DOCSIS 4.0 Spending Heavy, but 3.1 Seen Having Years Left

While the cable industry invests heavily in the groundwork for DOCSIS 4.0 and the greater speeds it will bring, existing DOCSIS 3.1 broadband delivery specifications and technology will be in use for years to come, cablers said Thursday. During an SCTE webinar, some said DOCSIS 4.0 could open the door to cable operators shifting from "best efforts" service standards to service level agreements (SLA), letting them guarantee specific speed tiers and latency.

DOCSIS 3.1 can support multi-gig speeds, which meet most subscribers' needs, said Erik Kuhlmann, GCI senior director-engineering and architecture. He said upgrades to GCI's hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network to support DOCSIS 4.0 -- as well as the company's fiber investments -- will get GCI to 10 Gbps speeds. But the HFC upgrades are moving more slowly than expected, he said. Brady Volpe, OpenVault chief product officer, said DOCSIS 3.1 could have as much as a decade of use left, depending on the operator. Meanwhile, DOCSIS 5.0 development is underway, Volpe added.

While 10 Gbps symmetrical speeds are a goal with DOCSIS 4.0, driving that type of speed into subscribers' homes on existing in-home wiring could raise concerns like higher maintenance costs, Volpe noted. He said a tipping point could come where cable operators opt instead for fiber to the home (FTTH) instead of making continual upgrades to their HFC infrastructure.

For GCI, that point is yet to be determined, GCI's Kuhlmann said. While FTTH could become a primary focus, for now GCI is not considering making a big pivot, he said.

To remain relevant and compete with fiber, cable must assess SLAs, Kuhlmann said. Volpe said even DOCSIS 3.1 makes SLAs feasible, but 4.0 offers greater ability. He said that as end users' data expectations grow, they expect SLAs.

Asked about the joint developer agreement between Broadcom and some major cable operators on DOCSIS 4.0 technology, Volpe said the JDA's exclusivity is a big barrier to many operators that can't afford to join. That could somewhat fragment the cable industry, which until now has enjoyed a compatibility model built largely on CableLabs standards, he said. The JDA could result in some operators eschewing DOCSIS 4.0 and choosing to remain with DOCSIS 3.1 or move to fiber because they lack early access to 4.0 technology, he said. Kuhlmann noted the JDA is "a little bit problematic" for GCI's planning. The company "will leverage the heck out of 3.1" for the foreseeable future, but the JDA complicates GCI's eventual decision about going with DOCSIS 4.0 vs. FTTH.

Cable operators likely will spend $10 billion on outside plant equipment, including optical nodes and amplifiers, through 2030 as they attempt to increase capacity and compete with fiber internet service providers, Dell'Oro Group said Thursday. Cable spending on outside plant equipment is expected to hit $972 million this year, up 15% year over year, with DOCSIS 3.1 and distributed access architecture projects driving the surge, it added. Outside plant spending is expected to peak at $2 billion in 2027 as tier one cable operators will be in the middle of DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades, Dell'Oro predicted.