Adaptive networks that reconfigure signals automatically — not merely faster speeds — are the future of better customer experience.
That’s what Mark Bridges, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at CableLabs, told us when he spoke with Telecompetitor about the future of consumer internet services.
“Most people’s perception of their experience is their Wi-Fi,” he said. “Where are they experiencing issues, and how can we react to that? The first step is to get data that’s meaningful that we can make sense of, and then be able to take action—reconfigure the network, respond to outages (hopefully before the consumer even notices there’s a problem), see impairments in network, and move traffic as needed.”
Bridges is the driving force behind the CableLabs Technology Vision, which predicts that the broadband industry is moving out of the “speed” era into the “experience era.”
“It’s focused around [customer experience]—improving it and making it more reliable, making it seamless.” As examples of opportunities for improved experience, Bridges mentioned walking out of the house and experiencing minor glitches as your phone switches between Wi-Fi and mobile. He also talked about “Follow Me” experiences that offer online customization and services that go with you when you travel to hotels, Airbnbs, and so on.
These “experience era” enhancements are two to five years away from realization, Bridges estimated. The “adaptive era” Bridges envisions beyond speed and experience is likely more than five years away, he says.
Bridges described the adaptive era as “really pushing the limits,” and marked by “intelligence throughout the network, so it can respond in real time.” Rather than being built on a series of rules or requiring the involvement of a human operator, truly adaptive networks will learn how to reconfigure themselves automatically.
But that will take time, and trust. “Getting to a fully adaptive network where we can fully trust the automation is probably post five years from now,” said Bridges.
Even if we are moving past the era in which, according to CableLabs, “Additional gains in speed no longer offer substantial improvements to customer experiences”—what about speed in the future? At what point will speed again be a consideration?
“We will have to stay on our game as far as speed goes,” Bridges said. “We need to stay competitive with speed tiers for the power users.”
In the meantime, CableLabs is carefully monitoring new technologies to see if they will require far higher speeds than those currently available.
“We’re always tracking to see if there’s a new technology that comes along where capacity becomes a big issue again,” said Bridges. “Even things like the [Apple] Vision Pro haven’t spiked the usage that way. We’re monitoring AI — both upstream and downstream— to see if those data needs get higher.”
Faster speeds are on the horizon, with Google Fiber and Frontier recently demonstrating 50 Gbps and 100 Gbps speeds.
In the meantime, CableLabs is focusing on all types of technology to usher in the experience era. Bridges spoke of their research and development with DOCSIS 4.0, PON, and CPON (coherent PON). “We continually research how we can push the lines that currently exist already.”
When asked which technology might lead into the future of adaptive networks, Bridges demurred. “Competition among mobile, fixed wireless, and fiber is good for consumers,” he said. “You can differentiate, but they’re going to coexist. We’re going to have mobile services and fixed services—they’ll each have their advantages.”
