Fiber is all the rage, but CableLabs asserts DOCSIS isn’t dead

It feels as if all eyes are on fiber at the moment, with money pouring in and deployment commitments piling up. Operators playing in this space have largely dismissed cable as obsolete, saying cable won’t be able to keep up with multi-gigabit speeds on fiber. But CableLabs contended DOCSIS isn’t dead – and won’t be for a while. CableLabs is the entity responsible for putting out DOCSIS specifications, but it also provides several different specifications for point-to-point coherent optics. Curtis Knittle, Vice President of wired technologies at CableLabs, said all the talk about DOCSIS not being able to keep up with fiber is nonsense. He pointed to the performance offered by DOCSIS 4.0, the most recently released specification, as proof. The DOCSIS 4.0 specification was finalized in March 2020 and will enable downlink speeds of up to 10 Gbps and uplink speeds of up to 6 Gbps once deployed. Knittle said the industry is still working to hammer out a few more items before it hits prime time, including out-of-band requirements, leakage detection and neighbor interference. CableLabs is also planning a series of interoperability test events to allow vendors to check their DOCSIS 4.0 kit, with a few set for late 2021 and more coming in early 2022.