21285 - SCTE Broadband Dec2021 COMPLETE v1

22 Vol. 43 No. 4 - November 2021 Issue What is the future Broadband is converging. Whereas in the past the main concern was principally about looking at where a signal comes from and where it goes to, now the main concern is whether there is actually broadband or not. Hybrid Fibre Coaxial Network (HFC), as one of the transport mediums for broadband has been subject to improvements in technology. My career in broadband started with LanCity in 1998. It was here that Broadband and TV merged for the first time as a way for consumers to obtain both TV and Broadband. Using 5-30MHz as the return was a new experience, and it was quite a learning curve for the industry to ensure hitting the head end with zero dBmV. Even the change to dBmV caused confusion for the dBuV experts; attenuation was calculated by hand with cable attenuation charts and attenuation in the passives. The past is something we will always have, but the future is still to be written. We have all become quite spoiled over the last few years, and incredibly dependent on superfast broadband in the last 18 months; everyone would agree that our main concern now is buffering. Nobody wants to wait for anything to upload or download, stream or playback. Our patience is thin, our attention spans ruined. Ultimately, that means we all need enough bandwidth not to have to wait for anything. The current DOCSIS 3.1 standard provides support for 10Gbps downstream and 2Gbps upstream. This is still a stepping stone on the Broadband HFC path; the DOCSIS 4.0 looks towards 1.8GHz as the high frequency for the upstream and 684MHz for the downstream. This is a significant change from DOCSIS 1.0. By Anthony Basham, President, SCTE of broadband? from the industry “The past is something we will always have, but the future is still to be written.” DOCSIS 1.0 DOCSIS 1.1 DOCSIS 2.0 DOCSIS 3.0 DOCSIS 3.1 DOCSIS 4.0 Downstream 40Mbps 40Mbps 40Mbps 1Gbps 10Gbps 10Gbps Upstream 10Mbps 10Mbps 30Mbps 200Mbps 1-2Gbps 6Gbps Issue date 1996 1999 2001 2006 2013 2019