To kick things off, we’ll work with Irvine, Louisville and San Diego to conduct a detailed study of factors that affect construction, such as local topography, housing density, and the condition of existing infrastructure. Meanwhile, cities will complete a checklist of items—such as providing a map of utility lines—that will prepare them for a large-scale fiber build.”

Following that process, Google Fiber, which today offers a mix of 1-Gig broadband and pay TV services, will determine if it will move forward and build networks in those cities.

On the cable end, TWC is the incumbent in Louisville, and Cox and TWC are the providers in the San Diego and Irvine areas. 

Google has initiated a similar exploration in Phoenix, Portland, and San Jose, but has not announced buildout commitments there.

Google Fiberrecently committed to launch service in San Antonio, Texas, building on deployments in Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas, and buildouts underway in Salt Lake City; Nashville, Tenn.; Atlanta; Charlotte; and Raleigh-Durham.

Thanks in part to Google Fiber, 1-Gig residential broadband connections is now the bar. Salisbury, a city in North Carolina, looks to raise it today with the debut of a 10 Gbps service that’s being offered through Fibrant, a municipally-owned provider.

The plan is to offer 10-gig to all premises in the city, thought the service is initially being offered at Catawba College, and being powered by the Calix E5-520 Ethernet Service Access Node (ESAN). The first location to get it at the school is Hoke Hall, with plans to extend it to other campus buildings such as the Cannon Student Center and Ralph W. Ketner Hall. The 10-Gig  service, expected to be of the most use to businesses customers, will be offered to residential customers for about $400 per month, Ars Technica said.

Fibrant, which initially rolled out 1-Gig with Calix last year, said its network can currently delivers up to 10 Gbps using point-to-point Ethernet technology today, but plans to transition to a next-gen PON platform (XGS-PON and NG-PON2) as it becomes available in 2016.

Verizon recently announced it had successfully tested NG-PON2 FTTP technology (with Cisco Systems and  PT Inovação) that could “easily provide” symmetrical speeds of 10 Gbps.Meanwhile, VTel launched a 10-Gig service in June that complements its $35 per month 1 Gbps offering. VTel said it’s 10-Gig residential offering was made possible by a $85 million network award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service. 

DOCSIS 3.1, cable’s emerging next-gen HFC IP platform, is targeting max capacities of 10 Gbps down and at least 1 Gbps upstream.

"In making the leap to multi-gigabit services for key anchor institutions and businesses, Fibrant has set a new bar for communities across America,” said John Colvin, SVP of North American Sales at Calix, in a statement. “As next generation PON technologies come to market in 2016, we are excited to see how smaller businesses, MDU (multiple dwelling unit) owners, and even single family residences take advantage of these impressive speeds and enjoy the next wave of broadband innovation."

Suddenlink Communicatins has expanded its 1 Gbps residential broadband service to four more areas of Texas --  Lubbock, Shallowater, Wolfforth and Post – while also juicing up the speeds of two existing tiers for no added cost.

As part of the upgrade, customers on the existing 75 Mbps (downstream) tier will jump to 100 Mbps, and those on the 100 Mbps offering will get 200 Mbps, Suddenlink said. 

The 1-Gig launches, part of the MSO’s Operation GigaSpeed initiative, follow initial debuts in systems serving Bryan-College Station, Texas; Nixa, Mo.; and Greenville and Rocky Mount, N.C.  

Suddenlink, which is being acquired by Altice Group for $9.1 billion, has been selling the standalone 1-Gig service, paired with an upstream that maxes out at 50 Mbps, for $109 per month in some markets, and rent a WiFi-enabled modem for $10 per month or a stand-alone modem for $5 per month.

Suddenlink is powering its 1-Gig residential service with DOCSIS 3.0, and also happens to be an early taker for the Hitron CDA3-35, a model that can bond up to 32 downstream channels and up to eight upstream channels. On the downstream end, that’s enough to pump out max speeds of 1.2 Gbps in North American systems that use 6MHz-sized DOCSIS channels.

“Today’s announcement is the next step in Operation GigaSpeed, the company-wide plan we announced last August,” said Suddenlink regional SVP of operations Dave Gilles, in a statement. “In sharp contrast to companies like Google and AT&T, which are offering a Gigabit service only to a few neighborhoods in primarily urban markets, we’re making our service available in all of the neighborhoods and households we are able to serve throughout the Lubbock area.”

 “This faster, high-speed Internet offering is a tremendous tool for our businesses, residents and education communities,” added Lubbock Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Eddie McBride. “The enhanced ability to connect and communicate with the world will help local businesses grow and will be attractive to new businesses. We're fortunate to have a partner like Suddenlink for many reasons, and the company’s commitment to offer this service here in the Hub City and the South Plains is just the latest.”

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.

Cox has kicked off its 1-gig residential service rollout in San Diego, marking the occasion with an event near the Pinnacle, a new 45-store apartment building in the city’s East Village that is among the first locations that will get the new service.

Cox said the initial launch will also include some new single-family homes in Escondido and north San Diego. Service there will run $99 a month, plus a $100 installation fee, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. 

Cox, which is marketing the service under the G1GABLAST brand, is initially using fiber-to-the-premises technology to deliver gigabit speeds, but also has plans to use DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks.

Following its first G1GABLAST service launch in Phoenix last fall, Cox has also started targeted FTTP overlays in Omaha,  New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.; Las Vegas and Phoenix, and FTTP in all of its new-build systems. Cox’s plan is to begin market- wide deployment of Gigabit services by the end of 2016.  

"Cox is the first provider in San Diego County to offer gigabit speeds to residential customers," Dave Bialis, SVP and region manager for Cox’s California operations, said in a statement. "We're excited to once again be on the forefront of bringing the latest technology to our customers, and we'll continue investing in our network and our community."

Cox also announced that customers on its Ultimate Internet package will see their speeds double later this year from 150 Mbps (down) to 300 Mbps. 

Google Fiber has committed to bring its mix of gigabit broadband and TV services to San Antonio, and an official announcement could emerge later today, according to several local reports citing unnamed city officials. Radio station WOAI noted that Google had recently posted an ad that seeks a city manager for Google Fiber in San Antonio. 

Update: Google Fiber confirmed Wednesday that it will be coming to San  Antonio, noting that it will be “the largest Fiber city to date,” according to this blog post from Mark Strama, Head of Google Fiber, Texas.

“Soon, we’ll enter the design phase of building our fiber network in San Antonio,” he added. “We’ll work closely with city leaders over the next several months to plan the layout of over 4,000 miles of fiber-optic cables—enough to stretch to Canada and back—across the metro area. This is no small task, and it will take some time, but we can’t wait to get started.”

Google Fiber has also set up a Web site that will track its progress in San  Antonio. 

Google Fiber's entry there will amp up competition with area incumbents AT&T and Time Warner Cable, which initiated its “TWC Maxx” upgrade in San Antonio in February. AT&T has also identified San Antonio for “GigaPower,” its 1-Gig, fiber-based platform.  

San Antonio was one  34 possible expansion cities in nine metro that Google Fiber was exploring back in February 2014. San Antonio did not make the cut when Google Fiber announced plans in January 2015 to expand to 18 cities in four metro areas. However, San Antonio approved a real estate deal with Google Fiber in March that appeared to show that a future deployment was a distinct possibility. 

Google Fiber has also been making noise in Tempe, Ariz., as the city council recently voted its approval for the ISP to enter the market, setting up the potential for more competition with CenturyLink and Cox Communications, which is already in the midst of a plan to deploy gigabit services across its entire service footprint.  

Phoenix (including Scottsdale and Tempe) was also on Google Fiber’s original list of potential expansion sites, but the company has yet to confirm that it will build there.

“Tempe has been great to work with as we’ve explored bringing Google Fiber to the city, and this Video Services License is an important next step for our progress in the area,” a Google Fiber spokesperson said, in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with Tempe and the rest of the Valley as we consider bringing superfast Internet to metro Phoenix.”

Google Fiber has already launched or will soon service in Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas. Google Fiber has deployment plans underway in Salt Lake City; Nashville, Tenn.; Atlanta; Charlotte; and Raleigh-Durham.

“Potential” Google Fiber cities include Portland, Ore.; San Jose; and Phoenix.

ox Communications has expanded the reach of its new 1-Gig residential service to  Louisiana, selecting Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Acadiana as the first sites for its ongoing “G!GABLAST” initiative. 

Cox said it announced the expansion at an event at the Americana Traditional Neighborhood Development in the city of Zachary, one of the first neighborhoods in the state to receive the new service.

In addition to the Americana subdivision there, Cox has also brought 1-Gig to the Lexi Falls subdivision in Broussard, and the Bella Ridge/Cottonwood Creed apartments in Harahan, which is located just outside of New Orleans. Cox said it plans to extend access to the service, initially offered using fiber-to-the-premises technology, to other properties in Louisiana “in the near future.”

Under its G!GABLAST initiative, Cox plans to offer residential gigabit speeds in all its markets by the end of 2016 using both FTTP and, soon, DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging platform for HFC networks that will support multi-gigabit speeds.

Cox has also introduced G1GABLAST service in parts of the Phoenix; Orange County, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Omaha. 

"We are excited about our roadmap to offer gigabit speeds to all of our residential customers," said Jacqui Vines, senior vice president and region manager for Cox's Southeast Region, in a statement.  "We are deploying new technology and infrastructure that will offer our customers the choice of gigabit speeds in all markets we serve."

"Americana has been planned to provide the highest level of technology for a smart mixed community in the State of Louisiana.  We have partnered with Cox over the last two years and today is the latest advancement of our smart community technology plan for Americana," added Charles Landry, Americana's lead developer.

Cox also  announced that customers in Louisiana who choose its Ultimate Internet package will see their speeds increase later this summer – from 150 Mbps to 200 Mbps.

For a more detailed view on how fiber is becoming an increasing part of the cable industry’s broadband diet, please see this week’s Multichannel News cover story (subscription required).

Comcast confirmed that Gigabit Pro, its new symmetrical 2 Gbps residential broadband service delivered via fiber-to-the-premises technology, will carry a promotional price of $159 per month in the early going, about half its general price of $299.95 per month.

A web site promoting the service went live Monday. According to the fine print, customers who are eligible (those within one-third of a mile of Comcast’s fiber network) must agree to a two-year term contract that is subject to early termination fees, as well as other fees, including $500 for a professional installation and $500 for service activation. “Installation may require 6 to 8 weeks or more to complete,” the site explains.

Updates:

-Gigabit Pro will not be subject to monthly usage consumption caps. Comcast is testing usage-based consumption policies in several markets for HFC-delivered high-speed Internet services. 

-Comcast confirmed a report that the promotional pricing for Gigabit Pro is presently limited to the MSO's Central Division markets, and that customers who take the promotional rate will be required to sign a three-year agreement. Comcast hasn't announced the duration of this promo. "We want to test it first and see what we learn from it," a spokesman said. 

In the early going, Comcast is offering Gigabit Pro as a stand-alone service, and is not offering it in conjunction with specific video and voice bundles.

According to the Gigabit Pro site, the new 2-Gig service is available in the following areas:

-Florida: Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Miami, and West Palm Beach.

-Georgia: Atlanta.

-Illinois: Chicago.

-Indiana: Anderson, Bloomington, Columbus, Elkhart, Fort Wayne, Gary, Hammond, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Lafayette,  and South Bend.

-Michigan: Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Jackson, and Lansing.

-Tennessee: Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Nashville.

-California: Chico, Fresno, Marysville/Yuba City, Merced, Modesto, Monterey, Sacramento, Salinas, San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara County, Stockton and Visalia metro areas.

Comcast, which announced Gigabit Pro in April, plans to make the 2-Gig service available to 18 million customers by the end of 2015. Other markets identified for the service include Houston; Colorado (including metro Denver, Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont and Colorado Springs); Utah; Washington State (including Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, and Everett); Oregon;  and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.

Comcast has been using its business-focused Metro Ethernet platform to deliver a residential service called Extreme 505 (those customers will be moved to Gigabit Pro), but is expected to use a PON-based approach for Gigabit Pro in the months ahead.

Comcast is deploying Gigabit Pro on a demand-driven basis, only pulling fiber and installing the necessary home-side gear to customers who sign up for it. Comcast expects to offer gigabit speeds on a much broader basis on its broadly deployed HFC network using DOCSIS 3.1, a new CableLabs-specified platform that is targeting capacities up to 10 Gbps down and at least 1 Gbps in the upstream.

More detail about Comcast’s strategy around Gigabit Pro and cable’s targeted use of fiber-to-the-premises technologies will be featured in the July 20 issue of Multichannel News. 

Moving forward with its previously announced Operation GigaSpeed initiative, Suddenlink Communications said Thursday that it has lit up a 1 Gbps (downstream) residential broadband service in an initial batch of markets – Bryan-College Station, Texas; Nixa, Mo.; and Greenville and Rocky Mount, N.C.

Tied in, residential high-speed Internet customers in those markets who are on two other speed tiers will get a free speed boost – those on the 75 Mbps (downstream) service will now get 100 Mbps, and subs who take the 100-Meg tier will be upped to 200 Mbps. The MSOs standard residential downstream speeds in this initial batch of markets will be up to 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps and the new 1-Gig offering.

Suddenlink did not announce pricing on the new 1-Gig service, but an official noted that it would be “competitively priced.” With discounts available through new customer promotional offers service bundles, residential Internet services from Suddenlink now range from $35 to around $100 per month.

According to pricing data for Suddenlink’s system in Bryan, Texas, obtained by Multichannel News, the standalone 1-Gig service, which is paired with an upstream that maxes out at 50 Mbps, sells for about $109 per month (customers can rent a WiFi-enabled modem for $10 per month or a stand-alone modem for $5 per month). A source familiar with the service indicated that 1-Gig would sell for a lower monthly price when bundled with other Suddenlink services.

Like other Suddenlink residential broadband services, the new 1-Gig tier will have a monthly data plan whereby customers can purchase buckets of additional data if they exceed their monthly allotment. Information about it is posted here, noting that the MSO’s  “monthly data plans have proven to be more than sufficient for substantially all customers.” 

Suddenlink confirmed that it is currently using DOCSIS 3.0 technology to deliver the new offering. “With equipment upgrades and channel bonding, we are able to deliver more than 1 Gig to the modem,” a Suddenlink official said via email.

State-of-the-art DOCSIS 3.0 modem chips from suppliers such as Intel and Broadcom can bond up to 32 downstream channels – enough to support downstream bursts of 1.2 Gbps in North American systems that use 6MHz-wide channels, and up to 1.6 Gbps on EuroDOCSIS systems that utilize 8MHz-wide channels. DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging platform specified by CableLabs, is gunning for multi-gigabit speeds. Some cable operators are expected to start some small, initial DOCSIS 3.1 deployments by late this year.

Suddenlink’s technical approach will enable it to offer 1-Gig service on a broad basis.

“In contrast to companies like Google and AT&T, which are generally offering a Gigabit service only to a few neighborhoods in primarily urban markets, Suddenlink is making its service available to all households passed by the Suddenlink network in the listed communities and will do the same in other markets where the company plans to launch the service,” the MSO said.

Suddenlink unveiled Operation GigaSpeed in August 2014, announcing that it intended to raise its top downstream high-speed Internet speed to 1 Gbps in 90% of its footprint by 2017. The initiative encompasses network upgrades, including all-digital migrations that free up valuable bandwidth for things like DOCSIS channel bonding, and the replacing of remaining deployed DOCSIS 2.0 modems with D3.0 CPE.

Time will tell how Altice Group’s proposed acquisition of Suddenlink Communications affects the U.S. MSO’s video strategy in the months and years ahead (Suddenlink has been working closely with TiVo), but it’s clear that both companies have something in common on the broadband side of the business—the pursuit of gigabit speeds.

Altice Group has already signaled that it will deploy DOCSIS 3.1, a next-gen IP platform for HFC networks designed to pump out multi-gigabit speeds. In April, Altice announced it would tap Cisco Systems’ “evolved” Converged Cable Access Platform (we now know it as the cBR-8) to serve as the foundation for its migration to D3.1, starting with Numericable in France.

Suddenlink, meanwhile, unveiled Operation GigaSpeed in August 2014, announcing plans to raise its top high-speed Internet speeds to 1 Gbps in 90% of its footprint by 2017. The MSO hasn’t revealed a technology roadmap for that initiative, though it’s expected to involve today’s DOCSIS 3.0 platform, factor in D3.1 when that technology is ready for prime time, and possibly include FTTP, at least in targeted, greenfield situations.  

CHICAGO -- While everyone seems to be fixated on residential broadband speeds the pump out 1 Gigabit per second or more, cable operators and other broadband ISPs must also continue to focus on improving the overall user experience as consumers connect in and outside the home.

That was a prevailing view here Tuesday afternoon during a technology session focused on innovation and the future of media.

The network is already doing a good job of meeting the needs of most consumers, but “the network has got to be smarter,” said David Dibble, the former Yahoo exec who was named CTO of Cablevision Systems last fall. “It’s not just a series of dumb pipes.”

By “smarter,” Dibble meant using things like telemetry  data and other forms of information that can keep tabs on the user experience, and in some cases, make the network itself a self-managed entity.

Tony Werner, the executive vice president and CTO of Comcast, agreed that an important goal is to manage that experience on the wired network to the home and when consumers access the Internet via WiFi. On that point, he said 60% of devices in the home aren’t wired and will only grow.

“I do very much believe that the home will go 100% wireless inside” within 12 to 18 months,  he said, noting later that MSOs should strive to make WiFi “bone-dead simple” for the consumer.

However, “you’ll still need a fairly robust [wired] network” underpinning it, Werner added.

While speed doesn’t tell the full consumer story for broadband, “speed is a good place to start,” Kevin Hart, EVP and CTO of Cox Communications said, noting that the MSO has been expanding the deployment of its new 1-Gig “G!GABLAST” residential service. “Speed is a key metric and something the consumer can relate to.”

But latency for gaming and other real-time apps and service reliability are also key metrics that the industry should also continue to pursue and maybe “put branding around.”

Still, 1-Gig is the new billboard speed that cable operators and other ISPs are chasing, even if the use-case isn’t obviously apparent to most broadband users.

But the consumer demand for 1-Gig will grow as people use broadband to consume video on an increasing number of IP-connected devices at once, leverage cloud-based services and apps, and tap broadband to manage and monitor more elements of their homes and lives.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the Internet of Everything,” Yvette Kanouff, SVP and general manager of Cisco’s service provider video software and solutions group,  said.

Werner agreed that consumer demand for 1-Gig won’t revolve around a solitary, but an accumulation of them, but believes that it will be a long time before that capacity is fully utilized.

“I still think a Gigabit is overkill for some time,” Werner said.

Jeremy Legg, the head of technology and strategy and product monetization at Turner Broadcasting System, noted that beefier broadband can also help programmers develop “smarter content.”

For TV Everywhere apps like CNNGo, Turner is already annotating content as it’s produced live, paving the way for a future in which consumers can essentially “multicast” a feed of CNN tailored for a viewer’s particular  interests.

On the point of smarter content, Werner noted that Comcast is developing an “enhanced content” feature for the MSO’s X1 video platform that will enable programmers to add additional content that can be layered on top of the video feed.

“We very much want the content folks to be on our platform,” Werner said. 

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts used the INTX stage Tuesday to offer a glimpse at a DOCSIS 3.1-powered, multi-purpose gateway that will enable the MSO to deliver gigabit speeds via its widely deployed HFC network.

“Developed by our teams here in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley, the DOCSIS 3.1 modem goes into production this year and will be available to customers in early 2016,” Tony Werner, Comcast’s EVP and CTO, noted in this blog post that provides more info about the device. “When combined with a DOCSIS 3.1-enabled network, the Gigabit Home Gateway is capable of delivering speeds greater than 1 gigabit per second (1 Gbps).”

Because it runs on the HFC network the Gigabit Home Gateway will enable the operator to bring gigabit speeds “to virtually all Xfinity customers once the DOCSIS 3.1 networking standard is deployed nationally,” Werner added.

Comcast is also using fiber-to-the-home in a targeted fashion to offer Gigabit Pro, a residential broadband service that supports symmetrical speeds of 2 Gbps and become available to 18 million homes by year-end.

According to Werner, the new D3.1-powered gateway will also feature gigabit WiFi, support IP video, and integrate home automation and security capabilities. It’s also the first Comcast device to integrate home networking control and monitoring software that the operator acquired in 2014 via its purchase of PowerCloud Systems. It’s also equipped with RDK B, a new flavor of the Reference Design Kit, a preintegrated software stack, that can be applied all-purpose gateways.

As a rechristened and recast Cable Show, this week’s INTX confab will still offer a variety of tech panels and sessions for the hard core engineer as well as the operations exec who’s looking to get a technology edge.

While it’s impossible to hit every session (please see Leslie Ellis and Tony Werner's preview of  what will be cooking at Imagine Park), here’s a list of sessions that will be on our don't miss list and plunge into key topics and areas that are important today, as well as a few that are expected to factor into the future shape of the broadband and TV industry.

The Broad Strokes

If you seek a multi-faceted, bigger-picture view and a CTO-level discussion on the biggest tech trends, you’d do right by putting this panel on your dance card:

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet: Technology, Innovation & The Future Of Media

-Tuesday, May 5 at 3 p.m. ; Room W470

-On tap: Phil McKinney, CableLabs (moderator); David Dibble (Cablevision Systems); Kevin Hart (Cox Communications); Yvette Kanouff (Cisco Systems); Jeremy Legg (Turner Broadcasting System); and Tony Werner (Comcast).

Gaga for Gigabit

If you’re a cable operator and you aren’t launching gigabit (or even 2-Gig) speeds to residential customers, or have it on your docket, then you just aren’t trying hard enough.  While Google Fiber gets much (too much?) credit for putting 1-Gig on the map and accelerating the deployment of those speeds, it’s clear that gigabit is now a priority for ISPs of all shapes and sizes, whether that’s delivered via fiber-to-the-premises or emerging DOCSIS 3.1 technologies. Pick your poison – all options will be covered this week.

Don’t miss:

Getting The Gig: Realizing the Potential of DOCSIS 3.1

-Wednesday, May 6 at 11:30 a.m.; Room W474

-On tap: Ralph Brown, CableLabs (moderator); Ayham Al-Banna, Mike Emmendorfer, and Carol Ansley, Arris; Scott Helms, Zcorum; Maxwell Huang; Cisco; and Niki Pantelias, Broadcom

Dude, You’re Getting a Gig: The Perils & Promise of Ultra-Fast Access Networks

-Wednesday, May 6 at 4:30 p.m.; Room W474

-On tap: Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable (moderator); Philip Nutsugah, Cox; Eric Small, AT&T; and JR Walden, Mediacom Communications.

The Network: Going Soft…and Remote

A hot topic across the telecom sector is the shift from single-purpose hardware to off-the-shelf gear that can be managed and optimized by software – represented by the move toward software-defined networking (SDN) and networks-function virtualization (NFV). With the potential operational benefits they can provide, cable is keying on this trend as it pursues next-gen access architectures such as the “virtual” Converged Cable Access Platform.  While still an arena best suited for the engineering crew, it will play a big role in the future of how cable builds its networks of the future. Tied in, cable’s also looking at access network architectures that are less centralized and monolithic, and instead move some key functionality deeper into the network and closer to the subscriber edge.

Don’t miss:

Software Vs. Silicon: Understanding and Advancing the SDN Revolution

-Tuesday, May 5 at 11:30 a.m.; Room W474

-On tap: John Chapman, Cisco (moderator); Jeff DeMent, Arris; Brian Field and Nagesh Nandiraju, Comcast; Glen Griffith, Ericsson; and James Kim and Karthik Sundaresan, CableLabs.

Remote PHY, When and Why: Approaches for Physical Layer Migration

-Wednesday, May 6 at 8:30 a.m. ; Room W474

-On tap:  Daniel Howard, SCTE  (moderator); Alon Bernstein, Pawel Sowinski, John Chapman and Hang Jin, Cisco; and Dan Lavender and Karthik Sundaresan, CableLabs.

Whipping Up More Wireless

In the U.S., cable’s the king of wired broadband, but the future is mobile and wireless – an area that is becoming a huge focus for cable operators. While access to WiFi in public and business locations is being used primarily as a perk for cable modem subs, operators are expected to look at “WiFi-First” mobile strategies that use cellular as a fallback connection, while others, such as Cablevision Systems’ new Freewheel service, are going with WiFi-only pursuits. Liberty Global, meanwhile, has been using a mixture of WiFi, MVNO deals, and even mobile acquisitions formulate its plan. Expect the next chapter in cable’s wireless and mobile future to begin to take shape this week.

Don’t miss:

Across the Spectrum: Strategies for a Changing Wireless Marketplace

-Tuesday, May 5 at 4:30 p.m.; Room W475

-On tap: Rob Pegararo, USA Today and Yahoo! Tech (moderator); Timothy Burke, Liberty Global; Charles Cheevers, Arris; Dave Mayo, T-Mobile USA; and Tom Nagel, Comcast.

The 411 on OTT

Is over-the-top video friend or foe to the pay TV industry? It’s clearly both, as operators continue to push authenticated TV Everywhere offerings, while others develop and roll out new direct-to-consumer offerings that are causing a rift in the status quo.

Don’t miss:

Why OTT is Their Best Friend: Strategies for Online Video

-Wednesday, May 6 at 9 a.m.; Room W470

-On tap: Colin Dixon, nScreen Media (moderator); Tim Connolly, Hulu; Braxton Jarratt, Clearleap; and Roger Lynch, Sling TV. 

Comcast, already a self-identified champion of DOCSIS 3.1, has begun to test the next-gen technology in the field as CableLabs prepares to rev up official testing on cable modems and cable modem termination systems that adhere to the spec, Light Readingreported Wednesday

"The target for us is to be in the field establishing network readiness in 2015," Jorge Salinger, Comcast’s VP of access architecture, said in Denver at Light Reading’s Cable Next-Gen Technologies and Strategies event.  "Our overall goal is to be able to deploy DOCSIS 3.1 and gigabit-per-second in a broad scale starting in 2016."

DOCSIS 3.1, designed to support capacities of up to 10 Gbps downstream and at least 1 Gbps upstream, will be a more efficient platform that will rely on blocks of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and eschew the use of 6MHz- and 8MHz-wide channels use by today’s DOCSIS networks. When combined with low density parity-check, a forward error correction scheme that uses less bandwidth than the current Reed-Solomon approach, DOCSIS 3.1 is expected to be about 50% more efficient from a bits-per-hertz perspective than DOCSIS 3.0.

According to the report, Salinger said Comcast is starting to field-test the use of OFDM on one network and in one headend.

The current, fastest residential broadband service offered by Comcast is Extreme 505, a $399.95 per month, targeted fiber-to-the-premises product that today offers 505 Mbps downstream by 100 Mbps upstream. Following its debut in the Northeastern U.S. in the fall of 2012, Comcast has since extended the reach of the product to include systems in MSO's South Division and Central Division.  In an apparent foreshadowing to coming rollout plans, Comcast recently filed an application for the “True Gig” trademark.

Liberty Global and NBN Co, the government-owned entity that is tasked with bringing faster broadband speeds to Australia, are among others that have committed to deploy DOCSIS 3.1. Cox Communications is also expected to use D3.1 for its ambitious deployment of gigabit services.

CableLabs has been conducting DOCSIS 3.1 interops in anticipation of official qualification and certification testing. According to Light Reading, CableLabs director of network technologies Belal Hamzeh told event-goers that the goal is to start D3.1 certification testing in May, meeting a prediction made at the SCTE Cable –Tec Expo last September that those tests would be underway by the first half of 2015.

To aid the transition, the first wave of D3.1 modems will be hybrids that can support DOCSIS 3.0 traffic and OFDM-based traffic for D3.1.

Technology leadership, perception, and competition are the top drivers for offering Gigabit broadband services, according to a new survey of 88 service operators conducted by research firm Broadbandtrends.

On a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (very important), technology leadership and perception tallied a 4.55 in the survey, followed by competitive environment (4.40), customer acquisition (4.18), customer retention (4.02), revenue generation (3.98), and operating expenses (3.67).

Broadbandtrends also found that more than half of respondents are currently offering 1-Gig broadband services to businesses and institutions, while 34% are offering them to residential customers.

Cloud-based backup and support for Ultra HD/4K video showed the most promise for emerging Gigabit broadband services, according to the survey, which also found that GPON is the favored technology for residential 1-Gig service, while P2P Gigabit Ethernet is the favored tech for businesses and institutions. Cable operators such as Cox Communications are starting off 1-Gig residential deployments using FTTH technologies, but will look to expand those offerings across their HFC infrastructures using DOCSIS 3.1, when the technology is ready for primetime.

Broadbandtrends said the survey also found that Calix is perceived as the top FTTH vendor, followed by Cisco Systems and Adtran. The survey also features operating ratings (using five criteria) for other FTTH vendors, including Alcatel-Lucent, Dasan, ECI, FiberHome, Genexis, Huawei, Iskratel, Keymile, Packetfront, Zhone and ZTE.

Broadbandtrends said the survey, conducted in September, includes results from all major regions and service provider categories spanning ILECs, CLECs, municipalities, utilities, wireless operator sand overbuilds.

Over Labor Day weekend, an email exchange unfolded with a former cable guy, Dave Archer, who now heads Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology in Reno.

The gist: He’d been contacted by a reporter who was wondering if Reno was less attractive to high-tech companies because it doesn’t have Gigabit broadband services.

“At some point in the conversation, I told him that wanting fiber to your home was like wanting a 747 to go to the grocery store,” he wrote. He added, “Then I realized I’d used that same analogy — in 1980.”

Archer asked for some links to prior columns on the topic, so I sent him five or so, plus some basics on “how to do the math” of estimating household bandwidth usage. It seems useful to pass that along.

Know going in that there’s a big caveat in any discussion involving the relative “weight” when shipping video over broadband: Compression engines. They keep getting better, which changes the math. Regularly.

Let’s say, for purposes of this discussion, that HD video compressed with MPEG-4 weighs about 3 Megabits per second, and that the same video compressed with MPEG-2 weighs 5 Mbps. (Expect violent disagreement on these numbers, should you choose to use them. Consider them a starting point. You’ll still win!)

Tablets, smartphones, laptops, PCs and their ilk use MPEG-4 compression. It’s newer than MPEG-2. There’s another one coming, “HEVC,” for High Efficiency Video Codec. It’s the capacity antidote to 4K/Ultra HD video.

TVs connected via a set-top box use MPEG-2 compression, as well as a completely different distribution path. But let’s throw them into the mix anyway, because we still won’t get anywhere near a Gig!

Picture a big, broadband-slurping house. In it are five HDTVs, all streaming live video via set-top boxes. That’s 25 Mbps.

Add five laptops, also streaming HD video, for another 15 Mbps.

Lots of people in this house! Add 10 tablets, all streaming video, for 30 Mbps.

What the heck. Let’s pile on more laptops. Ten more, all streaming video. Add another 30 Mbps.

We’re up to 100 Mbps. A Gigabit is 1,000 Mbps. That’s an order of magnitude difference, literally, by this math.

Does Reno need a Gig to be sexy enough for high tech? Probably, but not for any reasons of logic. Perception is reality, and the reason the reporter called in the first place is proof of that.

Still, wanting a Gigabit per second is like wanting a jet ski. For the kiddie pool.

Stumped by gibberish? Visit Leslie Ellis attranslation-please.comormultichannel.com/blog.

Suddenlink Communications reported strong earnings growth in the second quarter, results that its chairman and CEO Jerry Kent said will help it move forward in plans to offer customers higher-speed data service and maintain its competitive edge.

Suddenlink said it plans to increase capital spending by about $230 million beginning in the second half of this year and through 2017 to significantly enhance its high speed data network and ultimately position the company to offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second.

Internally known as "Operation GigaSpeed," this initiative will include expenditures to upgrade data network headend equipment, replace any remaining deployed DOCSIS 2.0 customer premises equipment with DOCSIS 3.0 equipment, and complete our all-digital video conversion.

“We expect to complete these enhancements in a phased, market-by-market approach, focusing first on our largest and most competitive markets,” Suddenlink said in a statement.

Once fully phased in, the plan calls for Suddenlink’s flagship Internet speed to increase from 15 Megabits per second to 200 Mbps and its top speed to rise from over 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps in nearly 90% of its service areas. Suddenlink expects to invest approximately $35 million of the total capital expenditures related to Operation GigaSpeed in the second half of 2014, with the remainder invested during 2015, 2016 and 2017.

"Our positive momentum continued in the second quarter. Customer relationships grew at a record pace in the trailing 12 months. Net gains accelerated for our market-leading Internet services. And revenue, EBITDA and cash flow were up significantly year over year," Kent said in a statement. "These results put us in excellent position to make strategic investments that will enable one Gigabit speeds and thereby retain our competitive advantage in Internet services."

Revenue for the small market operator rose 5.9% to $579.9 million and cash flow, before one-time charges, was up 6.2% to $226.1 million in the period. Suddenlink lost about 18,700 basic video customers in the period, an improvement over the 23,100 it lost in second quarter last year. High speed data additions also improved – Suddenlink added 200 HSD subscribers in the period versus a loss of 8,700 last year.