Mediacom, the fifth largest cable operator in the U.S., is kicking its network upgrade plans into high gear, with CTO J.R. Walden telling Fierce it is aiming to begin live testing full duplex (FDX) DOCSIS 4.0 equipment in Q3 and push service into the market with select customers in Q4.
According to Walden, Mediacom usually leaves testing of engineering samples of new gear to larger rivals like Comcast which have more resources, and begins its own testing once generally available kit comes to market. In the case of FDX gear, vendors have indicated that’s expected to happen in Q3, he said.
In terms of who those vendors are, exactly, Walden noted two companies – Broadcom and Maxlinear – have publicly announced plans to offer DOCSIS 4.0 modem chipsets while three companies are expected to bring FDX amplifiers to market. CommScope previously told Fierce it was working on an FDX amplifier and ATX hinted it might do the same. But right now, Walden said Broadcom is the only vendor set to provide chips for those amps, though he noted the industry is “actively recruiting” a second.
Mediacom’s DOCSIS 4.0 play may be a few months away, but that doesn’t mean the operator is sitting on its hands. Walden said it is in the midst of broad network upgrade which includes four major components.
First, it is tripling the densification of its nodes to serve around 100 homes per node, which Walden said frees up capacity for Mediacom to offer faster speeds to customers. It is also moving all of its RF video traffic to IP services and repurposing that spectrum for broadband. The third change involves the replacement of all of its nodes with Remote MACPHY devices to help it move to a distributed access architecture. And finally, it is making the leap to a 1.2 GHz high split.
The operator began its upgrade in West Des Moines, Iowa and has already completed work across more than 30% of the city, allowing it to roll out a new symmetrical 1-gig service. It expects to finish work there by the end of July.
Walden said there are a few factors limiting just how fast Mediacom can move with its upgrade. The primary hurdle are those few remaining customers with RF set-top boxes.
“Obviously you don’t want to upgrade a node and have those boxes literally shut down and stop working while they’re still in customers’ homes, which is what will happen if they’re not taken care of,” he said. The longer it takes for customers to migrate, the longer it will take Mediacom to upgrade the network and in turn offer faster speeds.
Mediacom already offers a service tier providing 2 Gbps downstream and 1 Gbps downstream in greenfield markets in Delaware and Illinois that aren’t constrained by legacy RF issues. As it upgrades the network, that service tier will become more widely available. When DOCSIS 4.0 modems become available, it will be able to deliver speeds as fast as 9 Gbps downstream and 2.5 Gbps upstream without making any further network upgrades. But Walden said what kinds of service tiers it plans to offer with that bandwidth have yet to be determined.
The operator is also contending with issues sourcing labor and problems with pole attachment and permitting processes. Part of the reason it started in West Des Moines is because a deal it struck with the city last year to settle a lawsuit related to Google Fiber allowed Mediacom to access the city’s conduit and overlash its existing facilities to do an upgrade without permitting headaches.
Given neighboring Des Moines is Mediacom’s largest market, SVP of Government and Public Relations Thomas Larsen said it will likely keep its focus there in 2023, though it will also be looking for other upgrade targets.