CABLE SECTOR PREPS DOCSIS TO RULE BROADBAND WORLD

New VoIP, home networking solutions on the horizon

The cable industry plans to dominate the broadband space with future products based on the industry's DOCSIS high-speed data specifications. Cable calls this worldwide effort Broadband 1.0.

“We're more international than we were a year ago… more mature technically,” said Richard Green, president and CEO of cable's R&D arm CableLabs, during a media briefing last week in Denver.

Established as a high-speed delivery mechanism, DOCSIS is morphing into next-generation 1.1 and 2.0 platforms that increase bandwidth, add quality of service (QOS) and pave the way for PacketCable voice over IP and CableHome home networking.

“We really have a robust system, an industry standard,” said Rouzbeh Yassini, senior executive consultant to CableLabs and CEO and co-founder of YAS Broadband Ventures. Yassini has shepherded the DOCSIS effort almost from its start and has been given responsibility for CableHome.

The first DOCSIS 1.1 modems — on which the PacketCable platform will run — are certified. Yassini projected fourth quarter certification of interoperable DOCSIS 2.0 products that will deliver 30 Mb/s of symmetrical bandwidth and open the commercial space to cable.

“Cable is the broadband of choice,” Yassini said. The DOCSIS foundation lets the industry move forward rapidly because it's not trying to reinvent the network each time to introduce new services, he said.

Cable plans to move all services on a single pipe and collapse them into an IP infrastructure, said David Fellows, AT&T Broadband's chief technology officer and chairman of the DOCSIS certification board.

Part of that pipe will be used for multimedia applications such as interactive gaming that, while requiring the low latency demanded for reliable voice service, don't necessarily carry the five nines reliability burden of primary voice, Fellows said.

CableLabs is working with dynamic QOS to apportion bandwidth into areas where it is needed — starting with primary-line voice — and “doing a lot of a bandwidth analysis,” said Mark Coblitz, senior vice president of strategic planning for Comcast. Dynamic QOS will let one household member use the cable network for interactive games while another makes a VoIP call via the PacketCable platform, he said.

“PacketCable is not a about telephony,” Coblitz said. “It's all about the platforms that we put together.”

When those platforms reach the home, CableHome will take over and network them between various IP-based devices, including televisions, computers, phones and games. Yassini expects CableHome interoperability certification to begin by third quarter 2002 as cable rushes into home networking.

“Everybody wants to own the home network,” said Susan Marshall, AT&T Broadband's senior vice president of advanced broadband services. “It's going to require us to innovate fast because this space is moving fast.”

AT&T has conducted CableHome-type trials but now uses its technicians to install home networks with proprietary Linksys gear, she said. The need for professional installation indicates that there is still a level of complexity that must be erased before the technology becomes widespread.

“We have to make this easier,” Green said. “That's what CableHome does.”