The 10 Gigabit Network of the Future

10G

By Michael Powell

Imagination is the source of innovation. It drives us to push past present limitations and to think anew about what the world can be. With regard to internet service, while it's difficult to predict the specific ways that we will connect and communicate digitally in the next decade, it's also evident that consumer demands on networks will grow, offering new challenges but also exciting new possibilities.

For that reason, while the cable industry remains focused on executing to meet the needs of customers today, it also devotes significant energy to thinking ahead about the world of tomorrow, and our country's future need for a scalable internet platform that can answer our ever-growing demands for speed, capacity, reliability and security. 

So we've been thinking. Even as we reach the summit of supporting gigabit connections, what does the future hold for broadband networks and what can we imagine? 

Welcome to the cable industry's vision for delivering 10 gigabit networks, or 10G, to consumers in the United States and across the globe in the coming years. 10G is the gigabit-enabled technology platform of the future that will deliver internet speeds 10 times faster than today's networks with the power and capacity to change the way we live, learn, work and play. 

As a technology platform, 10G will become the backbone of digital progress all over the globe. It will reinvent the role technology plays in our everyday lives–from remote diagnostics that will help our doctors monitor their patients from anywhere in real-time to video walls and AR applications that will help our children learn and collaborate with others all across the globe. 10G is not the picture; it is the canvas on which the demands of our imagination will be built.

10G


So, what exactly is 10G? Technically speaking, it's a menu of technologies designed to turbo-charge current networks, allowing providers to evolve existing one gigabit platforms to 10 gigabit connections with symmetrical speeds, lower latencies, enhanced reliability, higher compute capabilities, and better security in a scalable manner. At the center of this technology transformation is a new, fully-developed technological standard called 10 Gigabit Full Duplex DOCSIS, or 10g FDX, which makes it possible to deliver multi-gigabit upload and download speeds over the connections already present in hundreds of millions of homes.

It's a team effort. U.S. partners like Comcast, Charter, Cox, Mediacom, Midco, and international operators, including Rogers, Shaw Communications, Vodafone, Taiwan Broadband Communications, Telecom Argentina, Liberty Global and more, are implementing the new 10G initiative. And vendors, like Intel and Arris, are already signaling their support to manufacture technology that will be 10 gigabit-ready.

Alongside advances in technology, we must also build complementary institutional frameworks that will remove obstacles and accelerate progress toward a national 10G vision–a technological foundation that will strengthen our economy, benefit our citizens and keep us at the leading edge of technology in the world. As such, we look forward to working with policymakers on strategies to realize the full potential of 10G and accelerate progress.

As an industry, we're proud to embark on meeting this challenge. We were the first industry to introduce America and the world to residential broadband service in the late 1990s. And, when cable broadband was first developed, there were no streaming TV and video services, yet the industry made the investment so these kinds of services could not just exist, but thrive. And in the U.S., today we have reached an important milestone in reaching over 90 percent of our footprint with gigabit speeds, up from just five percent two years ago.

The best news? This isn't science fiction. It's a transformation already underway. We've been testing this technology in our labs now, with field trials expected to begin relatively soon. 

So make no mistake, 10G is coming on a cable platform that will deliver faster speeds to more consumers, more quickly and more economically than any other network. 

So, jump on. Saddle up. Invent. Connect. Live. Play. Work. And, imagine. We'll help you be ready for what's next.