Astound Broadband is making moves to upgrade its traditional cable broadband infrastructure to support multi-gigabit speeds and DOCSIS 4.0. The company said today that it will use equipment from Harmonic for the network upgrades.
“Multi-gigabit speeds [are in] Astound Broadband’s plan,” said Jeffrey Glahn, senior vice president of global sales, broadband, at Harmonic in an email exchange with Telecompetitor.
“Astound Broadband is evaluating both DOCSIS 4.0 and fiber options, market by market, with Harmonic’s solution.”
A spokesperson for Astound Broadband did not immediately reply to a request from Telecompetitor for additional information.
The Harmonic products that Astound will use include a virtualized cable modem termination system (vCMTS) and distributed access architecture (DAA) using remote PHY devices.
DAA moves intelligence to the edge of a hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) network. The remote PHY devices are installed in the node where optical transmissions are converted to coax. They improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), enabling the cable network operator to boost speeds.
As an Astound spokesperson noted, DAA is considered a requirement to offer DOCSIS 4.0, the latest generation of DOCSIS, which is designed to increase the speeds that HFC infrastructure can support, particularly on the upstream path.
Cableco Network Upgrades
In recent years, cable companies have found it increasingly difficult to compete in markets where a competitor has deployed fiber broadband. The reason is that fiber broadband supports faster speeds, particularly on the upstream path.
While the majority of internet traffic remains on the downstream path, the upstream path has become increasingly important as customers increasingly require symmetrical communications to support gaming and videoconferencing.
Astound already supports symmetrical 5 Gbps speeds in some markets where the company has deployed fiber broadband.
As a press release explains, Harmonic’s technology provides “a unified platform for DOCSIS today and PON for future [fiber broadband] deployments.”
Astound Broadband is the company formed through the consolidation of RCN, Grande, Wave, enTouch and Digital West. According to Astound, the company is the sixth largest cable multi-systems operator in the U.S.
Astound is just one of several major cablecos that are upgrading their networks to support faster and more symmetrical speeds using either DOCSIS 4.0, DOCSIS 3.1+, or a combination of the two. Other cablecos that have outlined the technology path they plan to take include Comcast, Charter, Cox, Midco, and Altice. While upgrades to DOCSIS 4.0 or DOCSIS 3.1+ don’t quite match fiber broadband in performance, they are considerably faster and less costly to accomplish.
