Comcast CEO Shows Off Superfast Modem

Can someone clarify for the non-technical types (such as myself) what "superfast" actually means?

Bonds together 4 cable lines? I though one of the big issues with cable was saturation from multiple users on the same bit of cable? Not sure here as adsl is by far more available around here

>a data download speed of 150 megabits per second

The article makes no mention of what kind of upstream speeds you'll get with this technology.

With more and more households pulling down big files, with HDTV starting to take off and the jump in downloads *that* will cause, with more multi-PC homes (four in mine), of COURSE they're going to want more bandwidth.

And until FTTH becomes more prevalent, cable is the best available option.

That means 16 cables should be 625 times as fast

and 128 cables... oh my god

Quick, get the bonding glue and a spool of coax!

It's download time!!!

In a related story, RIAA and MPAA have both filed suit in court to preemptively obtain ISP subscriber information before any infringement can occur.

"It's an important step forward for the Web 3.0," Ebeneezer Swindler, lawyer for the RIAA, said. "Someone could get on that evil BitTorrent site and download our content. This happens so fast that by the time we logged in we couldn't even see their IP addresses. Our current technology requires us to temporarily join the pirates so we could get their information... it's no good if they'd already stolen what they needed and gotten out of there!"

"It's NO good," reiterated Swindler, with peculiar emphasis on the "NO."

No government official could be reached for comment as they were busy preordering ivory backscratchers from expected additional campaign contributions from the MAFIAA.

They're competing with FiOS? The connection promised by every phone company 10 years ago that was never delivered despite being given money by the government to do so? The connection technology just now being rolled out by ONE phone company in a handful of cities?

That's competition?

So you can use up your 'unknown' monthly data limit four times as fast now! I hope that ISP's realise that a faster modem will require a higher data cap.

More information can be found at:
1. Specifications: http://www.cablemodem.com/specifications/specifica tions30.html [cablemodem.com]
2. Press release: http://www.cablelabs.com/news/pr/2006/06_pr_docsis 30_080706.html [cablelabs.com]
3. Ars Technica article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060808-7450 .html [arstechnica.com]

At this rate, they're NEVER gonna get the Slowskies away from their beloved ADSL and get them to become Comcast subscribers...

instead, multiple upstream or downstream channels are used. The real factor in achieving these speeds depends on what modulation type your cable op decides to configure on the CMTS. In a perfect world everything is 256-QAM/128-QAM, but you will often see 32-QAM implimented because the end to end cabling can't support the rf throughput required for higher bandwidth modulation types. The wiki article on DOCSIS [wikipedia.org] is a good place to start for more information.

The description stating that it "It bonds together four cable lines" is a horrible description of what is likely going on here.

Cable/tv channels are 6 MHz wide. On a typical cable system you can use 256QAM to encode digital data for transmission. In 6 MHz you can get about 39 Mbps. If you bond four channels together (24 MHz) that's 156 Mbps using 256QAM.

So what it sounds like is DOCSIS 3 supports channel bonding or perhaps simply a very wide channel.

The "four cable lines" has nothing to do with how much physical coax comes to your house. On paper an all digital 750 MHz plant could deliver on the order of 4.5 Gbps. But having 70 channels of analog really cuts into that.

Just having a faster modem will not result in faster downloads. It is like fixing a huge 150" tap to a 1" pipe. Unless the internet backbone, the servers, the routers, switches, bridges increase their capacities we are not going to see an across the board increase in download and upload speeds. We might see some fast on demand IP based TV solution provided by the ISP and stuff like that. But slashdot.org is probably going to load at the same speed it is currently loading and your email attachments are going to take as much to upload as it is currently taking.

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comcast CEO dazzled cable industry audience by showcasing a super quick modem, using a technology called DOCSIS 3.0. It was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories.

It is not clear whether the "it" referred to is the modem or the "technology called DOCSIS 3.0". In either case, the quoted information is not true.

DOCSIS 3.0 is a suite of specifications that represents the newest release of the DOCSIS specifications that have been around for nearly a decade now. CableLabs (the usual name for "Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.") managed the process of creating the specs, and performed the actual publication, but the specs themselves were developed in almost entirely by equipment manufacturers, with input from interested (mostly large) cable operators.

Similarly, the modem that was demonstrated was built not by CableLabs but by one of those equipment manufacturers (ARRIS, for whom I work, although I have no direct association with the group that builds the DOCSIS 3.0 modem; I was a contributor to the DOCSIS 3.0 specs).

The complete sleep-inducing suite of specs may be downloaded from www.cablelabs.com.

This is all very nice and impressive, but it's besides the point.

Verizon is coming into the Washington metro area with FIOS and based on informal discussions with friends and colleagues is kicking Comcast's butt.

Right now, it's primarily a price issue. High speed internet (5M/2M) is similarly price, but the FIOS TV is where Verizon has a huge advantage. Right now, most people are reporting savings of $25/month (that's SAVINGS) and this is for more channels, but standard def and high def.

Plus, the Verizon installers are, in general, far more professional because they haven't outsourced installation to guys in pickup trucks. They do it themselves, and the quality of their work is outstanding.

The good news here is for consumers... Comcast must do something they've refused to do so far... compete on price, because they have less features than Verizon. Right now, Comcast is offering limited deals (1 year, all your boxes for free), but as FIOS penetrates more neighborhoods, the prices will drop.

This really is good news for everybody.

The best part of this new technology?

The new modem still has the limitation of only ~300k of upstream bandwidth. It's totally win-win.

As much as the cablecos would like to make us all go "oooh" and "aaah" over this technology, it's still incredibly unimpressive. We won't see rollouts of this technology for at least a year and most projections show just 40% of cable subscribers will have access to DOCSIS 3.0 by 2012. It's really not all that impressive considering that projects like UTOPIA [utopianet.org] and FIOS are currently delivering better speeds than cable and can ramp up to 100Mbps+ without much in the way of equipment upgrades. UTOPIA can even do 1Gbps+ with a minimum of new equipment. This is just another way for incumbent providers to squeeze more blood from the turnip that is their aging copper-based plant. The stock market will reward them now, but the market as a whole will be punishing them in 5-10 years.

They'll all cower before my "uberfast" modem, which bonds an unspecified number of tight strings to give a speed increase up to 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0 times greater than reading a DVD a byte at a time over the phone to your mate with a hex editor.

It's a standard. I remember being one of the people stuck ... er, tasked with, reviewing the first version. It was a painful read, but definately showed that there was "something new in the air." A lot of surprising things were taken into account, especially in a time frame where DSL was just starting to kick cable's ass. I'm curious to see what the new standard includes.

Wasn't DOCSIS 3.0 capable of somewhere around a max of 466 mbps? Why only 150, then?

Oh, wait, TV channels. D'oh! Lemme have my 466 megabit! I don't watch television!

Sort of on topic, sort of off, but does Comcast's CEO actually use Comcast as his cable provider?

I ask this as my Comcrap cable has been knocked out *again* from a thunderstorm. Since January, we've lost service due to an ice storm, a relatively light snowfall, and just plain old rain. Another occasion had the TV service freezing up because it was *raining*. We've received nominal credits (yay, a $1.30 credit on my $90 bill!)

Does the CEO have to read about FiOS offering substantially better speeds and programming at a similar or lesser price than his own cable? If he has a problem, does he have to wait on hold for an hour and a half to talk to someone, just like his technicians? Is his area stuck with a cable guide that is 3 generations behind those in the middle of freakin' Indiana? Does his HD pixellate or get out of sync every so often? Is he happy with the literal handful of HD channels available to his lineup?

Yep, I'm bitter. I use Comcast because I can't get DSL (I'd have to get a landline phone for that anyway, which I don't want) and they are the only provider. I hate it hate it hate it. I just don't understand how someone could subscribe to their service and actually *enjoy* it, given the other technology alternatives that are out there, but just aren't available yet to everyone for some unknown reason. Gahhhhh!

This article has one key line that just makes me want to scream.

This is NOT 25 times faster than current standard cablemodems. It may be 25 times faster than Comcast currently OFFERS, but that is a significant difference.

One of the reasons uncapping modems worked as well as it did is because DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 are both capable of 45Mbit/sec downstream. There are current services (Disclaimer: I work for Cablevision, where one of these is offered) that are offering 30Mbit/sec download speeds - and getting them. (I personally have topped out at 29Mbit/sec.) There are other technologies than DOCSIS out there that are currently implemented which are easily capable of 100Mbit/sec.

There's absolutely nothing to get excited about with this. If anything, I admit to being puzzled as to why they weren't managing 180Mbit/sec on a modem with 4 bonded channels - 20Mbit/sec is a bit much to be writing off to overhead.

DOCSIS 3.0 is a solid step forward, but this is not the next greatest thing. There are comparative technologies available right now that would require minimal upgrades, if any. And the guy at Time Warner's right, what can't you do with 30Mbit/sec that you can with 100Mbps?

Most Cable providers are still running at DOCSIS 1.x and are planning a rollout to 2.x over YEARS of deployment.

Your bandwidth is constrained by your cable ISP's bandwidth to their Tier2 or Tier1 provider and your subscription plan.

My modem was capable of a theoretical 40Mb/s+ 5 years ago. I doubt comcast will be offering ANY service in the next 5 years that max out the capability of my DOCSIS 1.x modem.