Mediacom To Demo "10G"

Mediacom, one of the nation's largest telecommunications providers, is bullish on new versions of DOCSIS that will allow up to 10 gigabits per second download speeds over coaxial. They've talked about being one of the nation's first operators to deploy 10G (the marketing name devised by Cable Labs for the iterations of DOCSIS capable of higher downloads). Now, the company is holding a demonstration of 10G this week.

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As reported in Light Reading, Mediacom will hold a field demo of 10G on Thursday, September 17th in Ames, Iowa. Details about the demo are listed in the article. The demo is being held in conjunction with Cable Labs and NCTA-The Internet and Television Association, which represents large cable operators.

The choice of Ames is not surprising in many ways. Not only is Ames the home to Iowa State University, one of the nation's leading engineering research centers. Ames also JUST HAPPENS to be one of several Mediacom service areas that are currently being overbuilt by a new provider, in this case Metronet, with fiber-to-the-home. 

Cable operators see the next generations of DOCSIS as a way to hold off the competitive threat from fiber networks, especially those deploying GPON and 1 gigabit speeds. CableLabs is apparently working on two iterations of 10G. One version, called DOCSIS 4.0, is theoretically capable of up to 10 Gbps download and 6 Gbps upload speeds, and allows the operator to still have a small number of amplifiers between the node and the user. The other version, Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX), requires an N+0 architecture (no amplifiers) and is capable of 10 Gbps symmetrical speeds. It isn't clear from the Light Reading article which version Mediacom is planning to demonstrate.