fast forward

THE CABLE INDUSTRY IS RACING TOWARD expansion of its IP pipe into the 100-plus mbps range much faster than once seemed likely, largely in response to the competitive challenges posed by IPTV and ever higher DSL broadband service rates.

“This industry has 750MHz of capacity in the average cable system today,” says Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast Corp. “We use six of those MHz for high-speed data, so we haven’t even scratched the service.”

ARRIS Broadband’s Tom Cloonan

A starting point, Roberts suggests, was demonstrated by Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs) with the combination of four 6MHz channels to create a 200mbps IP stream that could be used to deliver content that might be shared across all those devices. “We need the innovation,” he says. “A billion bits per second is completely doable.”

Cable strategists long have stressed the importance of IP transport as the key to creating eventually an advanced service platform that merges voice, video and data capabilities into new types of content and applications. Now they’re taking action to implement an incremental expansion of IP capacity that will provide immediate benefits in the battle to differentiate their services.

While getting to gbps over a single IP channel depends on availability of products based on a still-pending, high-speed data standard known as DOCSIS 3.0, the jump to hundreds of mbps over a single wideband channel could begin by year’s end, a year or more before DOCSIS 3.0 becomes a commercial reality. This is possible because the new DOCSIS platform is being designed to work via software upgrades to existing DOCSIS 2.0 delivery systems now widely deployed in cable systems here and abroad, which allows for a migration path in the near term that will be in tune with the new standard once it is complete.

“Our wideband technology has been designed as an extension to DOCSIS 2.0 that can be upgraded to 3.0 when that standard is complete,” says Jeffrey Huppertz, vice president of marketing and business development at BroadLogic Network Technologies Inc., a supplier of chips for wideband cable applications. “It’s a deployable end-to-end solution available now in conjunction with equipment supplied by Cisco Systems [Inc.].”

Chips supplied by BroadLogic are employed in Cisco’s cable modem termination systems (CMTS) and its Linksys brand cable modems to combine as many as 16 6MHz cable channels into a single virtual data channel capable of delivering in excess of 600mbps in the downstream. “We’re the only ones supporting this scale of channel combining in a single chip,” Huppertz says.

But other vendors, including ARRIS International Inc. and Motorola Inc., are promoting wideband solutions that will give cable operators the opportunity to operate data channels four times as fast as traditional technology allows using current generation CMTS platforms. “We have the technology today to deliver TV over DOCSIS,” says Mike Caldwell, senior director at ARRIS Broadband. The ARRIS system operates at up to 160mbps in the downstream right now but can be expanded to eight times that capacity with future versions, if that’s what the market wants, he adds.

Where Cisco with the high-capacity BroadLogic chip has an early advantage in wideband data rates, ARRIS has the advantage of offering a system that is aligned more closely with the emerging DOCSIS 3.0 standard than that of Cisco. This is because CableLabs, in a key decision this past spring, chose a packet framing format for wideband backed by Broadcom Corp., supplier of wideband chips to ARRIS and Motorola, among others, over the framing format backed by Cisco. While the spectral channel-combining capabilities embodied in the BroadLogic chip are fully compatible with the emerging standard, the packet framing performed by a separate chip used in the Cisco approach is not.

Thus, there’s a strong possibility operators deploying wideband cable modems from ARRIS and Motorola before the standard is completed will not have to replace them to be compliant with DOCSIS 3.0 in the years ahead, at least with respect to downstream operations. “Our fingers are crossed a little bit, but we believe the [3.0] specification is firm enough that we can come out with modems for commercial distribution that will be 3.0-compliant in the downstream by the end of this year,” says Tom Cloonan, CTO at ARRIS Broadband. Already, he notes, the new pre-3.0 wideband cable modem the company plans to offer in the fourth quarter is undergoing field trials in Asia.

As for the upstream path, operators using the new ARRIS modems, which Cloonan says will cost no more than $200, can choose to go with the DOCSIS 2.0 approach or a proprietary channel-bonding capability that may not be compatible with the 3.0 standard. By using modems that are compliant with DOCSIS 3.0 in the downstream and 2.0 in the upstream, operators will be in a position to expand vastly their data service capacity on a per-subscriber basis from the deployed base of DOCSIS 2.0 CMTSs, without worrying about having to replace those modems when they upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0.

AOL’s Jonathan Miller

What all this adds up to is the fact that, depending on which vendors’ data delivery platforms they are using, cable operators either already have or soon will have the option to expand the capacity of their high-speed data services to these wideband rates merely by downloading software to the DOCSIS 2.0 CMTSs they already have in the field. This will give them opportunities not just to market 100-plus mbps data service but also to introduce new IP-based services they can’t offer over the existing data channels.

The starting point is simply to accommodate end users’ demand for Web access bandwidth, where, as America Online Chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller notes, consumption is skyrocketing. “There’s no question video consumption is going up,” Miller says. “We’ve got a little over a billion [video streams] today on a yearly basis, and it’s rising really fast. It tends to [be] video clips and music videos much more than long-form programs, but you can see the rise in [long-form] as well.”

Another concept that keeps cropping up is what some people are referring to as an “iPod for video,” in reference to the successful music download device sold by Apple Computer Inc. The consensus is if such devices are to succeed in the market, users will have to be able to get their movies much faster than they can over today’s high-speed links. As Cloonan notes, a typical movie download via a 3mbps access line takes about 90 minutes to complete, compared to the three minutes it takes at 100mbps.

Very high access speeds also will be a hit with gamers, says BroadLogic’s Huppertz. “People take competition seriously, to the point of paying for high-end computers to get an edge in clock processing speeds,” he notes. “They’ll pay for the advantage they’ll get from wideband as well.”

While cable operators don’t talk much about it, there’s another aspect to the IP wideband channel that is driving their interest right now, and that is IPTV.

“There’s a lot of discussion about IPTV,” says CableLabs CTO Ralph Brown. “Because the competition is pursuing it, there’s a feeling that cable has to as well.”

The big question cable operators face is whether it makes sense to wait for DOCSIS 3.0 gear to enter the market now that there are commercial options available for moving to wideband IP channels in the near term. CableLabs has told its members it expects to complete the standard sometime in the first quarter of 2006 with certification of equipment to follow.

While “all the big issues are thrashed out,” Brown says, “we’ve got several months of very active and intensive reviews of the individual specifications and any counter proposals that might be offered and then any refinements that need to be made. It’s a matter of the details. There aren’t really any divergent proposals that we have to entertain.”

But there are several “refinements” now under discussion that could slow things down, such as inclusion of new encryption modes that aren’t part of the existing DOCSIS protocols. “We’re not allowed to talk about the new ideas entering the debate, but there are several that could affect the pace of things,” Huppertz says.

“We thought this was pretty much on track to get us to a standard-compliant launch option over the next year or so,” says a senior cable engineering executive, speaking on background. “Now, I’m not so sure.”

Ironically, the perception that it may take longer to arrive at a completed standard than previously thought could induce MSOs to jump to data tiers at hundreds of mbps sooner than anticipated in light of the availability of the wideband channel options now entering the marketplace for deployment on DOCSIS 2.0 systems. “The idea of hitting the market with a 100mbps service is just too tempting to ignore,” the engineer says. “It may not be worth waiting for DOCSIS 3.0 if we have to give up that edge for another year or more.”