Mediacom launched its first DOCSIS 4.0 market, lighting up service in West Des Moines, Iowa, and laying plans to upgrade at least six more cities as part of its 10G upgrade plan. Along with the cable update, the operator is rolling out new symmetrical 1-gig and 2-gig speed tiers there.
Thomas Larsen, Mediacom’s SVP of government and public relations, told Fierce Telecom its upgrade project in the city spans 32,000 homes and businesses. While the network has been upgraded, though, Larsen noted it does not yet have DOCSIS 4.0 modems in its inventory, meaning it can’t yet take advantage of the full speeds offered by the next generation technology.
Still, Mediacom is pressing on with its upgrades, planning rollouts in the cities of Bertram, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Fairfax, Hiawathaf and Marion as well as portions of unincorporated Linn County in Iowa. Asked about the timeline for these deployments, Larsen said “we look at these as roughly 2-year projects. As nodes get upgraded, we will be able to turn on sections of each market so areas will be moving to 10G on a rolling basis.”
Back in February, Mediacom CTO J.R. Walden told Fierce that the persistence of legacy RF set-top boxes in its markets was a limiting factor for its DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades. Larsen confirmed this is still the case.
“We do need to swap out the old set top boxes on a node-by-node basis before we make the switchover to 10G. If we can overlash fiber to existing utility pole attachments versus building fiber underground, that can have a great impact on our construction timeline,” he said. However, he added there is also currently fierce competition for contract labor, which is another factor determining how fast it can move.
“From start to finish, we look at these as roughly 2-year projects,” Larsen said. “As nodes get upgraded, we will be able to turn on sections of each market so areas will be moving to 10G on a rolling basis.”
In addition to upgrading its legacy cable assets, Mediacom has been deploying a combination of fixed wireless access and fiber in expansion markets. In areas where it has fiber, such as Delaware, the operator has had 2-gig service on offer from the jump. Asked about uptake of the speed tier, Larsen said it’s still relatively new but it has seen “high interest” in certain markets. These tend to be in areas where “people were previously relying on cellular service with low data limits.”
Off to the races
So far, Mediacom has leaned into the full duplex (FDX) approach to DOCSIS 4.0 rather than extended spectrum (ESD). Both variants are set to deliver 10G capabilities for cable operators in different ways.
ESD involves adding more spectrum, jumping from a max of 1.2GHz in DOCSIS 3.1 to 1.8GHz. Meanwhile, FDX sticks with a 1.2GHz-sized pipe but uses noise cancellation to allow upstream and downstream traffic to be transmitted over the same spectrum.
In 2022, Mediacom announced it would use CommScope’s RD2322 RxD devices operating in Remote MACPHY mode within the vendor’s OM4120 Optical Nodes, which allows it to upgrade from 1 GHz of spectrum to 1.2 GHz.
However, Mediacom has been reluctant to fully commit to FDX, with a spokesperson previously telling Fierce that its hitherto focus on the approach “is more about timing and equipment availability than a specific commitment to FDX vs ESD. Both are possible later on.”
Other cable operators, such as Charter and Cox, are taking the ESD approach, while Comcast is also leveraging the FDX method.
Comcast was the first to deploy DOCSIS 4.0 in October, when it announced customers in Colorado Springs could sign up for a new line of symmetrical multi-gig service.
As for how Charter’s progressing on its upgrades to prepare for DOCSIS 4.0, the company has “initiated all [its] step one markets at this point,” CFO Jessica Fischer said this month.
The first phase of network upgrades will see Charter implement high-split architecture to increase its usable spectrum to 1.2 GHz across 15% of its footprint. Fischer said Charter will complete some phase one upgrades by the end of this year and “finish the rest of them inside of 2024.”