DOCSIS 3.0 To Blanket U.S. By 2013

Research firm Pike & Fischer estimates that US cable operators will have deployed DOCSIS 3.0 to 99% of homes passed by 2013. Of 120 million homes passed nationwide by cable networks at the end of 2008, around 15 million -- roughly 13% -- were passed by DOCSIS 3.0, Pike & Fischer estimated. The firm expects that number to increase to nearly 53 million households in 2009 and to 119 million by 2013. Annual spending on DOCSIS 3.0 equipment will peak in 2010 at $400 million, Pike & Fisher estimated, and will total less than $1.2 billion over the next five years. The main driver behind cable's DOCSIS 3.0 build-outs are operational cost savings and the ability to expand high-speed Internet services to small and midsize businesses, rather than home-based users, according to Tim McElgunn, an analyst with Pike & Fischer's Broadband Advisory Services research group. "In our view, it is not the prospect of vastly increased residential high-speed data revenue that will encourage rapid deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 technology," McElgunn wrote in the summary to the "DOCSIS 3.0 Deployment Forecast" report.