As cable rolls out new services, MSOs must focus on integrating software and other technology silos into seamless architectures, said cable CTOs at a Wed Expo panel. “The network’s going soft,” quipped Comcast evp/CTO Tony Werner, who said cable’s hardware-centric past is fast giving way to a software focus as the industry works on tru2way and other new initiatives. Cox svp/CTO Chris Bowick called the effort to bridge siloed services “one of our biggest technological problems,” likening the task to taking a formation of small planes and trying “to build them into a single integrated airplane while they’re still flying.” Bowick said Cox still plans to roll out DOCSIS 3.0 in some of its most competitive markets in Q3; Werner said Comcast will deploy it in 20% of its footprint by year-end, noting the rollout “could even be higher than that.” Challenges include finding chunks of spectrum to channel-bond together to achieve the kind of high data rates that DOCSIS 3.0 makes possible, which “is a little bigger a deal than we originally thought.”

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