Near universal DOCSIS 3.0 deployment predicted by 2013

Report: DOCSIS 3.0 To Blanket U.S. By 2013 [Multichannel News]

A new research report predicts that U.S. cable operators will have universally deployed the advanced cable broadband technology DOCSIS 3.0 by 2013. Pike & Fisher, a research firm, released a report that details the anticipated progress of cable operators upgrading their infrastructure to support DOCSIS 3.0 and the ultra high speed broadband that it will bring to customers. At the end of last year, approximately 13 percent of all homes passed by cable broadband had DOCSIS 3.0 available to them. By the end of this year, Pike & Fisher estimates that around 44 percent of all homes passed will have DOCSIS 3.0 as an option - that's over 50 million U.S. households.

Those numbers continue to increase until 2013, when the report indicates that nearly all 120 million homes that are passed by cable broadband have access to DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. While 2013 may sound like a long time off for customers looking for the next step up in broadband speeds, the deployment of these speeds is happening far faster than any competing technology. Based on the estimates in this report, between now and 2013, U.S. cable operators will make 26 million more homes DOCSIS 3.0 capable per year, on average.  As I reported last week, Cablevision announced a DOCSIS 3.0 deployment with speeds much faster than the fiber-to-the home technology that's being deployed by Verizon.  And they're doing it at a lower price.

These improvements also have the ability to be rolled out much more quickly than any competing technology, like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-verse, because the cost to upgrade the HFC cable infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.0 is much less than both phone company's deployment costs.  That's the reason why it's likely that 120 million U.S. households will have access to DOCSIS 3.0 broadband speeds in the range of 50 - 100 Mbps or more by 2013.  I'd bet my wife's Derby hat that competing phone company products will pass only a fraction of that number by then.

As I've said here previously, here at Insight we're working diligently on our own DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades. While I don't have anything specific to report on our launch dates yet, stay tuned.   Readers of this blog will be among the first to know when we're ready to make an announcement.

Comments

[Wayne]

Can you give any insight (no pun intended) on when Insight will offer a DOCSIS rollout?