More Mobile Broadband, Faster Deployment Called Key for Cable

An upgraded DOCSIS standard and improved video compression are among technologies that will improve cable operators’ technical performance, executives said. DOCSIS 3.1 will be presented to the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers conference here on Thursday, McKinney said. The new standard will allow higher cable modem speeds and support traffic of 1 Gbps and above, he said. The upgrade is “not a forklift upgrade,” letting cable operators “pick and choose” elements they need while also supporting backwards compatibility, he said. CableLabs has been meeting with operators and vendors about the technology, said McKinney. The former Hewlett-Packard executive was hired by the cable technology consortium this summer (http://xrl.us/bnuivn) to replace exiting CEO Paul Liao (CD May 31 p16). “It’s not just about more speed, but also the quality of the pipe,” McKinney said. “It will offer a lot of opportunity to grow."

DOCSIS 3.1 will offer operators cost-reduction opportunities, said Kevin Hart, Cox Communications chief technology officer. John Schanz, Comcast Cable chief network officer, explained to the audience of marketers that the new DOCSIS standard will allow cable ISPs to get more out of their current technology and be more compatible with “silicon advancement” in infrastructure. New video compression technology called high efficiency video coding will also add to the products that cable can offer to compete with other pay-TV providers, Hart said. “It’s essential to keep cable as the provider of choice,” McKinney said.

Executives said they were interested to see how Google deploys its Kansas City, Mo., area fiber project, with some expressing doubts it poses a serious threat to cable technology. Google is a capable company, Schanz said, but it’s now “learning about building out a network” and the difficulties associated with it. John Pascarelli, Mediacom executive vice president-operations, said only a company like Google could get the financing for the project, which he described as inefficient. “There’s no way they can turn that into a profit center,” Pascarelli said of the Google Fiber project. “They just throwing money into it, trying to embarrass our industry.” Schanz said that despite that, the cable industry is in a position to efficiently deploy fiber.

Cable operators will need to bring products to market much faster, the executives said. Several noted that the 18-month deployment model has already been shortened to five-six months. McKinney said that applies to CableLabs, which “has to be faster” and can’t wait upwards of four years for new DOCSIS upgrades. Many cable operators are moving to an “agile sprint” model of product development, where smaller teams work to fully integrate products into the network, as opposed to the “waterfall” serial approach that often created the 18-month cycle, he said. Hart said it’s important for product development to “fail fast” if consumers aren’t adopting it. McKinney said bad products should be “killed, not wounded” and that it’s important to reward the risks in killing unsuccessful products as much as developing successful products.

CableLab’s product development will focus as much on quickly deploying good ideas as the organization did in developing them, said a presentation from McKinney. Cable will have to continue to develop “better pipes,” which sometimes means higher quality, rather than more capacity, he said. Cable will have to innovate on “smart spaces,” which will allow a variety of devices to connect to a home network, including sensor technology that could be used for healthcare or security, he said. Expansion to new screens other than TV sets will be key to creating a “rich user experience” that allows for more consumer viewing of pay-TV content, he said. McKinney showed the audience a new flexible display that he had rolled up. He said it costs one third that of an LCD panel and could eventually be as cheap as one-tenth the cost of LCD, without any loss in resolution. The technology, which allows a display to be “printed,” will add screens to walls, tabletops and many other locations, he said. It should begin to roll out in 18-24 months and be used primarily for retail marketing projects, though its use is expected to expand, McKinney said.