Here’s an interesting take from Multichannel News on DOCSIS 3.0 growth. According to the pub’s research division, cable operators are now offering DOCSIS 3.0-enabled service to “more than 52 million U.S. consumers and businesses.” And yet it doesn’t appear that adoption rates are very high. Multichannel News references Time Warner Cable as an example, stating that TWC signed up just 2,000 D3 subscribers in New York City during the first quarter of service availability.
There are two points of interest in the Multichannel News findings. First, as analyst Mike Paxton explains, cable companies are building out infrastructure to support higher Internet speeds than most people need at this point. That puts them in a stronger position than some of their competitors and lets the cable operators support continued service growth.
Second, DOCSIS 3.0 offers advantages beyond just higher peak downstream speeds. While cable operators may not have much of an audience yet for premium 50-Mbps tiers, they do have an interest in lowering the cost of providing bandwidth to all of their subscribers. And as Motorola’s Brian O’Neill explained a couple weeks ago, Motorola’s D3 hardware helps them do just that.
Bottom line: There aren’t a lot of subscribers taking advantage of DOCSIS 3.0 speeds yet, but cable operators are building for the future and, in some cases, lowering operating costs by migrating to the latest DOCSIS standard now.
{ 1 comment }
