Following initial deployments in markets such as Salt Lake City, Comcast has moved ahead with the national rollout of the xFi Advanced Gateway, a product that supports DOCSIS 3.1, souped up WiFi and a set of dedicated IoT radios.

Early on, Comcast will deploy the new gateway (previously called the XB6) to customers on the MSO’s fastest residential speed tiers, from 300 Mbps up to 1 Gbps, in markets where it has deployed DOCSIS 3.1. Comcast has deployed D3.1, a gigabit-class technology for its HFC network, to about 75% of its footprint (or 26 markets) so far.

Comcast is leasing the xFi Advanced Gateway for $10 per month, the same price as its previous-generation DOCSIS 3.0-based gateway, the xFi Wireless Gateway (formerly known as the XB3).  Comcast designed the new gateway, but as reported earlier, the operator has tapped Arris to build a version powered by an Intel Corp. D3.1 chip, and Technicolor to build one using Broadcom’s  chipset.

The new gateway supports xFi, a cloud-based home WiFi management platform that the cable operator rolled out in May.

Among other specs, the new gateway supports and 8x8 WiFi antenna array that leans on 802.11ac version 2, which allows for it to tap into 160 MHz channels (versus 20 MHz and 80 MHz used in most WiFi routers and gateways in the market). It also uses Multi-user, Multi-input, Multi-output technology to deliver top speeds to dozens of devices hanging off the network, the company said.

That also “over-provisions” the device to support more than 1 Gbps, Fraser Stirling, senior vice president of devices and AI systems at Comcast, said. Comcast said it has tested WiFi speeds of more than 1.5 Gbps using the new gateway's wireless technology configuration. 

Comcast believes that the WiFi capacities of the new gateway will be enough to blanket the vast majority of homes with WiFi, but later this month will start to offer optional, complementary xFi Pod devices that use mesh technology to complete the whole-home WiFi scenario by extending the range of the system and eliminating dead zones.  

Comcast hasn’t announced pricing on those xFi Pods, developed in partnership with Plume, but has posted an FAQ about them. Per the FAQ, Comcast will be selling the self-installable xFi Pods in sets of three or six.

RELATED: Comcast Leads $37.5M Investment in Plume

The xFi Advanced Gateway is also equipped with a set of IoT radios – Bluetooth LE, Zigbee and Thread, making the device “capable of connecting to virtually any IoT device.” Nest devices, for example, use Thread radios. Those capabilities are also expected to ensure that the new gateway integrates with Xfinity Home, Comcast’s home security/smart home service.

Comcast said it has made the new gateway easy to set up and onboard, as customers need only plug it in, scan a QR code with the xFi app and follow the prompts. Customers will be able to self-install the device, but for company installs, the techs will be using the same “customer flow” to set up the device, Stirling said.

“Everything we’ve been doing lately has 100% self-install in mind,” Stirling said. “The SIK (self install kit) is always front and center.”

More details about Comcast’s new product and its design strategy will be featured in the December 11 edition of Broadcasting & Cable.

Rogers Communications intends to roll out an IPTV service that relies on Comcast’s X1 platform in early 2018, but the technology ties between those operators is going much deeper than that.

RELATED: Rogers to Tap Comcast’s X1 Platform for IPTV Shift

As part of its Q4 results, the Canadian service operator will also use a range of CPE designed by Comcast, including DOCSIS 3.1 gateways, WiFi extenders, a new class of wireless set-tops and technology that enables the operator to send video to third-party companion devices, such as tablets and smartphones.

The plan also calls for Rogers to adopt Comcast’s new Digital Home solution, which Comcast announced earlier this month around CES and expects to deploy by the end of Q1 2017.  That cloud-powered platform will allow the operator to centralize and organize their networks via millions of in-home broadband gateways. Rogers, along with Cox and Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks (now part of Charter Communications) already sells a home security service powered by Icontrol (Comcast and Alarm.com are in the process of acquiring different pieces of Icontrol).

CES 2017: Comcast Aims to Smarten Up, Simplify the Home Network

Rogers also said it plans to debut a new advanced DOCSIS 3.1 WiFi gateway by mid-2017. Rogers has begun to offer a D3.1 gateway from Hitron. Comcast, meanwhile, has tapped Arris and Technicolor to product a new D3.1 gateway called the XB6.

RELATED: Comcast Taps Arris, Technicolor for ‘XB6’ Gateways: Sources

Rogers expects to launch its version of Digital Home along with the new IPTV product in early 2018, Tony Staffieri, Rogers’s CFO, said Thursday on the company’s earnings call.

As for its coming deployment of X1, Rogers hopes to generate the kind of results Comcast is getting with it in the U.S. and ride the scale and R&D afforded by the platform.

“We have seen the success X1 has had for Comcast in the U.S. market, including improving TV subscriber additions, lowering churn, increasing ARPU for excellent users, but most importantly, delivering a better customer experience,” Staffieri said. “Our customers will benefit from Comcast’s scale and substantial R&D investments.”

He also said Rogers expects its cable video economics to benefit from the variable opex model offered via its Comcast agreement, “which will limit cable video capex to more success-based investment.”

Staffieri also characterized the execution  risk of X1 as “moderate to low.”

“This is a proven product,” he said, noting that the ecosystem for the platform is relatively small.  “Others have done it in terms of licensing the product.”

Shaw Communications and Cox Communications have already rolled out next-gen video products that rely on X1.

“We think there is a real opportunity for growth,” Staffieri said when Rogers combines its new X1-powered video product with its own Internet products.

During the quarter,  Rogers lost 13,000 video subs, narrowed from a year-ago loss of 24,000, for a total of 1.82 million. Rogers lost 76,000 video subs in all of 2016.

The MSO added 30,000 high-speed Internet subs, expanding to a total of 2.14 million.

Rogers also disclosed that its Q4 net income was impacted by a $484 million charge tied to its discontinued investment in the operator’s own IPTV product, which is dumped in favor of the new X1-hosted approach with Comcast.

Rogers also noted that it intends to hire Joseph Natale as president and CEO effective July 2017.  Alan Horn is currently serving as Rogers’s interim president and CEO.

Rogers announced last October that Guy Laurence had stepped down and that Telus Communications chief Joseph Natale would be stepping into that role eventually.

Comcast has tapped Arris and Technicolor as its first two suppliers for the XB6, a DOCSIS 3.1-powered, multi-gigabit advanced gateway that the MSO plans to start rolling out in the first quarter of 2017, according to multiple industry sources.

Comcast declined to name its XB6 suppliers, but confirmed that its first version of the product will employ Intel’s Corp.’s Puma 7 chipset, and that it is also designing a version that will run on silicon from Broadcom. 

Sources said the first Intel-based XB6 model is being made by Arris, and that Technicolor is working on the Broadcom-based model.

Though Comcast is sourcing those products to Arris and Technicolor (Technicolor acquired Cisco Systems's consumer premises equipment business in 2015), Comcast took the reins on the hardware design for the XB6.

Comcast is preparing to accelerate the deployment of the XB6 as it looks to expand its deployment of DOCSIS 3.1 and 1-gig residential broadband service to additional markets in 2017 and as it gets ready to unleash a new “Digital Home” offering announced at CES today that aims to smarten up and simplify the provisioning and management of customer in-home networks.

RELATED: Comcast Aims to Smarten Up, Simplify the Home Network

Compatible with DOCSIS 3.0 and newer DOCSIS 3.1 networks, the XB6 also supports MoCA 2.0, dual-band 802.11ac WiFi, ZigBee, Bluetooth LE  (low energy), as well as ports for digital voice services.  

Comcast has also hinted at a retail strategy for the XB6, which will employ a  new self-install system. 

RELATED: INTX 2016: Comcast Previews New Consumer Gear

“We are taking this to retail,” Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chairman and CEO, said of the XB6 in September at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference.

Comcast will be launching a beta version of its integration of Netflix on X1 in a matter of coming days, but the operator isn’t that far away from making it available to all its X1 customers. 

“We expect it to be [available] across the entire Comcast footprint before Thanksgiving,” Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chairman and CEO, said Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs 25th Annual Communacopia Conference.

Roberts demonstrated the X1-Netflix integration at the investor conference, noting that Netflix has content that Comcast subs don’t get with their traditional pay TV service.

Notably, customers can sign-up and sign-on to Netflix via X1. “This is exactly the Netflix experience” that a consumer would find on a third-party device, Roberts said.

Rather than telescoping and treating Netflix as a separate silo, Comcast will be integrating Netflix’s library into the X1 search and recommendation platform and tying Netflix into results derived via the X1 voice remote (Comcast has deployed about 10 million of those, Roberts said.)

Among other examples, X1 will feature an “Available on Netflix” row on the X1 guide, as well as in the X1’s Kids section. To facilitate binge-viewing, the next episode in a series will be auto-played – similar to how Netflix apps behave on other types of devices.

Comcast and Netflix haven’t detailed the financial arrangement of the integration, but Roberts confirmed that the two sides “have a marketing relationship.”

“We sell a lot of content to Netflix,” Roberts added.  “We’re now going to sell the subscriptions to customers of Netflix. I think it’s a big day.”

“I’m really pleased with the relationship,” Roberts said, while acknowledging earlier that the two companies did not always see eye-to-eye but have mutual respect.

Roberts also opened the door to similar relationships with other OTT providers. “We’re in discussions of doing that,” he said, hopeful that the Netflix integration will offer a “nice template” for others to follow.

Comcast focused on Netflix first, in part, because “it’s the biggest one, arguably the most important one to get right…I think our organization has made a conscious decision that we're going to aggregate other people's content, some of which we sell directly, and some that we don't."

He said Comcast would’ve liked to do that a year or two ago, but said the company was not technically ready to do so, and didn’t yet have the scale.

“We didn’t have enough X1s out there,” he said. Comcast is now rolling out about 40,000 X1 boxes per day, and expects to have about half its video sub base on X1 by the end of the year.

CPE Update

Roberts also announced some deployment updates for Comcast’s latest line of set-tops and gateways.

He said Comcast launched the Xi5, the MSO’s first HDR-capable client box for the X1 platform, last week. Notably, it doesn’t need a wired cable connection, but instead connects to the primary box over WiFi.

RELATED: Comcast’s First HDR Box in Employee Trials

“I think this is the future of how we’re making cable boxes,” Roberts said of the Xi5’s wireless connectivity.

He added that Comcast has also launched the XB6, a DOCSIS 3.1-powered gateway, that he dubbed, “as the world’s fastest router.”

RELATED: INTX 2016: Comcast Previews New Consumer Gear

“We’re taking this to retail,” Roberts said of the XB6, adding that it will also allow for customer self-installs.