“Raising the Bar” was the theme at the 2019 SCTE Expo in New Orleans and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers is planning to raise that bar really high. Right now the push for the cable industry is 10G and cable companies are
planning to be fully adapted by 2030. Even though that’s a very ambitious goal, everyone in the industry is banding together to make it happen.
It is important to understand that 10G stands for a 10Gbps speed and that upgrade includes “four pillars” of improved quality: increased speed, better security, better reliability, and lower latency. 90% of homes in the US have access to 1Gbps
speeds from their cable provider, but that’s not fast enough for the technology coming in the next 10 years. To meet this goal (and succeed on achieving what’s been describe by the four pillars) cable companies understand that they are
going to be undertaking the entire replacement of their aging infrastructure that includes over 18 million devices like amps, splitters and nodes. At the heart of the 10G push is DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) that must go
through a giant revision to the proposed v4.0, increasing the frequency to 1.8GHz and utilizing EDS (Extended Spectrum DOCSIS) and FDX (Full Duplex DOCSIS).
The cable industry is not afraid of the 5G push rolling through the world right now either. These 5G microcells will still have to live on a suburban high-speed WIRED network, and they can provide that. There were many discussions at the SCTE Expo regarding
the possibilities of the cable industry to support the 5G revolution and that a 10G cable network can be the best option for them. This ambitious thought of creating a robust and extremely high-speed network has also brought the cable companies to
local and federal governments. The push for “smart cities” full of sensors, wireless access, and loads of data needs to live on someone’s network.
No need to fear — our industry won’t be taken over by the cable companies, but we are seeing a merging trend among integrators, manufacturers, distributors and other professionals that will see a most exciting and revolutionary period in the
next five to 10 years.
For more information on the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers,
visit SCTE.org.
NOTE: This Emerging Trends piece is brought to you by CEDIA’s Technology Advisory Council and Technology Application & Innovation department.