Liberty Global’s UPC Netherlands will be the first major cable TV operator in Europe to deploy the EuroDOCSIS 3.0 standard, which will provide consumers broadband speeds up to 120 Mbps.
At the IBC show last week, company CEO Diederik Karsten previewed the service, which will be called UPC Fiber Power. ‘With the new product we offer far greater speeds than ADSL or VDSL, at least five times as fast,’ Karsten said.
The company intends to roll out the service over its entire network in Holland over the next few months. Exact pricing was not announced because, Karsten said, ‘We know our competitors are listening.’ He did give some hints, though. There will be two tiers 60 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up; 120 Mbps down and 12 Mbps up.
The top tier, according to Karsten will be ‘well below €100 ($146) a month.’ Cisco got the order for the consumer premises equipment (CPE) with its EPC3000 EuroDOCSIS 3.0 modem.
Liberty Media’s Liberty Global, the world’s third largest multi-country cable TV service, expects to launch DOCSIS 3.0 in its Austria and Switzerland operations by year-end and in other countries where it operates beginning in 2009.
Liberty Global said it has experience with DOCSIS 3.0 from the deployment that began in Q4 2007 by Japan’s J:COM, which has launched a 160 Mbps version in all four of its regional operations. J:COM has over 55,000 subscribers to the DOCSIS 3.0 service and reports that where it’s available more than 25% of new subscribers sign up for it. As of June 30, 2008, Liberty Global owns an indirect 37.8% interest in J:COM.
Taking a poke at the telcos, Liberty Global president and CEO Mike Fries said the launch of Fiber Power ‘marks another milestone in cable’s long-standing superiority over DSL. Hands down, this will be the fastest and most robust broadband service available in our markets.’
The main differences between DOCSIS and EuroDOCSIS are due to European cable TV’s different TV channel bandwidths. European cable channels are based on the PAL TV standards, which are 8 MHz wide, compared to the 6 MHz width for the NTSC standard in use in North America.
The telcos and cablecos worldwide are in a titanic battle to provide more bandwidth to the home. Consumers are beginning to demand more bandwidth for streaming video and for uploading and downloading video. Consumers are thinking entertainment videos now but will soon be using videos for educational purposes (lectures), health care (home monitoring) and security (Web cameras).
Each of those markets could be as large as entertainment when it comes to Internet-delivered videos. Some consumers will use video for working at home, applications like teleconferencing and interviews.
Telcos are huffing and puffing to deploy fiber-optic networks. Some like AT&T and BT are running fiber to the neighborhood, then using VDSL2 technology to get 15 to 40 Mbps over the copper wires to the home. Verizon is the only major telco worldwide that has accepted that 100 Mbps to the home is THE future and has committed fully to a fiber-to-the-home strategy, at least for most of its footprint.
Meanwhile the Finnish operators Welho also said that it has already launched a services based on EuroDOCSIS 3.0 at 110 Mbps which it says went live back on August 25. The tiny Welho only services 320,000 homes in Helsinki and charges just €54.90 ($80) a month, but charges €139 ($200) to buy the modem. Spanish operator ONO has also said it will launch a new high-speed broadband service based on the technology shortly.