The pressing need for more bandwidth on the industry’s hybrid-fiber-coax (HFC) networks has always been an interesting and often contentious topic of discussion amongst industry pundits, analysts, and engineers.  Our continued competitive drive toward a host of bandwidth-hungry services can place significant bandwidth demands on the network.  These services may include a mix of:  legacy analog channels; hundreds of channels of digital high-definition television (a large percentage at 1080P) along with an equal number of standard-definition digital channels; substantial growth in Video on Demand (VoD) – practically ALL of which will eventually be in HD;  3DTV;  substantial growth in residential high-speed Internet subscribers, and many with well over 125 MB/s downstream speeds along with (with even faster growth rates) large numbers of commercial Internet and business-Ethernet subscribers at “committed information rates” with similar and growing speeds; IP video as part of the high-speed Internet mix; IP simulcast and TV everywhere; interactive services and advanced advertising, as enabled by tru2way and EBIF; VoIP telephone to both residential and business customers, with advanced custom-calling feature sets; higher upstream data speeds as subscriber usage patterns would shift to require any content, anywhere, anytime and to any device; and wireless backhaul.

In this video, hosted by Leslie Ellis as part of her Video Translation Please series, we discuss a few of the methods used to address the industry’s bandwidth needs in the years to come – including 1GHz upgrades, analog channel reclamation, and switched digital video.