CES: Cisco Demos Long-Awaited DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem

Aiming to open the broadband services door wide for capacity-constrained cablecos, Cisco Systems Inc. is demonstrating a DOCSIS 3.0 modem that would let operators support downlink speeds of 160mbps and uplinks of 120mbps.

This would provide cablecos a powerful weapon in which to battle rival telcos, such as Verizon and SureWest Communications, who are deploying – and aggressively marketing – 20mbps symmetric Internet access pipes as part of their triple-play bundles.

Cisco said the product would be available sometime this spring.

Prominent industry watchers, such as Jeff Heynen at Infonetics Research, have said that high-speed Internet services have helped telcos like Verizon eat into the customer bases of cabelcos.

While the sorely needed bandwidth boost is welcomed by cable giants, it would not completely address the demand for symmetric high-speed links coveted by delay-intolerant online gamers and those engaging in media sharing (pictures, music, etc.) in their homes.

Non-profit cable industry R&D unit CableLabs has been working hard to evolve the DOCSIS spec and drive equipment vendor creation of modems that embody the advanced, channel-bonding technology. Comcast in particular has taken steps, detailed at last year’s Cable Show, to accelerate this process. http://www.xchangemag.com/articles/542/telcos_push_symmetric_broadband_access.html

The cable kingpin committed last month to deploying the advanced modems in 20 percent of homes passed by the end of 2008.

With at least one unit available for demo and general availability in a few months, it remains to be seen just how quickly and efficiently cable operators deploy the units in the field and the broadband services that they introduce to use the extra bandwidth provided by the boxes.

Beyond the need for faster Internet speeds, DOCSIS 3.0 is designed to leverage cablecos’ network investments in an era where the likes of AT&T and Verizon alone have spent billions to deploy the primarily fiber infrastructure they’re using to push video-driven triple-play services to the home.

Wall Street has reacted negatively to cableco spending on capital expenditures beyond original forecasts. Such was the case early last month when Comcast revised spending up $300 million for 2007. While cableco stocks had been down for months, Comcast’s hit a new low the following day.

The new cable modem and other products debuted at the Consumer Electronic Show, were created by Cisco’s Scientific Atlanta company, one Cisco paid more than $6 billion for as part of its expansion in the broadband services equipment market.

“Web surfers want faster access to everything, especially video content,” said John Sweeney, director of product strategy and management for Scientific Atlanta, in prepared comments. “To help cable operators deliver more content over their existing networks, our DOCSIS 3.0-compliant channel-bonding technology uses multiple channels to deliver more packets simultaneously, providing high-speed data rates up to four times as fast as than existing DOCSIS 2.0 modems.”

Cisco said the DPC-3000 DOCSIS 3.0 Channel Bonded Cable Modem is designed to meet the CableLabs DOCSIS 3.0 specs, which features support of four bonded downstream channels and four bonded upstream channels.

The vendor said the cable modem is designed to be backward-compatible for use as a single-channel cable modem with DOCSIS and Euro-DOCSIS 1.1/1.0 and 2.0 networks.

The Cisco DPC3000 Channel Bonded Modem is expected to be commercially available in the spring, which could very well make it the first such device available from a major networking player. However, CableLabs has been hard at work evaluating other units, leading experts to expect several follow-on announcements for anxious cablecos.

AT&T Inc. www.att.com
Cable Laboratories www.cablelabs.com
Cisco Systems, Inc. www.cisco.com
Comcast Corp. www.comcast.com
Verizon Communications, Inc. www.verizon.com
SureWest Communications www.surewest.com

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