NBN Co, the mixed-access broadband initiative backed by the Australian government, said it is expanding its fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) footprint as it prepares to relaunch wholesale services on parts of the national network delivered via hybrid fiber/coax (HFC).  

On the FTTC front, NBN will roll that technology out to an additional 440,000 homes and businesses, taking the total planned FTTC footprint close to 1.5 million premises by 2020. Those 440,000 additions were originally slated for fiber-to-the-node access networks within the existing planned HFC footprint.  

Those newly planned FTTC premises are also inside or adjacent to existing Telstra HFC network coverage but are not able to connect to the Telstra HFC network, NBN noted.  

NBN also said it will begin a staged resale of wholesale HFC services to retailers starting April 27, with an initial release of about 1,000 premises in its HFC access network footprint in Melbourne and Sydney, and another 38,000 set for release by the end of June in parts of Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth.  

From July onward, NBN said it expects to “significantly ramp up” its release of HFC premises, expecting to hit about 100,000 per month.  

“We are pleased with the improvements seen from the additional work undertaken while sales have been paused on the HFC network,” Bill Morrow, NBN’s CEO, said in a statement. Morrow plans to step down from NBN by the end of 2018.  

“The flexibility of the multi-technology mix allows us to choose the right technology for each area and deliver the project on time and on budget,” added Morrow, who plans to step down from NBN by the end of 2018. “We remain confident of reaching our goal of completing the build and connecting eight million Australian premises by 2020.” 

RELATED: NBN’s CEO Sets His Exit  

The current goal is to connect 8 million homes and businesses by 2020, with NBN expecting to end 2018 with 80% of the population able to connect to its national broadband network. NBN is trying to reach that goal using a variety of access technologies, including FTTP, fiber-to-the-node/basement/curb, HFC, fixed wireless and satellite broadband. 

 NBN is also teaming with Ericsson on a 5G trial in Melbourne as it looks at possible upgrade options for fixed wireless broadband services, according to ZDNet, which noted that NBN will use 100 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHZ band for the pilot.  

Following the launch of a Coherent Optics specification project about a year ago, CableLabs followed up this week with Full Duplex Coherent Optics, an effort that aims to beef up fiber capacity and enable the technology to work on fibers in cable access networks.

RELATED: CableLabs Eyes Coherent Tech go Give HFC a Future-Proofing Capacity Boost 

Per this blog post by Steve Jia, distinguished technologist, wired technologies at CableLabs (with contributions from CableLabs Fellow Dr. Alberto Campos), the Colorado-based cable R&D organization claims that Full Duplex Coherent Optics will enable the following set of capabilities:

-Double the bi-directional capacity of each fiber;

-Multiply the capacity of each existing access network fiber by over 200 times; and,

-Make Coherent Optics technology well suited for deployment in many more cable access network fibers.

Under the current plan, the new scheme will be incorporated into the ongoing CableLabs P2P Coherent Optics spec effort, which is targeting a release in mid-2018. The Full Duplex Coherent Optics initiative is moving ahead even as work continues on Full Duplex DOCSIS, an annex to DOCSIS 3.1 that targeting multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds over HFC networks.

RELATED: Full Duplex DOCSIS Plows Ahead 

Last year, CableLabs said it had figured out a way to adapt point-to-point coherent technology, in use for decades for long-haul networks, to work with short-haul access networks, holding that the move would enable MSOs to mine more capacity out of their HFC networks by “more than 1,000 times.”

In this week’s post, Jia reiterated that cable’s interest in coherent optics stemmed from the “somewhat limited fiber count between the headend and the fiber node” and the need to maximize the capacity of this scarce resource.

He noted that there are two fundamental topologies to achieve bidirectional P2P coherent transport -- dual-fiber and single-fiber – adding that a survey of MSOs found that 20% of existing cable access networks use a single-fiber topology whereby downstream and upstream transmission to nodes takes place on a single strand of fiber. CableLabs, Jia added, sees this single-fiber topology rising to 60% over the next five years among MSOs.

While dual-fiber requires a second fiber (one for the downstream and another for the upstream), the single-fiber approach transmits the up and down at different wavelengths using two lasers. The first option is difficult because of the fiber scarcity and the second one – the addition of another laser – is expensive.

CableLabs is proposing an alternative that uses two optical circulators (characterized as low-cost, passive, but directional devices) on each end in a special configuration.

“Instead of using two fibers, a single fiber is connected for bidirectional transmission,” Jia said. “Most importantly, instead of using two lasers, a single laser is employed for single-fiber coherent systems.”

Regarding its application to cable and the use of direction-division multiplexing in the optical domain, the claim is that it can double the whole fiber system capacity, and can work with 100G, 200G and future 400G systems.

CableLabs also said this works for short and long wavelengths, as its Optical Center of Excellence has tested it at distances of up to 100 kilometers.

Australian government-backed National Broadband Network (nbn) said it has reached a deployment milestone as there are now 6 million homes and businesses able to connect to broadband service on nbn network from one of its preferred ISP partners.

Nbn is working toward a goal to provide high speed wholesale access and connect 8 million homes and businesses by 2020 using a mix of access technologies, including HFC, fixed wireless, satellite, fiber-to-the-node, and fiber-to-the-premises. Arris is a key player for the HFC portion of nbn’s upgrade plan.

RELATED: nbn Lowers HFC Goals

Nbn noted that the FTTN and HFC deployments today serve more than half of the 6 million premises that can connect to retail services on the network.

Regarding pace of deployment, nbn said it’s been making close to 100,000 premises serviceable each week over the past three months. Roughly 2.7 million premises are accessing retail services over the network, with about 40,000 new premises signing up with internet providers each week, nbn said.

Under the current plan, the network, more than half built today, is expected to be three-quarters built by 2018 and complete by 2020.

Nbn, now a card-carrying member of CableLabs, announced in June that lab tests of DOCSIS 3.1 achieved 1-Gig speeds. At the time, it said it would move to field trials in December and eye potential commercial launches of D3.1 on the HFC portion of its network in 2018.

RELATED: Australia’s nbn Joins CableLabs

Under the most current timeframe, nbn expects to DOCSIS 3.1-powered service by the end of 2018, according to ZDNet.

Australian government-backed National Broadband Network (nbn) said its lab tests of DOCSIS 3.1 technology have produced downstream speeds of about 1 Gbps and upstream speeds of 100 Mbps, more than double the 40 Mbps its retail partners are offering via the HFC portion of the nbn network.

RELATED: Australia’s nbn Joins CableLabs

Those lab trials were conducted in Melbourne (on HFC plant acquired from Telstra), and indicate that gigabit speeds are “around the corner” for eligible homes and businesses in other markets, including Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and the Gold Coast, nbn said.

Nbn said it plans to conduct more D3.1 lab tests in August and shift to field trials in December, with a “potential commercial launch” of D3.1 services in 2018.

"These early tests of DOCSIS 3.1 technology are very exciting,” Bill Morrow, nbn’s CEO, said in a statement. “This is another example of the continued efforts of the nbn team to innovate and plan for Australia's growing demands for data. DOCSIS 3.1 is going to be able to provide fantastic gigabit potential for end users – just as our Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network does today.”

Nbn’s current goal is to provide universal high-speed broadband to 8 million homes and businesses by 2020 using a mix of access technologies, including HFC, fixed wireless, satellite, fiber-to-the-node, and fiber-to-the-premises. Arris is a key player for the HFC portion of nbn’s upgrade plan.

Under the most recent corporate plan, the “base case” is to have 17% of the nbn network use FTTP, 51% to use a mix of fiber-to-the-node/basement/distribution point, 24% HFC, and 8% fixed wireless and satellite.

RELATED: nbn Lowers HFC Goals

In May, nbn said about 5 million homes and businesses could connect to retail services via its network, noting that, on average, it was activating about 250,000 premises per month so far in 2017. About 2.2 million premises can currently connect to retail services over the nbn network.

The “remote PHY” era is fully underway as two top cable access network suppliers – Arris and Cisco Systems – touted next-gen products that aim to help operators boost capacity while also keeping headend power and space requirements in check.

Both vendors touted their latest wares in conjunction with this week’s ANGA Com show in Cologne, Germany.

Arris’s approach uses the MAC core of its flagship converged cable access platform, the E6000, in tandem with new remote PHY modules that reside in the nodes. It’s also releasing a remote PHY shelf that’s targeted to smaller cable operators.

Arris also announced that Stofa, a Danish service provider, has tapped the vendor to migrate all its sites to DOCSIS 3.1 and a new distributed architecture that leans on the E6000 and Arris’s NC2000 nodes with the aforementioned remote PHY modules.

Cisco, meanwhile, launched “Infinite Broadband,” a remote PHY solution for cable operators that builds on its cBR-8 CCAP and GS7000 node products, noting that the combo establishes the “foundation” for virtualization and Full Duplex DOCSIS, an emerging annex to DOCSIS 3.1 that will enable symmetrical gigabit speeds on the HFC network.

RELATED: Cisco Chips In For ‘Full Duplex’ DOCSIS

Cisco said it RPHY has been shipping to customers in multiple countries since April 2017. Execs with Comcast, Cox Communications, and Liberty Global were referenced in Cisco’s RPHY announcement.

Update: Casa Systems, a vendor that competes with Arris and Cisco in the CCAP sector, announced Tuesday that it would demonstrate its DOCSIS 3.1 remote PHY solution at this week’s show.

Cisco also noted that its RPHY solution is based on “open, standardized software” contributed to the CableLabs OpenRPD forum in 2016 that, it claims, will create an interoperable ecosystem for remote PHY device vendors. Cisco said it’s also planning to provide interop testing for those vendors, with Vector Technologies, BKtel networks and Teleste already on board.

Cisco, Arris and other cable access network vendors are focusing on remote PHY as the architecture continues to become a bigger priority for cable operators. According to a recent survey of 35 cable operators around the globe conducted by Kagan Research, 61% of those MSOs said they plan to start virtualizing their CCAPs or begin the shift to a distributed access architecture (DAA) by the end of 2018.

RELATED: Cable Ops Poised for Push into Virtualization, Distributed Architectures

Arris expects remote PHY orders to start picking up toward Q4 with a commercial ramp up anticipated by the start of 2018, Dan Whalen, president of Arris’s Network & Cloud unit, said, noting that it pushes some of the space and power challenges faced by cable operators into the node while also paving the way for more capacity.

"We think the ramp starts next year,” Whalen said.

Arris, he added, is also pursuing a remote MAC/PHY strategy that could be ready to take hold by mid-2018, but acknowledged that there are some concerns about how much power consumption will be required inside the node to support both the MAC and the PHY.

The move to distributed architectures also create a more Ethernet-centric, open network, explained Daniel Etman, product marketing director for Cisco’s Cable Access Business Unit.

Cisco, he added, is also factoring in a new set of auto-configuration tools that enable field techs to update remote PHY nodes and enable operators to start to pivot to more distributed architectures.

In March, Neil Smit, the former CEO of Comcast’s cable unit, said a recent study from outside independent experts found that the MSO’s fiber network plans showed “excellent compatibility” with 5G. Research from a top industry analyst seems to share that position, at least when it comes to the fiber part.

RELATED: Smit: Comcast’s Fiber Network Plans Have 'Uncanny' Compatibility with 5G

“At first blush, cable’s dense wired infrastructure deep into residential areas would seem ideally suited for deploying small cells/5G using high frequency spectrum,” Craig Moffett, analyst with MoffettNathanson noted Monday in a second report about small cells providing the underpinning infrastructure for 5G.

However, the “relevant infrastructure,” at least for the densest part of the capillary network, is primarily coax, not fiber, he added.

He outlined a couple of possibilities for the cable industry – that cable has an incremental cost advantage in deploying fiber by virtue of its existing assets to support small cell networks that require fiber, or that the engineers will figure out a way to “make it work” as it did earlier with high-speed Internet using DOCSIS.

RELATED:  A Beginner’s Guide to ‘5G’

Moffett said the first possibility – the cost advantage of deploying fiber off the existing assets, -- appear somewhat limited, as most cable plant is aerial, not buried, and because utility poles are subject to fairly permissive attachment rules that other players can take advantage of.

As for that second possibility: “[Could a bunch of really smart engineers figure out a way to make it work? Perhaps. Time will tell,” he said.

Notably, the cable industry continues to get more bang out of its HFC networks with DOCSIS 3.1, a multi-gigabit platform, and its pursuit of Full Duplex DOCSIS, a longer term annex to D3.1 that will support symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds.

RELATED: ‘Full Duplex’ DOCSIS Speeds  Ahead

“The industry’s network assets appeared to give it a leg up, at least as it pertained to small cell deployments (although it lacked the macro network, brand equity, and distribution resources of the incumbents,” the analyst explained.

Earlier in the report, Moffett held that Verizon’s wireline/wireless network in Boston, where the telco said it would need 1,700 strands of fiber in each cable, sheds lots of light on the amount of glass Verizon will need.

RELATED: Verizon Adding Lots of Fiber to Diet for 5G Rollout

“Most industry observers tend to think of fiber counts of 100 and up as high. With both its words and actions, Verizon scuttled that convention and made clear that it views the fiber assets in the market today as wholly inadequate for its small cell and, eventually, 5G needs,” he wrote.

Moffett also doesn’t believe that Verizon will be able to pull it all off in-house, while also acknowledging that the “gargantuan fiber counts” for Verizon in Boston aren’t “representative of the baseline standard for all its markets.”

He said it is reasonable to thing that Verizon will have to partner with a “natural partner” such as Zayo Group to maximize the amount of network it can deploy per dollar invested.

However, Moffett questions whether it makes sense for Verizon to buy Zayo. Zayo’s core business is dark fiber leasing, making it a neutral host arms dealer, and that core business would not be as effective if it was under Verizon’s control.

“Customers avoided doing business with direct competitors when feasible,” Moffett wrote.

Offering a way for cable operators to migrate to a more efficient, virtualized platform, Calix has introduced a product that can plug into their legacy access networks and utilize software-defined capabilities.

Calix said that product, the AXOS DPx Connector, is a DOCSIS Virtualized Network Function (VNF) that can be woven into existing OSS (operational support systems) for HFC and PON networks deployed by MSOs.

Cable operators are eager to shift to software-defined networking and virtualized apps and systems, but they are challenged with how to develop a framework that can fit that into those legacy OSS environments, Shane Eleniak, vice president of product line leadership at Calix, said.

Calix has already done some work with DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON and DOCSIS Provisioning of GPON, which enable operators to utilize their DOCSIS backoffice systems for PON deployments, but want to move away from a classic, monolithic software approach, he said.

MSOs, Eleniak added, “want to invest in something that is SDN-aware…The tricky part for an operator, is how do I bridge?”

Calix claims that the AXOS DPx Connector can be plugged into the existing architecture and virtualize the applications without altering the underlying backoffice systems. MSOs would also use the same servers, but the new connector would add scale and tie it back to a data center or network operation center (NOC).

To aid the effort, Calix has teamed up with Momentum Telecom, a company that supplies DOCSIS management/provisioning products and hosted voice services to cable operators.

Eleniak said the primary, early targets for the new product are cable operators that have been deploying PON or have it on their roadmap for certain scenarios in a way that complements the HFC side of their business. He said it will also fit in as operators deploy DOCSIS 3.1 and starting to pursue “virtual” Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAPs) and distributed access architectures.

Calix said it has field trials underway. It will be using a two-pronged approach for trials and deployments – working with Momentum and its base of MSOs as well as direct engagements with the operators, according to Doug Blue, Calix's solutions marketing director for cable. 

 “As an industry, we know that SDN is the way of the future of service providers and this partnership between Calix and Momentum Telecom will allow our customers to more easily move to an SDN architecture as soon as they are ready,” Scott Helms, senior vice president of advanced services at Momentum Telecom, said in a statement. “The service agility enabled by SDN has become a key strategic goal for cable operators, and the combined solution allows our joint customers to immediately begin to reap the benefits of an SDA architecture without the complexity of high costs of integration.“  

Keeping tabs on future demands of the access network, CableLabs said it has adapted coherent technology, in use for decades for long-haul networks, to work with short-haul access networks.

As a potential future-proofing option, this application of coherent technology could put MSOs in position to mine more capacity out of their HFC networks, by “more than 1,000 times,” Alberto Campos, distinguished technologist at CableLabs, said in this blog post about the work, noting that the R&D house has already demonstrated a 50x capacity bump over what analog optics can achieve today on 80 kilometers of fiber.

He said the approach, paired with a move to new distributed architectures, could remove limitation on analog optical transport that requires higher power levels countered by the reduction of the number of optical analog carriers the fiber can support due to fiber “non-linearity effects.”

“HFC Networks have been typically designed with 6 to 8 fibers connecting the hub to the fiber node,” he explained. “Two of these fibers are used for primary downstream and upstream connection and in some cases two additional fibers are used for redundancy purposes. The rest of the fibers were left for future use. Unfortunately, a large amount of these ‘future use’ fibers, because of an ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, have since been repurposed for business services, cell backhaul, node splits and fiber deep architectures. In some cases, only the two primary fibers that are feeding the fiber node remain available for access transport.”

He said this  fiber shortage problem will only grow as fiber demand for business services and wireless backhaul increases, which is where coherent technology offers an opportunity.

CableLabs, he said, has “re-engineered the coherent link to meet the special conditions of the access network,” that improved performance at lower cost than long-haul or metro environments.

Citing labs results, CableLabs achieved 256 Gbps over 80 km on a single wavelength “with minimal dispersion compensation,” resulting in about 26 times the capacity of what can be achieved over an analog optical carrier fully loaded with 1.2 GHz worth of DOCSIS 3.1 signals, Campos said.

CableLabs plans to develop specifications that apply the benefits of coherent optics to access networks, and will welcome vendor involvement in their creation.

CableLabs announced the new approach in tandem with its Winter Conference taking place this week in Orlando, Fla. The event if off-limits to the press, but here’s a look at what’s being discussed there, according to a draft of the event agenda obtained by Multichannel News.

Australian government-backed National Broadband Network (nbn) said it remains “on track” to complete its stated plan to complete its network build by 2020 and connect 8 million premises, but it will be reducing the amount of hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) required to reach that goal.

In a revised corporate plan released this week, nbn outlined a shift in mix of technology types it will use to connect 8 million premises by 2020. 

It originally planned to reach that in part with HFC to 4 million premises that are considered “ready for service” (RFS), but knocked that forecast down to 2.5 million to 3.2 million premises. Anticipated use of fiber-to-the-node/-to-the-basement/and distribution point, meanwhile, rose from 5.1 million premises that are RFS to 6.5 million.

Nbn’s planned use of FTTP (2 million to 2.5 million RFS) and fixed wireless and satellite technologies (900,000 to 1.1 million RFS) remain relatively steady.

According to IT News, nbn CEO Bill Morrow said the change in that deployment mix came after it was able to glean more data from the state of HFC networks it acquired from Telstra and Optus.

"[Last year] we didn't have contracts in place with equipment suppliers and delivery partners… and we lacked a lot of the data associated with exchange information from Telstra and Optus,” he said, according to the publication. We've been able to close all of that out through the year…The data that is available today changed the type of technology we should choose."

In the newly updated plan, nbn now anticipates annual revenue for fiscal year 2020 to be about $5 billion, with ARPU of $52.  As for the current state,  nbn has 2.9 million premises ready for service, and 1.1 million activated end users. Revenues were $421 million.

Once everything is in place, nbn expects to have 1-Gig available to 40% of Australians, 100 Mbps to 70%, and 100% getting 25 Mbps or more.

nbn noted that the projected top end of the peak funding range is now $46 million to $54 million, down from $46 million to $56 million, as it was able to minimize many of the uncertainties and cost assumptions in the business.

The government-backed group also noted that it’s fully funded for fiscal year 2017, but that it’s also exploring sources of external debt. Per IT News, nbn will still need to raise another $10 billion to meet its anticipated FY2018 requirement of $39.5 billion.

"We are confident we'll be able to obtain the necessary funds," Morrow said, noting that the process is already underway, according to the report.

nbn recently launched commercial broadband service on Telstra's  former HFC network in Ocean Reef, Western Australia, offering up to 100 Mbps down and 40 Mbps for its “retail service providers.”

nbn’s first commercial HFC services occurred in June in Redcliffe, Queensland, via the former Optus network.

Nbn, which uses an open access wholesale model and has tapped Arris as a partner for the HFC portion of its plan, said then that Optus, TPG and Exetel are offering HFC services at launch, with Telstra likely to be joining that group of sellers soon.

Nbn also has plans to launch DOCSIS 3.1 services and target gigabit speeds in the second half of 2017.

The Australian government-backed National Broadband Network (nbn) said it has launched commercial broadband services on Telstra’s former hybrid fiber/coax network in Ocean Reef, Western Austria.

The launch, which offers services of up to 100 Mbps down by 40 Mbps upstream from what it calls “Retail Service Providers” follows nbn’s first commercial HFC services launch in Redcliffe, Queensland, on June 30 on the former Optus network.

nbn said Optus, TPG and Exetel are offering HFC services at launch, with Telstra likely to be joining that group of sellers soon. 

In addition to 100/40, other speed tiers offered on the nbn HFC network are 50/20, 25/5 and 12/1, an nbn official noted, adding that “most” of the RSPs implement data caps that vary by provider, with many set at either 250 gigabytes, 500 GB or 1 terabyte.

“It is worth remembering that we will actually be one of the first operators in the world to deliver open access wholesale services over an HFC network so we have broken a lot of new ground in these last couple of years and now that hard work will pay off for our customers and end-users,” John Simon, chief customer officer at nbn, said in a statement.

Nbn’s near-term plan is to have about 200,000 HFC “end-user premises” activated by June 2017 as it works on a rollout that will eventually cover a footprint of more than 3 million premises.

Nbn, which isn’t without its critics, expects to launch DOCSIS 3.1 services and target gigabit speeds in the second half of 2017.

The group’s broader plan is to deliver broadband to 12 million premises in Australia via FTTP, FTTN, HFC, fixed wireless and satellite by 2020.

Nbn Co., a government-owned unit that is using various technologies to deliver next-gen broadband services to millions of locations in Australia, plans to launch DOCSIS 3.1-based services in the second half of 2017.

The timing of that plan was revealed in a report from Ovum – HFC: Delivering Gigabit Broadand – that was commissioned by nbn that provides an overview of the evolution of hybrid fiber/coax technologies.

DOCSIS 3.1 sets the stage for multi-gigabit broadband, and is designed to support capacities of 10 Gbps down by at least 1 Gbps upstream. A “full-duplex” initiative underway at CableLabs will enable symmetrical speeds via D3.1. Nokia demonstrated a prototype of that approach, called XG-CABLE, in May at the INTX show in Boston.

“At nbn we are planning to launch our DOCSIS 3.1 services in the second half of next year and we have a keen eye on other new emerging technologies such as Full Duplex DOCSIS because of the extraordinary potential that it offers,”  Dennis Steiger, CTO of nbn, said in a statement.

Following earlier trials involving Arris-made DOCSIS modems and network gear, Nbn  Australia launched commercial HFC service in late June, and currently offers up to 100 Mbps down by 40 Mbps up. The plan calls for nbn’s HFC platform to deliver broadband to more than 3 million premises, with 900,000 premises slated to be connected by June 2017.

More broadly, nbn’s plan is to deliver broadband to 12 million premises in Australia via FTTP, FTTN, HFC, fixed wireless and satellite by 2020.

Per Ovum’s report, HFC/cable will hold a 19% of the global broadband market between 2015 and 2020, with global HFC subs rising from 152 million in 2015, to 187 million in 2020. HFC will remain the dominant platform for U.S. broadband, with subs jumping from 59 million to 66 million in that same timeframe, the forecast said. 

For the cable industry, FTTP is no longer a four-letter word.

Thanks to increased competition and the emergence of over-the-top video and other bandwidth-gobbling services, fiber-to-the-premises architecture is now an accepted part of the cable industry’s lexicon, albeit still in a limited way.

For more than a decade, cable operators have been well-served by a hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network matched with DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) technology, and that combination still dominates the broadband landscape. The top 10 U.S. MSOs accounted for 60% of the residential broadband market, and 86% of all broadband net additions in Q1 of 2015, per Leichtman Research Group.

But fiber-fueled competition is heating up, particularly among incumbent telcos and overbuilders, despite Verizon Communications’s recent sale of wireline assets to Frontier Communications and an apparent de-emphasis on FiOS.

Among the newcomers, Google Fiber is putting a scare into the cable sector as it pushes ahead with expansion into four metro areas — Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. — building on earlier commitments in Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas. Google Fiber represents a tiny portion of the market, but has successfully put 1-Gig on the front burner while setting the bar on price at $70 per month for a standalone offering.

Of potential greater concern to MSOs, though, should be what’s afoot at AT&T. As it looks to get approval for its proposed merger with satellite-TV provider DirecTV, telco AT&T disclosed in a recent public-interest fi ling that it has committed to expand its fiber-based GigaPower platform to a total of 11.7 million homes — about 9 million more homes than in its previously announced commitments.

That bigger commitment is “less than meets the eye” because it factors in a broader set of customer locations that include businesses, vacant homes and apartments, Moffett Nathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said in a recent report. Nonetheless, Moffett also expressed surprise that “[c]able stocks haven’t reacted more strongly to the news.”

“[B]y the simple but closely watched metric of ‘fiber overlap,’ AT&T’s latest announcement is a meaningful change,” Moffett said, outlining assumptions that cable broadband will capture just 40% of share in markets where it faces off with FTTP, versus 55% when pitted against fiber-to-the-node competition and 60% where it’s up against plain-vanilla digital subscriber line (DSL) service.

Among some large MSOs, Comcast has a 32% overlap with AT&T’s U-verse platform, versus Time Warner Cable (26%), Charter Communications (32%), Bright House Networks (25%) and Cox Communications (25%). In the most extreme case, AT&T’s new commitment could translate into a 2.4% decline in cable’s share of the residential broadband market, Moffett said.

And all of this is happening as over-the-top video gains popularity and momentum, fed by the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Hulu, Sling TV and CBS All Access, as well as new standalone offerings from HBO and Showtime.

Meanwhile, consumers have been lulled into thinking they need Gigabit speeds ASAP, thanks in large part to Google Fiber, whose cachet and persuasive marketing have fed the perceived need for speed.

“There’s some sort of magic associated with fiber,” John Caezza, president of Arris’s Access Technologies division, said. “Everyone thinks it’s better than [HFC].”

There is still plenty of magic left in the HFC network, MSOs have maintained, but many are starting to use FTTP in a limited, targeted way while also pushing fiber closer to the home elsewhere to punch up their DOCSIS-delivered speeds.

Cox Communications, for example, has been among the most active major U.S. cable operators with “G1GABLAST,” an initiative that will see the MSO begin market- wide deployment of Gigabit services by the end of 2016.

While DOCSIS 3.1, cable’s emerging multi- Gigabit platform for HFC, will factor heavily into that plan, Cox is initially offering speeds of 1-Gigabit per second in select markets using fiber. Cox’s Gigabit deployments currently include targeted FTTP overlays in Omaha, Las Vegas and Phoenix, and FTTP in all of its new-build systems.

GOING ‘PRO’ WITH FIBER

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, is also taking a precision-based approach to FTTP, but potentially at a much larger scale.

Offering 2 Gigabits per second both downstream and upstream, Comcast’s just-launched residential “Gigabit Pro” service is spendy — it carries a limited promotional price of $159 per month (with a three-year commitment), about half of the regular price of $299 per month (with a two-year commitment), plus up to $1,000 in installation and activation fees.

But Gigabit Pro will be made available to about 18 million homes by the end of the year, as homes within one-third of a mile of Comcast’s fiber network will be eligible to get the service.

It’s a success-based approach. Comcast will run fiber and install the necessary equipment, including the Optical Network Terminal, only to customers who sign up for Gigabit Pro.

Comcast is also spinning fiber into some of its coming consumer-facing products. The multi-service Gigabit Gateway that the MSO showed at INTX in May focused on DOCSIS 3.1 and advanced WiFi, but Comcast is developing a version of the device with a direct fiber input as well.

While the vast majority of Comcast’s residential customers don’t need 2 Gbps, the new service ensures that the MSO will have something available to those that do.

“Gigabit Pro is really for those customers who have got extreme needs,” Tony Werner, Comcast’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, said.

Early Gigabit Pro deployments will use the Metro Ethernet system that serves Comcast’s midsized business customers, but “very quickly … we are migrating to the same PON [passive optical network] technology that we’ll be using in some of the greenfield and in some of the other major complexes, like apartment buildings or new developments.”

Comcast hasn’t announced which flavor of PON (GPON or EPON) it will ride long-term, but Werner said the analysis is complete, the decision has been made and the MSO has already issued requests for proposals (RFPs) for Gigabit Pro to vendors.

Cable operators that opt for PON have some new tools at their disposal that will make their new FTTP systems fi t into their legacy operations. CableLabs has already developed DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON (DPoE), specifications that allow cable operators to use DOCSIS-style provisioning for EPON deployments. A version for GPON has also been developed.

Going forward, FTTP will likely be the order of the day for new builds at Comcast, since the bulk of the costs for it are construction and labor.

“Once the trench is open, the incremental economics are close enough that we will do fiber-to-the-prem, unless it’s a very small stub off of existing plant,” Werner said.

Cable’s FTTP projects “tend to be opportunistic; it’s greenfield work,” Phil McKinney, president and CEO of CableLabs, said, noting that cable’s research consortium is staffing up and boosting its work on next-generation fiber technologies.

“If you’re opening up a piece of ground and you’re going to run a conduit in, you’re laying fiber,” McKinney said.

DOCSIS 3.1: CABLE’S WORKHORSE

While cable is using FTTP like a sniper’s bullet to deliver gigabit speeds, DOCSIS 3.1 represents the shotgun blast that will be used to deliver big speeds in “brownfields” served now by HFC.

“I think it [HFC] has tremendous life, and we are going to be riding it all day long,” Werner said, noting that even FTTP is HFC in the sense that fiber is connected to the home, but in most cases, services in those homes are delivered over coax.

DOCSIS 3.1 “is definitely going to be our go-to animal,” he added. “Due to ubiquity, we can go out and virtually serve all of our plant very quickly.”

Comcast and other MSOs are also keen on DOCSIS 3.1 because there’s no service disruption and hardly any friction to the customer.

Comcast is testing DOCSIS 3.1 in the field in anticipation of future deployments. “There’s basically zero surprises on it at this moment,” Werner said, noting that a significant amount of Comcast’s cable-modem termination systems (CMTSs) can be upgraded via software to DOCSIS 3.1 for the downstream, and will require new cards for the upstream.

Broadcom’s DOCSIS 3.1 silicon for modems is “working well,” Werner said, while Intel’s new chip has “just tapped out,” which means it is nearing the final design cycle. STMicroelectronics is also expected to toss its hat into the DOCSIS 3.1 ring.

Adoption of DOCSIS 3.1 will be global and quick, according to a recent IHS study. Asked what share of their residential base would be passed by DOCSIS 3.1-enabled headends or hubs, MSOs responded collectively that it would reach about 35% by 2017.

CableLabs’s latest DOCSIS 3.1 interoperability event was slated to end on July 17, putting vendors one step closer to formal certification and qualification testing this summer. “As we find issues through the interop and through the early devices going through cert wave, we’re going to close that loop pretty tightly,” McKinney said, calling DOCSIS 3.1 “job one for me.”

Though MSOs will deliver Gigabit speeds through a mix of HFC and FTTP, McKinney wonders if the “cable” label is even suitable anymore.

“The cable industry has more fiber in the ground than each fiber provider in the world,” he said. “If you look at total fiber strand miles, there’s more fiber under management and under control of the [cable] operators than anybody else combined.”

Cable operators, on average, still serve about 400 homes from each cable node. “But the trend is absolutely moving down,” Caezza said, noting that some MSOs are skipping the next logical step of 200 homes per node by driving fiber to service groups of 100 to 125 homes per node.

That’s already happening to a degree at Comcast. In some Gigabit Pro markets, the MSO is already in that 100-homesper- node neighborhood, Rob Howald, Comcast’s vice president of network architecture, reportedly said at the recent Gigabit Cities Live! conference in Atlanta.

David Eckard, chief technology officer of Alcatel-Lucent’s Fixed Networks Division, said he sees a “storm coming” in which MSOs upgrade to a distributed architecture (CableLabs recently issued the specifications for several approaches) and consider operationally tricky “mid-splits” that expand the amount of upstream capacity.

“Everybody’s end game, whether you’re a telco or an MSO, is fiber,” Eckard said. “The question [for cable operators] is, how deep is that fiber going to be?”

A Vote for DOCSIS 3.0

Much of cable’s Gigabit fanfare centers on FTTP and the emerging DOCSIS 3.1 platform. But Suddenlink Communications will ride DOCSIS 3.0 as it enters the Gigasphere.

As part of the MSO’s Operation GigaSpeed initiative, Suddenlink is offering a highly asymmetrical service — up to 1 Gigabit per second downstream and 50 Megabits per second upstream — in a handful of markets: Bryan-College Station, Texas; Nixa, Mo.; and Greenville and Rocky Mount, N.C.

According to pricing data for Suddenlink’s system in Bryan, Texas, obtained by Multichannel News, the standalone 1-Gbps service fetches $109 per month, though it’s expected to sell for less when bundled with other services.

Suddenlink confirmed its use of DOCSIS 3.0 technology early on, noting that with “equipment upgrades and channel bonding, we are able to deliver more than 1 Gig to the modem.”

State-of-the-art DOCSIS 3.0 modem chips from suppliers such as Intel and Broadcom can bond up to 32 downstream 6 MHz-wide channels — enough to support downstream bursts of 1.2 Gbps in North American DOCSIS systems.

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 replacement of remaining deployed DOCSIS 2.0 modems with DOCSIS 3.0-based equipment.