cable labs innovationshttps://www.lightreading.com/cable/cable-business-services/cablelabs-first-full-duplex-trials-in-1-year/d/d-id/728774?
he momentum behind Full Duplex DOCSIS is growing. Originally announced as an exploratory project in February, the technology moved into full specification development in August, and now CableLabs is forecasting that the first Full Duplex trials will take place in about 12 months. (See CableLabs Makes Symmetrical Multi-Gig Push and Full Duplex Is a Go; Cable Aims for 10 Gig.)
Speaking at Light Reading's The Future of Cable Business Services event in New York last week, CableLabs Chief Strategy Officer Ike Elliott put a timeline on Full Duplex's progress, suggesting that the technology for coaxial networks could strengthen the cable industry's position in the business services market in the not-too-distant future. Full Duplex, which promises symmetrical speeds as high as 10 Gbit/s in theory, and more likely 5 Gbit/s in the upstream in reality, could allow cable operators to compete for more high-bandwidth commercial contracts. The technology enables both upstream and downstream traffic to operate in the same spectrum at the same time, thereby doubling spectrum efficiency and increasing overall capacity.
"[Full Duplex is] something that's in the labs right now," said Elliot. "We're working with the vendor community in defining specifications on it, and we really expect to see some trials on that within about a year."
However, Elliot cautioned that Full Duplex won't be rolled out all at once by cable operators.
"It requires getting fiber all the way to the last active [component] in the network," noted Elliot, adding that, "There's a big infrastructure investment to make... so [Full Duplex is] not going to be available across a broad footprint on day one."