Comcast Expanding Wideband - Analyst Blog

Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) launched its residential “Extreme" tier DOCSIS 3.0 (wideband) network in Indianapolis offering 50 Mbps downstream and 10 Mbps upstream speed for a price of $99.95 per month. The company is aggressively deploying the DOCSIS 3.0 technology to upgrade its existing customers from broadband to high-speed wideband network. Management predicted that all of its residential networks will be upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 by mid 2010.
 
As residential VoIP and HDTV services continue to grow, communications service providers are dealing with increased network traffic driven by strong demand for video download and file sharing. This massive requirement for data transport has encouraged cable operators seeking to improve their transport offerings.

Furthermore, Cable MSOs are facing fierce competition from telecom service providers. Telecom operators are quickly gaining market share from cable MSOs by offering Mobile TV and other high-speed broadband services to subscribers.
 
Comcast decided to increasingly focus on the small and medium sized businesses (SMB) segment. Leveraging on the DOCSIS 3.0 platform, the company offers various tiers of business-class wideband services that provide bandwidth within the range of downstream speeds of 100 Mbps and upstream speeds of 15 Mbps.
 
Industry sources have predicted that Comcast is trying hard to develop a superfast DOCSIS 3.0-based network architecture that will support 250 Mbps speed. For that the company needs to install wideband cable modems that can bond 8 digital downstream channels to create one larger and faster logical pipe to support a throughput of 250 Mbps. 

Comcast has undertaken a project to reclaim 40 to 50 of its existing analog channels to free up spectrum for DOCSIS 3.0. Broadcom Corp. (BRCM) and Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN) are the two major suppliers of these modems.