Supersonic DOCSIS: 15 Gigabit Cable 2020, 50-80 Gigabits 2030

Tom Cloonan of Arris is confident of remarkable speeds. (Video and transcript below). At CableLabs' 2015 summer event he predicted DOCSIS would reach 15 gig (shared) in a few years and 50-80 gig a decade later. 15 gigabits would require using 1.7 GHz and higher speeds would require going to 6GHz and more. Jeff Baumgartner at Multichannel calls this "supersonic DOCSIS." 

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Nokia Gives Half of Nokia China to Government to get Alcatel Deal Approved

Compensation to be negotiated. SASAC, the State Holding Company, will have 50% - 1 share in the combined Nokia China and Alcatel Shanghai Bell. Yuan Xin will continue as chairman and party secretary. No word yet on whether Luis Martinez-Amago will continue as second in command. Nokia, the European survivor, will have 50% +1 but is unlikely ever to challenge Chinese control. Chinese sales are absolutely crucial to Alcatel and Nokia. They had no real negotiating room and had to take whatever the Chinese offered.

As part of the EU/China deal for a telecom equipment cartel, Alcatel Shanghai Bell and Nokia each have a share of the Chinese market, crucial sales for the struggling companies. In an interview with Jessica Lipsky of EE Times, Alcatel CTO Marcus Weldon notes, "China allows foreign vendors to claim a maximum 11% of the wireless market; Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia each have an 11% share." Whether China will allow the merged company 22% or only 11% is a major factor in the future success of the company, but nothing is decided.

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USA: Cable adding, telcos shedding

Unlike Canada, Holland and England, telcos falling behind. Overall growth continues at about 2%/year. Some of those without broadband are signing on. There's a surprisingly modest loss to "wireless only" broadband despite speeds of 5-15 megabits and going up. AT&T lost 136,000 broadband customers while Time Warner Cable added 189,000. Both AT&T and Verizon showed large gains where they've upgraded (U-Verse, FiOS) and large losses where they haven't. 

Saul Hansell in NY Times got this one right: AT&T & Verizon and Verizon put much of their network into "harvest mode," back in 2004-5 with the intent of milking those lines and/or selling them.

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From Lantiq: Intel deal "is great"

"It's great for us," Christoph von Schierstädt of Lantiq tells me. I compared the company at merger with the hopes of a few years ago. http://bit.ly/lantiqbye Christoph is looking forward and writes,

"Honestly, I don't really agree that the Lantiq / Intel story isn't a good one. In fact it's a great proof of everything we did to bring the company back on track  - We made the company faster, lean and nimble. Dan Artusi installed four key principles which we are acting under since then: customers, speed, simplify, participation. He furthermore demanded and successfully installed the 'see a problem, fix it' mentality; means we all care for the success of the company and remove roadblocks faster. 

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Gigabit cable for Montreal, Suddenlink & Alaska

Every cableco has plans but how will they price? Using DOCSIS 3.0, Videotron now is serving customers in Montreal (pr below) with the whole city set to upgrade in the near future. Hitron modems are going into use in the U.S., presumably at Altice's Suddenlink and at GCI in Alaska. (Also below). Suddenlink is charging $109 for the gigabit.

Comcast and Cox also offer a gigabit in many areas but today it's mostly a pr stunt. Comcast is charging $300/month and $1,000 for the install. They run a dedicated fiber and deliver the service as they would for a large business.

Both companies tell me they will switch to using their existing coax when DOCSIS 3.1 is ready.

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Germany chooses 100-150 megabit 35b DSL

Bruno wanted G.fast but DT chooses cheaper 35b.  February 2014. CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn startled the broadband world by suggesting they would deploy 500 megabit G.fast. Kabel Deutschland has been winning customers away by offering twice the speed of DT for the same price. BJ knows gigabit cable is close and he wanted to stay in the game. 25M homes were initially promised the upgrade and that's now been raised to ~30M, or 80% of the country.

A year later, his plans were cut back because of DT's financial problems. DT has lost billions on T-Systems, their computer outsourcing division as well as billions on T-Mobile USA. The losses in Greece and Eastern Europe are also high.  Over the last four years, they've paid more in dividends than their net profits. Debt is up by six billion. 

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Vultures come out on the Qualcomm-Ikanos deal

Two hours after the announcement, Jim Baaker put out a national press release looking for clients to sue Ikanos, Qualcomm or their insurers. Since the price was reasonable - 50% above the previous share price in a tough market for chips - the suit has little merit. But the companies might enrich the plaintiff's lawyer to avoid the time and expense of a trial.

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$50-60M Ikanos buy brings Qualcomm into DSL

Giant steps in. Ikanos, which absorbed Globespan, Virata, Conexant and Centillium, is a crucial part of the history of DSL. In a flat DSL market, they've struggled for several years. Promised products for node scale vectoring and G.fast are not visible in the market although I understand they are far advanced. CPE chip sales have declined as Chinese chipmakers entered the market. A year ago, Dado Banatao's Tallwood VC firm and Alcatel bailed them out in the belief the new chips would find buyers. Time and money have run out and they've accepted the offer. Ikanos has been on the block for a while, with an asking price of $80-100M.

Qualcomm's entry surprised me because they don't offer complementary chips for cable and fiber.  The deal was presumably inspired by Intel's purchase of Lantiq, creating a powerful combined offering of DSL, cable (formerly TI) and wireless (formerly Infineon) chips for home connections. Ikanos also sells Fusiv, a network processor for gateways. 

LTE + DSL gateways are in modest deployment in Germany and could play a surprisingly important future role. LTE with realworld speeds of 50+megabits is deploying widely around the world. Many people believe spectrum limits LTE capacity so much that the telcos can't afford to use LTE bandwidth to supercharge DSL. That's probably true in midtown Manhattan but 95+% of the time LTE towers run far below capacity. This is especially true in rural areas, where DT intends to sell DSL + LTE in volume.

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