by Light Reading at SCTE TechExpo in Washington, D.C. last fall. “The technology is working…the whole ecosystem is just starting to throw it into gear.” As a result, industry analysts see HFC plant upgrades and DOCSIS 4.0 deployments picking up steam this year. “2026 should be a much better year for cable,” said Jeff Jeynen, Vice president of Broadband Access and Home networking at the Dell’Oro Group. In particular, he cited the move by the industry’s primary silicon vendor, Broadcom, to offer unified chipsets for the two versions of DOCSIS 4.0. Thinking ahead, CableLabs is now looking at developing a next-gen spec beyond the current DOCSIS 4.0. Known as DOCSIS 4.0 “optional annex” or, more colloquially as DOCSIS 5.0, the proposed spec would enable HFC networks to leverage such higher spectrum frequencies as 3GHz and 6GHz to support data speeds as high as 25Gbps and 50Gbps, respectively. “The heck with 10G,” CableLabs President and CEO Phil McKinney declared at SCTE TechExpo last fall, referring to the industry’s earlier 10-Gig speed initiative. DOCSIS 4.0, he pronounced, is “not the crescendo” of HFC’s capabilities. Whether this proposed new DOCSIS spec becomes a reality is very much an open question, however. Indeed, some senior cable technologists seem quite dubious about the idea because they don’t see a strong enough market for it. Instead, they believe that operators should just go all- fibre after deploying DOCSIS 4.0. “I don’t think there will be a DOCSIS 5.0,” stated Chris Bastian, former CTO of the SCTE, A Subsidiary of CableLabs in the U.S., and now an industry consultant. “There’s not enough demand for it… by the time you have 80% of cable subscribers on DOCSIS 4.0 in five-plus years, at that point just go to fibre already.” Even with all the next-gen DOCSIS chatter, North American cablecos are also pouring resources into their own fibre builds and next-gen PON deployments, especially in greenfield areas, adjacent “edge-outs” and even some brownfields. The leading player here is Optimum. The operator has been aggressively overbuilding many of its legacy HFC systems with FTTH lines, especially in such densely packed markets as New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. Thanks to such aggressive moves, Optimum
ended last year with fibre lines passing 3.1 million locations and now boasts 695,000 residential and 21,000 commercial fibre subs. Finally, after much industry lobbying for it, CableLabs is now developing customised PON standards for cable. They include support for XGS-PON and 25GS-PON, as well as the development of a 100-Gig coherent PON platform for operators. FTTH and PON offer “a much easier transition to increased capacity than DOCSIS and HFC technology,” said Mike Emmendorfer, VP of technology for Calix, which is working with CableLabs on the projects. Industry technologists welcome the moves. But some worry that CableLabs waited too long to make the PON pivot.
Only time will tell.
Volume 48 No.2 MAY 2026
93
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker