SCTE TECH EXPO 2025, WASHINGTON DC – 50,000 Gbps. AI amplifiers. Ultra-dense mobile networks. Do we have your attention yet? These were some of the announcements that caught ours this week at SCTE’s Tech Expo.
Industry trade shows can sometimes feel repetitive, with companies repeating the same lines over and over again about 5G, AI, fiber and future potential. But this year’s Tech Expo threw us some curve balls.
Here's our rundown of two cool things we heard about that are here and now and one more that’s on the horizon.
50,000 Gbps over fiber
Speaking during a keynote presentation, CableLabs CEO Phil McKinney laid out cable’s upgrade roadmap. He hit the usual notes about the transition to DOCSIS 3.1 to 4.0, talked up DOCSIS 4.0 Optional Annex – a version of the standard which allows operators to use 3 GHz of spectrum to hit 25 Gbps speeds – and invited his colleagues to join work on an iteration of the standard that would enable the use of 6 GHz of spectrum to hit 50 Gbps.
But then something interesting happened. McKinney started talking about fiber and, more specifically, coherent optics.
“In our advanced fiber lab, we’ve demonstrated something that will take your breath away as far as where coherent optics can go,” he said. “50,000 gigabits [per second] over a single strand of fiber and it’s the fiber you already have in the ground.”
It’s not clear when this coherent PON technology may become widely available, but McKinney noted many of CableLabs’ vendor partners are “heavily engaged” on it.
Another thing that’s not entirely clear: what the heck it would be used for. As Cogent Co. CEO Frederic Perron noted in a separate keynote, 1 Gbps is enough to enable 100 simultaneous Netflix streams. So 50,000 Gbps seems like overkill unless the use case is backhaul (ahem, for AI traffic to boot) or some as-yet-undiscovered application.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Comcast’s AI amplifiers
Comcast has been talking about Project Genesis – its effort to virtualize its network and deliver multi-gig speed upgrades as part of its quest to deliver edge services – for a while. Now, it’s taking the next step to enable its high-tech ambitions: deploying AI-enabled amplifiers and Wi-Fi 7 gateways to push intelligence closer to its users.
Elad Nafshi, Comcast’s chief network officer, said the devices are busy “spectrum analyzing all of your experiences 24/7 and optimizing every bit that goes to your home.”
The data collected is fed into Comcast’s AIops platform, which sifts through 300 billion data points per hour to optimize the network experience and self-heal issues where necessary. Nafshi said its AIops system is already capable of autonomously fixing 77% of the network alarms that come through. The new amplifiers will introduce new abilities, like identifying fiber cuts and cyber threats, rerouting traffic, optimizing power usage across the network and more.
Notably, Nafshi argued this AI-enabled experience is a differentiating approach for cable, claiming fiber competitors can’t do the same because they have a passive network and thus don’t have visibility into what happens in the cabinets outside customer homes.
Charter’s ultra-dense mobile network
Comcast wasn’t the only one talking up its mobile ambitions at the Expo. Gary Koerper, Charter’s SVP of emerging technologies and strategic development, explained the company is working to put its existing infrastructure to work for wireless deployments.
Charter’s so-called “fiber-powered DAS” technology is basically just strand-mounted small cells. But Koerper argued the breadth of Charter’s existing wireline infrastructure could allow it to created a wildly dense wireless network.
“The connection between that DAS to our cable is a tap … and the cable industry has a tap every 100 feet or so going down the street. So that tap, every 100 feet, represents effectively the potential for a 5G tower, giving us the ability for the densest 5G network on the planet,” he said.
Charter won the third largest amount of spectrum in 2020’s CBRS auction. Koerper noted the company can use the same technology mobile operators use to enable 4G and 5G coexistence to allow 5G and DOCSIS traffic to run side by side on its network.
While he didn’t provide any specifics around actual deployment of this technology, Charter executives said earlier this year the company has already deployed thousands of small cells across several states. Seems like plenty more are on the way.