HiGame

The various established telcos and cable operators have been under pressure ever since Google announced it would begin rolling out fiber networks to consumers in test locations across the country. Now, Comcast is gearing up to fight back with its own next-gen standard support and a promise of 1Gbps performance delivered over a cable modem.

These speed jumps come courtesy of improvements to the DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) standard. Currently, DOCSIS 3.0 is deployed across much of the US and Europe, but the new technology Comcast is going to deploy is based on Broadcom’s BCM3390 cable modem SoC, and that chip adds support for DOCSIS 3.1.



Expected performance from DOCSIS 3.1 (EuroDOCSIS is the European version but has similar specs)

DOCSIS 3.1 is designed to allow cable modems to hit performance targets that were previously only possible with fiber networks through the use of 4096 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) and other steps that improve signal efficiency and transmission quality.



When Broadcom announced its BCM3390 at CES 2015, Comcast’s executive vice-president, Tony Werner said, “DOCSIS 3.1 is a critical technology for Comcast to provide even faster, more reliable data speeds and features such as IP video to our subscribers’ homes by harnessing more spectrum in the downstream. By more effectively using our cable plant to grow our total throughput, we expect to offer our customers more than 1 Gigabit speeds in their homes in 2015 and beyond.” What’s a tad disingenuous about Comcast’s position is that the current DOCSIS 3.0 standard is fully capable of gigabit transmission already, albeit not very efficiently. Still, the capability is there. and Comcast hasn’t previously deployed it — most likely because rolling out new DOCSIS 3.1 modems is also an opportunity to drive up modem rental fees for the new hardware and to drag out the upgrade process.

Pricing and rollout availability are both still to be determined, but we’d expect the company to target those cities which Google selects for its own fiber rollouts. AT&T has also promised to build out high-speed connections to 100 cities in the near future — it’s amazing how fast companies respond to perceived competitive pressures when competition actually exists in a market.

Broadcom expects to sample the BCM 3390 modem in the first part of the year with modem availability coming in the back half of 2015. In addition to providing for efficient gigabit fiber networks, the new modems will also offer two gigabit WiFi performance in the home, potentially opening the door for wireless 4K streaming within the home provided that there’s a clear line of sight between router and television.


More...