By Dr. Robert L Howald, Motorola Home & Networks
Today’s HFC plants continue to be a powerful infrastructure for delivery of video, voice, and data services to residential and business customers. It has successfully evolved over time to support a broader suite of services, and these services continue to be enhanced. Where will it go next? While predicting what comes next is always risky, the alternative – moving ahead without a vision – is riskier still. A decade ago, Motorola embarked on a bandwidth projection analysis in order that the industry could prepare for a future full of new possibilities. That projection was published as part of the NCTA proceedings in 2002.
Now, here we are in 2010, with nearly the ten years of “the future” behind us. What predictions were accurate? What misfired? What factors contributed to divergence in estimated growth? This paper will assess those projections. The illuminating conclusions provide important lessons learned about subscriber behaviors, the pace of technology maturity, and how new services come to market. We can use such lessons to better project the next wave of services and technology. Such knowledge is critical to making the next ten years a success