While it’s uncertain whether Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) will hit its goal of passing 20 percent of its households with DOCSIS 3.0 by year-end, one thing is for sure: The cable colossus is facing an extreme network makeover extending far beyond channel bonding.
Since Comcast CEO Brian Roberts made the DOCSIS pledge in early January, the economy has tanked, the company got caught throttling traffic and was ordered by the FCC to replace its capacity management by year-end, and it implemented a monthly bandwidth ceiling for power users.
The latter two developments resulted in Comcast having to overhaul its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) twice in a few months. All of the above factors make the DOCSIS 3.0 deployment milestone project far bigger and tougher than originally anticipated.
“If you couple the DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts with their plans to implement bandwidth caps on heavy users, you’ve got a lot of heavy-lifting to do from a policy and OSS perspective, which Comcast is going to phase in gradually,” said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for IPTV and Next-Gen OSS/BSS at Infonetics Research Inc. “We are talking about a sea change in how Americans perceive and use their broadband connections. Therefore, I think you’ll see Comcast continue to roll things out conservatively throughout the year.”
Nine Months Later
Back in January, it was thought Comcast initially would implement the full DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding capability to deliver 160mbps downstream and 120mbps upstream. But limited equipment choices and capabilities, coupled with the above-mentioned non-CPE factors, largely have forced a more conservative approach.
Nonetheless, Comcast still is gunning for the original goal, having announced plans last week to first deploy channel bonding in the Greater Boston area, the Twin Cities, Philadelphia and New Jersey. Comcast said “it expects to reach more than 10 major markets and pass nearly 10 million homes and businesses [with DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding] in the next several months.”
Asked about the nine-month-old Roberts’ pledge, a Comcast spokesperson replied: “It’s what we’re trying to shoot for.”
The Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 effort is seen as a make-or-break strategy for the provision of higher bandwidth services harnessing existing networks to keep pace with telco TV providers such as AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) Of course, those telcos are leveraging newer and fiber-fueled networks to deliver video services and high-speed Internet to hotly contested residential markets, with some emphasis on SMBs.
Rather than run up a huge bill and burn precious time ripping out coax from their hybrid fiber/coax networks and replacing it with fiber, most cablecos are counting on DOCSIS 3.0 to get them to the same big bandwidth, only by bonding multiple channels to form much larger ones to support more and faster services.
Beyond Keeping Coax
But there’s much more to DOCSIS 3.0 than just leveraging the coax.
“Let’s not forget that you are basing these services on new CMTS cards from Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) and ARRIS Group Inc. (ARRS), as well as new universal edge QAM platforms from both Harmonic Inc. (HLIT) and ARRIS. That doesn’t include the new modems and EMTAs,” stressed Heynen. “You’ve got lots of new equipment being introduced all at one time, and cable operators are famously conservative when it comes to these situations, especially when you don’t want to negatively impact the digital voice subscribers you fought so hard to steal away from the telcos.”
