Months later than originally expected, CableLabs has finally come out with its next-generation technical standard for cable broadband equipment.

In an announcement made Monday, CableLabs issued its DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) standard, which cable operators around the world have been eagerly awaiting to hike their broadband speeds dramatically and increase their overall bandwidth. The public release of the new standard comes after industry engineers have spent the better part of two years drafting an upgrade to DOCSIS 2.0, the current gold standard for cable high-speed data service.

As expected, the new spec will enable cable operators to bond together four or more 6MHz channels to deliver much higher data speeds and much greater bandwidth to subscribers. Known as "channel-bonding" or "wideband," the approach will let cable systems offer shared downstream data rates of at least 160 Mbit/s and shared upstream speeds of at least 120 Mbit/s, more than 10 times faster than the highest data speeds now available to most cable modem and DSL subscribers.

Besides boosting broadband transmission rates, the DOCSIS 3.0 spec should make it far easier for the cable guys to offer such bandwidth-intensive services as digital video, high-definition TV (HDTV), digital video recording (DVR), and video-on-demand (VOD) through more efficient use of their current spectrum. In addition, the new standard should make it easier for MSOs to deliver such bandwidth-rich services as video conferencing to commercial customers.

Get the rest of the story at Cable Digital News.

— Alan Breznick, Site Editor, Cable Digital News