New Radio over Coax

Charter, Rogers Communications, and CableLabs have collaborated on a new technology they are calling new radio over coax. The immediate goal of the new technology is to use a cable company’s coaxial network to transmit 5G signals. In Charter’s case, the company wants to use new bandwidth to take advantage of Charter’s CBRS spectrum. The technology to make this happen relies on opening up new spectrum inside the HFC (Hybrid fiber coaxial) network at frequencies higher than 1.8 GHz, which is the current bandwidth needed to implement DOCSIS 4.0. Much in the same way that DSL transmits broadband at a higher frequency on telephone copper, NRoC will transmit at a higher frequency that won’t interfere with the current network transmissions of video and broadband. There are numerous potential uses for a cable company by opening a new data path on an HFC network. Charter says that NRoC can transform the cost of small cell deployment. This technology would enable Charter to add a new small cell site at any node for a significantly lower cost than adding a traditional small cell site.