What the broadband home of the future may look like

The race to deliver the highest possible broadband speeds is on, with companies like Alphabet (Google Fiber), AT&T (GigaPower) and Comcast (Gigabit Internet) vying to deliver lightning fast Internet. But while most everyone agrees that the zippiest network speeds coupled with low latencies will ultimately provide a boon to consumers, it is not necessarily obvious how that future might play out, much less how soon we could get there?

To help every day folks imagine what’s possible, CableLabs, a non-profit innovation and R&D lab founded by leading companies in the cable industry, has released a short promotional film called “The Near Future,” to outline its vision through family vignettes. CEO Phil McKinney maintains it is about showing “what we believe the home of the future will look like that will require high-speed networks.” McKinney is talking network speeds of 1-gigabit-per-second, 3Gbps, and ultimately 10Gbps. CableLabs has been pushing a telecommunication standard called DOCSIS, shorthand for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. It's an approach for delivering fiber-like speeds over existing cable lines.