DOCSIS 3.1 is very much in evidence at and around the ANGA COM show in Cologne, Germany, this week. Numerous products are being touted, as are operator deployments and speed tests.
As just a few examples, VeEX is showing test gear that's been upgraded to support the spec, Vecima is highlighting its DOCSIS 3.1 distributed access architecture, and Huawei introduced a 10 Gbps HFC platform designed to support both DOCSIS 3.1 and PON.
On the deployment front, Cisco's (NASDAQ:CSCO) cBR-8 CCAP has deployed with Altice and VOO, and Casa Systems' C100G CCAP has deployed in Finland with DNA. The Altice and DNA deployments also included field speed trials, with both posting downstream throughput of 3 Gbps or better. Given the general rule of thumb that you want trial speeds to be about double the speed of the service offering to the consumer, D3.1 should accommodate gigabit services comfortably.
As in the States, European DOCSIS 3.1 deployments to date have been primarily trials - limited deployments to cable operator employees and friendly customers. While some operators are taking a wait-and-see approach to DOCSIS 3.1, the relatively small scale of deployments thus far is based more on gear availability, particularly of modems, than reticence. While D3.1-capable CMTS and CCAP gear is readily available and (relatively) widely deployed, the modems aren't yet available in quantity. The manufacturers, including chipset vendors, simply haven't yet reached full production of 3.1 modems. So an operator that wants 100,000 modems might be able to actually get only a few hundred right now.
Once the modem vendors get their production of D3.1 boxes fully ramped up, which is primarily just a matter of time, then DOCSIS 3.1 can be expected to really take off.
