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The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), in collaboration with the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), CableLabs, and Cable Europe, today announced the next generation of cable broadband — DOCSIS 3.1 — will be dubbed “Gigasphere” as its public name to demystify the technology for consumers.
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 3.1 will be the next standard for delivering broadband service over cable systems. Unlike earlier standards that depended on allocating one or more traditional “channels” for broadband, Gigasphere will use orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), allowing cable systems to bond segments of unused spectrum together dedicated to broadband, delivering the potential of 10/1Gbps service.
Gigasphere will help cable systems compete more effectively with fiber to the home broadband networks, although upstream speeds are still slower than what fiber can offer. By rebranding DOCSIS 3.1, cable operators hope customers will respond to future marketing efforts that promote the viability of cable-delivered broadband in light of growing fiber competition.
The first DOCSIS 3.1 modems will be hybrids that support both DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 3.0 spectrum, and will be able to handle both simultaneously. The DOCSIS 3.0 side will carry a minimum requirement of bonding 24 downstream QAM channels and 8 upstream QAM channels, alongside a DOCSIS 3.1 minimum that calls for the ability to tie in two channels/blocks orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) at 192MHz-wide each, and two 96MHz-wide channels for the upstream.
Those are the baseline requirments and operators will later decide how and when to turn up that capacity, but when fully-loaded, that 3.0/3.1 mix will be able to handle max downstream speeds of 4 Gbps to 5 Gbps, and 1.5 Gbps in the upstream right out of the chute, Matthew Schmitt, CableLabs’s director of DOCSIS, explained here in an interview.
– See more at: http://www.multichannel.com/news/distribution/first-docsis-31-modems-will-have-4-5-gbps-potential/261067#sthash.iuXwADeI.dpuf
The first generation of Gigasphere modems will cover both DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 3.0 spectrum simultaneously when they arrive later this year. Models will support the current DOCSIS 3 standard with up to 24 bonded QAM channels for downloading and up to 8 channels for uploading. The modems will also cover two 192MHz OFDM channels for downloading and two 96MHz wide OFDM channels for uploading under DOCSIS 3.1 — potentially delivering up to 4-5Gbps downloading and 1.5Gbps uploading speeds.
Phil, are these down/up numbers dedicated to each premise or are they shared by a number of premises?