By John M. Ulm, Motorola, Home & Networks Mobility Technology Office
This paper takes a long term look at cable’s broadband bandwidth needs over a 10+ year horizon. It discusses several drivers that forecast bandwidth needs down the road. We compare HFC potential against FTTP architectures and shows that there is plenty of capacity left in coax to compete with GPON or even co-exist with it. HFC also has the significant advantage in that it can incrementally expand bandwidth through this entire process without requiring a massive infrastructure overhaul like pure FTTP providers. How far can the MSOs take coax looking way out on the 10+ year horizon? With the recent evaluations of the RF overlay systems, we take a closer look at the theoretical maximum capacity of coax. The paper discusses how HFC can offer 1+ Gbps services over coax and what is needed beyond our current DOCSIS systems.