CableLabs Kills Interim DOCSIS Standard

CableLabs has killed a budding attempt to create an interim DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) tech standard for cable modem equipment, Light Reading has learned.

No details are available yet. But knowledgeable sources confirmed that CableLabs executives decided to short-circuit the effort after fielding heated criticism of the proposed spec from executives of several large MSOs at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers' Cable-Tec Expo in Denver last week. A CableLabs spokesman declined comment on the proposed spec earlier today.

The controversial DOCSIS 2.0b spec, promoted mainly by tech equipment vendors as a temporary measure, would have enabled cable operators to hike broadband downstream speeds dramatically by bonding together two or three 6MHz channels. Such a move would have boosted cable subscriber bandwidth to at least 70 Mbit/s downstream.

With the phone companies breathing down the cable guys' necks, DOCSIS 2.0b proponents have been pushing the interim spec as a quick and easy way to boost broadband bandwidth with a software download while the industry waits for DOCSIS 3.0, the next full release of the DOCSIS standard.

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— Alan Breznick, Site Editor, Cable Digital News