Comcast said today that it successfully completed a trial of 10G and full duplex DOCSIS 4.0 technology delivering symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds on a live connection. The company said it will continue to trial the technology “over the next several months in preparation for offering 10G-enabled services to customers in the second half of 2023.”
Comcast’s longer-term goal is to roll out multi-gigabit speeds to more than 50 million locations before the end of 2025. This will enable the company to better compete against providers that already have deployed fiber broadband capable of supporting multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds, in some cases approaching 10 Gbps symmetrically.
The cable industry uses the term “10G” for a range of technology advances aimed at enhancing internet connectivity. Full duplex DOCSIS 4.0 is one of those advances. A key goal of the 10G initiative is to provide symmetrical multi-gigabit services that have not been possible with traditional asymmetrical cable infrastructure.
But while Cablelabs 10G standards call for 10 Gbps speeds downstream, developers have not yet found a way to deliver 10 Gbps speeds symmetrically and the cable industry still seems to be in the process of determining just what its maximum symmetrical speeds will be.
That may be why Comcast’s announcement today did not specify the speeds that the company plans to offer when it launches multi-gigabit service, nor did it detail the speeds achieved in the newly announced 10G and DOCSIS 4.0 live trial.
The company did, however, achieve symmetrical speeds of 4 Gbps in a lab trial earlier this year that used 10G and DOCSIS 4.0.
Comcast 10G
The only details that Comcast provided about the live trial announced today were that the trial occurred at a business location in the Philadelphia area and that it included a DOCSIS 4.0-enabled 10G node and multiple cable modems.
The company took aim at fiber broadband providers in today’s announcement, stating that 10G has the potential to deliver enhanced speeds over the connections already installed in peoples’ homes “without the need to dig up yards and neighborhoods or pick and choose who gets faster speeds and who doesn’t.”
