More Details about Mediacom's 10G Trial

Mediacom held an event in Ames, Iowa on September 17, 2020 designed to highlight their efforts to bring faster speeds over their hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network. And Light Reading has a fairly exhaustive article highlighting the company's "10G Smart Home" project. Here are some highlights from the Light Reading article:

• The field trial encompasses four nodes in the Ames network where the physical plant has been upgraded from 860 mhz to 1.2 ghz. 
• It uses DOCSIS 3.1 (not 4.0 or FDX) with a Node+0 architecture in the test area. The rest of the Ames network averages 2 amplifiers between the fiber node and the customer.
• Mediacom installed a high-split upgrade allowing for more upstream bandwidth, one of the primary limitations of HFC networks compared to fiber

While calling it a "10G Smart Home" demonstration, the article hints that the terminology is more aspirational than fact at this point.

"Walden (Mediacom CTO JR Walden) estimates that the setup enables the network to deliver about 5 Gbit/s downstream and 1.2 Gbit/s upstream to the back of the modem (a DOCSIS 3.1 model, in this case) outfitted with a 2.5 Gbit/s port. Today's D3.1 modems can't process more than 5 Gbit/s, but next-gen DOCSIS 4.0 modems will be able to do more."

The article also discusses some of the cool technology that Mediacom demonstrated at the September 17th event.

Two key takeaways based on the reporting (I wasn't there so I'm going by what Light Reading is telling us):
1. Download speeds continue to be a challenge for DOCSIS. Until full duplex DOCSIS is fully baked and ready for field deployment, symmetrical speeds will be a challenge (although Mediacom said the upgraded nodes in Ames are capable of 1 Gbps symmetrical speeds now)
2. Mediacom (and many other large cable companies) are all-in on DOCSIS and its evolution. Yes, the technology will be capable of 10 Gbps symmetrical speeds sometime in the next few years. But as fiber networks such as Cedar Falls and others have shown us, 10G is already here for fiber (XGS-PON and NG2-PON) and for customers who want/need it.