The past year saw technology and specification developments enable higher capacity and improved speeds for the cable industry's 10G broadband platform, said CableLabs Wednesday. Those developments include rollout of coherent termination device specs that allow more efficient use of fiber assets when paired with wavelength-division multiplexing in the optical access network and release of gateway device security best common practices, it said.

ISPs for decades have mistakenly focused just on higher bandwidth as the route to higher-quality service for end users, while latency was given less focus, misunderstood and mischaracterized, reported the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group Technical Working Group on Friday. The BITAG WG recommended a focus on tackling latency caused by buffering delays, which often get ignored in latency measurements. Very-low-latency networking technologies are being developed that could eliminate buffering delays and allow creating new classes of applications, but that tech requires changes in endpoint devices and network equipment, it said. There should be more measurement of and reporting on working latency and broadband providers and network equipment developers should deploy mechanisms like active queue management (AQM) to reduce buffering-caused working latency, it said. Application and operating system developers should look at future methods for very-low-latency service delivery, and policymakers and regulators should avoid creating barriers to AQM deployment and to low-latency services and networks, the WG said.

Comcast has successfully tested a prototype 10G modem that delivered upload and downloads exceeding 4 Gbps, it said Thursday. It said the lab test used a DOCSIS 4.0 SoC cable modem built by Broadcom. It said modem speeds "are expected to increase significantly" beyond 4 Gbps as the 10G architecture gets refined.

Atlantic Broadband rebranded as Breezeline, the cable operator announced Monday. It said the move comes following its 2021 purchases of cable systems in Ohio (see 2109010068). It said its Ohio operations, operating now under the WideOpenWest brand name, will transition to Breezeline by summer. “We’re no longer just an east coast provider, and we’ve long offered much more than broadband, so our company identity must evolve with us,” said President Frank van der Post. Breezeline said it will launch Breezeline Stream TV, a cloud-based TV platform for accessing live and recorded programming, in select markets early this year and in additional markets throughout 2022.

Eighty-seven percent of U.S. households get an internet service at home, 85% via broadband, reported the Leichtman Research Group Tuesday. Some 60% of broadband subscribers are very satisfied with their home internet service, 7% not satisfied; 68% of broadband subscribers say their internet service meets the household’s needs, 4% disagreed. Some 63% of broadband subscribers rate their internet speed very high, 7% poor. Six in 10 adults with home internet service watch video online daily, up from 50% in 2019, and 87% of households use at least one computer.

Space data volume will likely increase 14-fold between 2020 and 2030, to more than 125,000 petabytes, though the amount remains small compared with terrestrial networks, Northern Sky Research said Monday. NSR said satellite communications will be the vast majority of that growth, with low earth orbit constellations the main driver. It said non-geostationary orbit will go from about 5% of satellite connectivity traffic today to more than 30% by 2030.

Government and incumbent telecom companies show growing interest in public-private partnerships, said a Benton Institute report Monday prepared by CTC Technology and Energy. “For example, Consolidated Communications in New England has entered into partnerships with numerous small communities to build fiber-to-the-premises, with the community financing the deployment and Consolidated responsible for designing, building, maintaining, and operating the networks,” it said. More federal and state broadband funds encourage partnerships, the report said. NTIA's new broadband infrastructure program requires applicants to establish public-private partnerships, while states including Maine, Maryland, Vermont and Virginia “have special grant programs specifically for public-private efforts,” it said. Such partnerships can change the usual dynamic of private capital going to served, high-return areas while public money goes to unserved markets, the paper said: Such collaboration “attracts private investment to areas where return is low or nonexistent but can be improved through collaboration with the local community,” while unlocking "local public investment in already-served communities where policymakers want better broadband but prefer to [achieve it] in partnership with the private sector."

Amazon asked for FCC OK to put up two Ka-band satellites by Q4 2022 as an early step toward its non-geostationary orbit broadband constellation Kuiper. KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 "are an important step in the development process," letting it test the communications and network technology to be used in the final satellite design and validate launch operations and mission management procedures, it blogged Monday. In an experimental license application, Amazon said Kuiper would orbit at 590 kilometers altitude. It said there would be two launches via ABL Space Systems. It said it's designing and testing Kuiper at a 219,000-square-foot facility in Redmond, and is adding 20,000 additional square feet of capacity. It said Kuiper employs more than 750 and plans to add "hundreds more" in 2022.

Comcast continued a 20-year run adding at least a million residential broadband subscribers a year, though its Q3 2021 adds were slower than Q3 2019, the company said Thursday announcing quarterly results. It added 281,000 residential broadband customers during the quarter, lower than the 359,000 added in Q3 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said growth of lower-income subscribers was slower due to wireless competition drawn by government programs like the emergency broadband benefit and lower churn across broadband providers meaning "less jump balls, where we do well." With Comcast having 1.1 million broadband adds so far this year, it still has a long runway of future connectivity growth, he said. New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors that the softer broadband adds weren't surprising and Wall Street consensus is a further slowdown from the pace of growth in this Q3 is likely. Comcast ended the quarter with 29.4 million residential broadband customers, up 1.6 million year over year, 17.8 million residential video customers, down 1.4 million, and 9.2 million residential voice customers, down 500,000. It has 3.7 million wireless lines, up 1.1 million. Revenue of $30.3 billion was up $4.8 billion. EO Brian Roberts said Comcast sees big potential to gain share in business services with its purchase earlier this month of software-defined networking and cloud platforms company Masergy. It said the 285,000 wireless customers added in Q3 was its best quarter since the 2017 launch of the wireless business. Roberts said the low penetration by its wireless offerings among its broadband customers means its wireless business has room to grow. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote in a note that Comcast seems to be pointing to a slowdown in broadband growth in Q4.

U.S. households subscribing to a broadband service, but not pay TV, will reach 54 million by 2025, up from 38 million last year, TDG emailed Wednesday. With nine in 10 U.S. households expected to use residential broadband in four years, video creators and distributors have “lucrative growth opportunities,” said analyst Paul Hockenbury. TDG defines broadband-only (BBO) customers as early mainstream adopters influenced by price, benefits and available support. BBOs watch 28 hours of TV a week, about 10% less than broadband households subscribing to a legacy or over-the-top pay-TV service, he said. Sixty percent of BBO TV time is streaming video, mostly subscription VOD, said the analyst. The three most popular SVOD apps for BBO households are Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. Two-thirds of BBOs watch free ad-supported streaming video on TV, led by YouTube at 76%; Pluto at 36%. Over 33% of BBOs use a terrestrial TV antenna and watch more than 12 hours of broadcast TV weekly.