In another proof-of-concept aimed at showing the long legs of cable's hybrid fiber-coax architecture, Liberty Global's UPC Austria said it achieved a sustained maximum downstream Internet speed of 1.3 Gigabits per second over its live network in Vienna using equipment from Arris Group.
The tests were conducted with Arris's commercially available C4 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem termination system and the vendor's Touchstone data modems. In the trial, UPC Austria downloaded more than 100 songs in less than 5 seconds.
UPC Austria currently offers Internet service with up to 100 Mbps speeds. The MSO acknowledged that a residential service offering more than 1 Gbps may not be commercially viable today but that the trial underscored its readiness to keep up with future demands.
"Our network infrastructure is very solid and with the advanced technology of our high quality Fibre Power Network, UPC customers are equipped for the demands of tomorrow," UPC Austria CEO Thomas Hintze said in announcing the trial results.
UPC Austria is the largest cable operator in the country with 692,000 customers as of June 30.
At June's 2011 Cable Show in Chicago, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts demonstrated a cable modem delivering a sustained 1.084 Gbps downstream, running over a dedicated coax network segment in the operator's Chicago system. The operator used Cisco Systems' 3G60 CMTS line card to deliver 32 downstream channels to two DOCSIS 3.0 prototype modems each with 16 downstream and four upstream channels.
