Cable set to raise high-speed limits

The cable industry is raising the high-speed data delivery bar with a technology proposal that will deliver 30 Mb/s of symmetrical speed as early as next year.

While stopping short of calling it a DSL killer, many observers agreed cable's emerging DOCSIS 2.0 specifications, which set those speeds among other parameters, will significantly improve its commercial presence.

“We needed this as the last piece of the puzzle to make DOCSIS complete,” said Steve Craddock, senior vice president of new media development for Comcast and a member of CableLabs' DOCSIS board. “We knew we needed more robust physical layer technology to allow us to do business applications.”

'DSL was dead  before we started.' — Rouzbeh Yassini CableLabs

DOCSIS 2.0 is the latest iteration of CableLabs' evolving high-speed data standards. It includes an advanced physical layer (PHY) with synchronous CDMA (S-CDMA) and advanced frequency agile TDMA (A-TDMA) modulation that triples upstream speeds and improves reliability. DOCSIS 2.0 specs should be finalized by the end of this year and first products certified some time next year.

The high-powered symmetrical bandwidth differentiates between cable's primarily residential DOCSIS 1.0 and 1.1 efforts, said Michael Goodman, analyst for The Yankee Group and co-author of a recent study predicting cable's continued domination of the residential broadband data market.

“Upstream isn't a big issue on the consumer side,” Goodman said. Commercially, though, operators should be “expecting bigger files, more bandwidth-intensive things in the upstream path.”

While cable still has access and quality issues to resolve, DOCSIS 2.0 technologically increases the pressure on competing DSL providers, Craddock said. “It's a toolkit that enables operators to develop services that have the potential to grow the business and branch out and do things we always wanted to do.”

For Rouzbeh Yassini, CableLabs' executive adviser who is running the cable modem initiative, DOCSIS 2.0 fills a key need of providing symmetrical service.

“We can actually do 20 T-1 services,” he said. But Yassini believes DOCSIS 2.0 will not impact DSL operators' business plans. “DSL was dead before we started,” he said.

DOCSIS 2.0 will require software and hardware system upgrades, but existing modems work with the PHY, Yassini said, adding that advanced PHY technology will not increase costs. “This might be a blip of 20¢ to 30¢ [per cable modem], and then it's going to go away.”

For Terayon Communication Systems, the new specifications are vindication for a long, often acrimonious struggle to have S-CDMA technology recognized.

“They presented this a couple years ago, and politics got involved,” said one industry source. “A lot of assertions were made [by competitors] that weren't true, as it turns out.”

Terayon, meanwhile, insisted that S-CDMA, which is popular overseas, would help the U.S. market.

“I use the word ‘validation’ vs. ‘vindication,’” said Zaki Rakib, Terayon's CEO. “The competition tried to take away the value of S-CDMA. The most important piece of this decision is the validation of that value.”

Terayon is the only vendor with a dual-mode S-CDMA/A-TDMA chip, which gives Terayon a time-to-market advantage, said Richard Prodan, the company's senior vice president and chief scientist.

Industry-leading chipmaker Broadcom collaborated with Terayon, Conexant Systems, Texas Instruments and Pacific Broadband Communications on the DOCSIS 2.0 spec, but “Terayon is the only company that submitted both the S-CDMA and advanced TDMA technology in one implementation,” Prodan said.

Broadcom did not return calls seeking comment on its dual technology.

While 2.0 will enhance cable's commercial stance, it won't obviate DOCSIS 1.1. “There's stuff we need to do right now. Voice is one of them that can't wait,” Craddock said. “I'm not in a month of Sundays going to wait [at least a year] to get 1.1 in the field.”

And it doesn't overcome cable's other non-technology problems.

“The battle for consumers isn't over who has faster service,” said Ian Olgierson, analyst for Kagan World Media. “It's who has the more reliable service, and who can simply deliver it.”