Cable’s Slow Ride to Fiber

How fast will the cable industry move to an all-fiber plant? A Credit Suisse financial analyst believes the industry will be slow to upgrade from coax in less competitive areas, not seeing any urgency in upgrading to faster, more reliable technology, with speed and type of upgrades paced by the competition within the markets they serve. “We expect kind of different choices to be made in different [population dense] areas,” said Grant Joslin, Vice President US Telecom Equity Research, Credit Suisse. “If you're in an area where you've got millimeter wave wireless and you've got one fiber competitor or two or three fiber competitors, that's the kind of area where you would prioritize [DOCSIS upgrades] first and as soon as you've got components coming in, you would love to do those upgrades.” Joslin said there would be less urgency for upgrading to DOCSIS 4.0 in less competitive markets. Suburban areas that lack fiber competition get upgraded on a defensive basis, while rural and deeply rural areas are likely the last to be upgraded. He said that the upgrades from DOCSIS 3.1 to 4.0 would likely be more gradual and not result in a significant capital expense for larger service providers, given their existing expenditures.