A recurring theme at Light Reading’s Cable Next-Gen events, year after year, is that DOCSIS 3.1 has a lot of juice left to give. But nearly a decade on since the hybrid fiber coax standard was released by CableLabs in 2013, is the cable industry beating a dead horse? In terms of downstream network speeds, the answer is no. Most people agree that homes still don’t demand the 10 Gbps theoretical maximum download enabled by DOCSIS 3.1 (although 3.1 modems are currently limited to about 2.5 Gbps down, which is still more than sufficient for the majority of homes and businesses). In terms of upstream, however, the 1 Gbps maximum speeds of DOCSIS 3.1 have looked outdated for a while…