After two years, cable TV, Internet, and phone provider Mediacom has completed its mission of company wide deployment of DOCSIS 3.1 network services. Now it is available across Mediacom's entire footprint according to JR Walden, Mediacom's Chief Technology Officer.
“We did the last one Friday,” Walden was speaking at an SCTE Cable-Tec Expo breakfast panel event that included technology executives from Midco, CableLabs and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers. The event was produced by Broadband Technology Report. “We wanted to put a stake in the ground as fast as we could," he continued.
"We began launching markets in 2017," he added. "We staggered the launches to get our names in the paper a little more. It worked. But for all intent and purposes, we’re done."
To improve Mediacom's Internet, voice and digital television bundles are available in 22 states. Mediacom began switching from CableLabs’ DOCSIS 3.0 to the new 3.1 standard two years ago. Back then the vendors didn’t really even have any DOCSIS 3.1 products completed.
They could get the cable modem termination system or CMTS products for the hubs early on. They replaced about 200 cable modem termination system devices at around 40 different locations but the DOCSIS 3.1 modems were a lot harder to source.
“CableLabs kept telling us that the CMTSs would come first and the modems second,” Walden said. “I don’t know why I didn’t believe them. We really anticipated the modems coming a little faster.”
Mediacom conducted DOCSIS 3.1 field tests in 2016.
About 10% of new Mediacom Internet, cable and voice subscribers are signing up for 1-gig service, powered be DOCSIS 3.1, Walden said. They have deployed some 12,000 DOCSIS 3.1 gateways out of a million plus customers. Mediacom announced last year a billion dollar upgade plan.
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