Cablefax The Magazine August 2022 - 9

Comcast Delivers
on Proof of Concept
By Sara Winegardner
Technologists are often unsung heroes, burning
the midnight oil to bolster networks and
expand capacity to make room for more devices
and advanced services. And after years
of ideating, problem solving and testing, the
team at Comcast is leading the way forward
when it comes to making 10G a reality for
all. It's part of the work its engineers have
been doing since the company's early days
to ensure customers can get the service they
want whenever they want.
" When we look at the path to 10G, it is
about the optionality of what the customers
want. We've built a platform that is able to
deliver multiple-gigabit symmetrical off of fiber
or off of coax and to do that seamlessly, "
Comcast Cable EVP/Chief Network Officer
Elad Nafshi says. " Speed is one thing, latency
is another. Now how do we create the absolute
most optimal delivery? "
The technologists at Comcast view the
last 18 months as a period of heads-down
development that focused on how to bring
together the final pieces of the 10G puzzle
and give it life. In April 2021, Comcast completed
the first-ever live lab test of the Full
Duplex DOCSIS system-on-chip device that
opened the door to multigigabit symmetrical
speeds on its HFC network. In January 2022,
the provider utilized a Full Duplex DOCSIS
4.0 system-on-chip cable modem built by
Broadcom to deliver symmetrical speeds
faster than 4 Gbps in a world-first lab test.
And in April 2022 during a 10G showcase at
CableLabs headquarters, it achieved a complete
10G connection on a live network with
download speeds exceeding 8 Gbps and up10G
PIONEER
load
speeds faster than 5 Gbps.
" We've removed the doubts about our ability
to deliver. We've shown it in a productionlike
environment, so that's behind us, " Nafshi
says. " It's a whole other thing to deliver
across a network the size of us. We have over
60 million homes passed across the U.S., and
that is a completely different burden. "
Nafshi is adamant that the company
wouldn't have been able to get this far without
help from its army of partners including
Broadcom, CommScope, Harmonic and Intel.
They'll be working in tandem with Comcast to
ensure the equipment needed to deliver 10G
symmetrical speeds to customers is available
when the network is ready to go. But not all
of the upcoming work is in the network. Quite
a bit of energy is focused on Comcast's frontline
employees and field technicians so that
they can help customers understand the advancements
coming to their internet service
as well as quickly solve any problems that
arise post-deployment.
" We're actually neck deep into it right now.
But these are the types of things that candidly
are ahead of us, " he says. " It's working. It's
going to work, how do we get it everywhere? "
The hope is that embracing and deploying
hollow-core fiber will help Comcast figure
out how to do just that. Compared to traditional
fiber where laser light travels over a
solid glass core, hollow-core fiber is empty
inside with air-filled channels. According to
Comcast, data travels 150% faster through
these fibers than on glass-core fiber networks
and latency is 33% lower through
hollow-core fiber.
Comcast's Elad Nafshi
" It's yet another tool in our chest as the
network continues to evolve, " Nafshi says.
" We build to hundreds of thousands of new
homes every year, and as we continue to
look at our architecture going forward, not
just on the access side, but also on the core
network side, how do we take advantage of
these bleeding edge optical innovations that
continue to evolve? " 
FAST
FACTS
50,000
new route miles of fiber
were added to Comcast's
network from 2017 to 2021
88%
of U.S. households are served
by 1 Gig speeds, up from 4% in
2016, according to FCC data
$131.7 billion
is the amount in cumulative GDP
that 10G networks are expected
to generate in economic benefits,
per Telecom Advisory Services
CablefaxTopOps.com
August 2022
TOP OPS
9
http://www.CablefaxTopOps.com
Cablefax The Magazine August 2022

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