Comcast chief Brian Roberts turned some heads last month at The Cable Show when he showed off cable’s DOCSIS 3.0-powered "wideband" future — a future where data rates will reach 150 megabits per second (and probably beyond). That’s pretty darned fast, and should make cable a formidable competitor for many years, even as AT&T and Verizon tout similar or greater speeds with their fiber rollouts.

But while the Roberts demo may have gotten folks fired up about CableLabs’ amazing work, it really only showcased what’s to come — not what’s out there now. The good news, however, is that there are many ways to crank out more capacity and speed on those data pipes even before DOCSIS 3.0 hits mass deployment. Vendors like Cisco, Motorola and others already offer several ways to maximize data speeds. I picked the brain of Jeff Walker, senior director of marketing for Motorola Connected Home Solutions, who said that in addition to old tricks like node splitting (hey, it still works!), cable operators have a number of options:

  • Dynamic Load Balancing – The basic principle behind DLB is spreading the data workload across many machines (servers, processors, etc.) to increase the bandwidth available to everyone. In the broadband world, this can often mean a 30% gain in available bandwidth.

  • Logical Channels – Operators can organize cable modems in the field into logical groups based on modulation and/or throughput profiles. With telcos pushing faster symmetrical speeds (partly because of DOCSIS 2.0’s inherent upstream limitations), this is a great way to bolster that elusive upstream path. Logical channels can allow MSOs to as much as double upstream data rates.

  • Spectrum Overlay – Broadband access equipment provider Vyyo has been a big advocate of this technique, which involves leveraging higher frequencies on existing coax (3 GHz, for example). The result can greatly enhance both downstream and upstream speeds.

  • Cable PON (passive optical network) – This technology involves migrating from a hybrid fiber-coax infrastructure to an all-fiber network. It’s perhaps the most ambitious (and most expensive) option for cable operators looking to stay ahead of the telcos. When it comes to existing cable systems, Motorola’s Walker admits that "it will be a long time before they really try to do this…But in the greenfield situations, it makes sense." (Disclosure: Moto heavily markets its own PON solution.) Walker says home developers are actually pushing fiber as a future-proof selling point.

The bottom line is that all the excitement over DOCSIS 3.0 wideband is justified: It’s a great long-term solution that’s backward-compatible with DOCSIS 2.0. But the cable industry has other ways to keep up with consumer bandwidth demands, now and in the future. Cable customers ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The Daily

Subscribe
Thursday–June 26

Verizon, Nokia Secure U.K. Project

Verizon Business , in partnership with Nokia , won a contract to deploy Verizon Private 5G Networks to industrial campuses across logistics, manufacturing and innovation sites in the River Thames Estuary

Read the Full Issue
The Skinny is delivered on Tuesday and focuses on the cable profession. You'll stay in the know on the headlines, topics and special issues you value most. Sign Up

Calendar

Sep 11
2025 Faxies Awards Faxies Nominations Open! Final deadline: 4/4/25
Full Calendar

Jobs

Seeking an INDUSTRY JOB or hiring for one?
VIEW JOBS

In conjunction with our sister brand, Cynopsis, we are offering hiring managers a deep pool of media-savvy, skilled candidates at a range of experience levels and sectors. The result will be an even more robust industry job board, to help both employers and job seekers.

Contact Carley Ashley, [email protected], for more information about posting a job on the website and our Jobs newsletter, sent twice weekly to 85,000 media professionals.