Docsis 3.1 Set for a Spring Fling

The first iteration of hardware specs for Docsis 3.1 are expected to emerge as soon as next March or April to help cable modem and cable modem termination system (CMTS) vendors get a jump on product development for the new, speedier CableLabs platform. Following the hardware specs, other specs tied to Docsis 3.1, including the new OSS components, would follow later in 2013, people familiar with the matter say.

"There will of course be internal milestones in between now and then, and vendors can of course begin developing whenever they feel the specs are solid enough to do so, but I don't believe we would want to comment on those internal milestones," CableLabs Director of Docsis Specifications Matt Schmitt said via email.

It's expected that the first products with the new specifications will be hybrid Docsis 3.0/3.1 consumer premises equipment (CPE) that will enable operators to seed the market before they begin to turn on 3.1 spectrum. Rather than tapping the 6MHz- and 8MHz-wide channels used today for North American Docsis and EuroDocsis, Docsis 3.1 spectrum will rely on blocks of much smaller orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers alongside the introduction of a more efficient Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme called low-density parity-check (LDPC).

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