Cox Communications isn't going to leave all the gigabit fun to Google and the telcos.
During The Cable Show this week, Cox Communications Inc. announced that it will deploy broadband services with speeds of 1 Gbit/s as an option to all residential customers. The full timeline hasn't been worked out, but Cox will start rolling gigabit service in select markets in 2014. (See AT&T Turns Up Gig Heat in 21 New Metros and Keeping Up With Google Fiber.)
As a privately-held company, Cox has more flexibility than other cable providers to make capital investments. For example, the cable operator was one of, if not the first in the US to upgrade its cable plant to 1 Gigahertz in 2007.
For the gigabit rollout, Cox hasn't specified which technologies it will use, but a spokesperson did tell Light Reading that the service will rely on portions of Cox's existing network in addition to newer fiber infrastructure.
The spokesperson also pointed out that Cox already delivers gigabit speeds to commercial customers. In the short term, she added, the company plans to double speeds for some of its regular residential broadband tiers as it looks forward to full gigabit deployment.
Cox executive vice president and chief technology officer Kevin Hart told Multichannel News that the company is preparing for gigabit service in part through transition to an all-digital network. The operator will use the reclaimed bandwidth from roughly 60 analog channels to support upgrades to DOCSIS 3.1 technology.
In a related story, the cable industry has decided to brand the DOCSIS 3.1 platform as Gigasphere.
davidhoffman, User Rank: Light Beer 5/21/2014 | 2:31:12 AM
Re: First questions Do you have some links to a source that can explain why this statement is true:
"No mention of symmetrical bandwidth either (essential for remote storage cloud services)."
I always thought that reasonable asymmetrical bandwidth would allow remote cloud storage sevices to work at an aceptable level. People are doing cloud storage on asymmetric cable lines for many months now.
MarkC73, User Rank: Light Sabre 5/5/2014 | 2:00:16 PM
Re: Equipment? Thanks! At first I was thinking that the article was kind of old, but a quick search between the 2 companies yielded some more info, granted they are from Infinera's site but still good info, as well as highlighting a long relationship. Let me read up a bit before I ask anymore ?'s
Mitch Wagner, User Rank: Lightning 5/2/2014 | 4:51:35 PM
Nice! As a Cox customer, this is great news. I'm currently running 32 Mbps down, 4 Mbps up. Do we know what the upload speed is going to be for the Cox deployment, or know when Cox will announce more specifics?
macemoneta, User Rank: Light Sabre 5/2/2014 | 4:49:18 PM
First questions I always want to know price and whether caps / throttling will be imposed. It's likely that pricing will be competitive if there's another gigabit service provider, but what if there isn't a competitor? Will it even be offered before Google starts laying fiber in the neighborhood? Also, without the elimination of caps, gigabit becomes worthless in mere minutes. No mention of symmetrical bandwidth either (essential for remote storage cloud services).
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