Charter Plans To Offer 10 Gbps Broadband Speed

In a recent announcement, Tom Rutledge, Charter Communications chairman and CEO added that the cable operator is heading towards a future, where the subscribers will be able to enjoy a maximum broadband speed of 10 Gigabits per second. However, he hasn’t shared any details on when this will be possible.

At New York’s UBS Media and Communications conference, Rutledge talked about Charter Communications present MVNO agreement with Verizon, which is expected to take hold either by the next year or in 2018. This deal with Verizon will allow the cable operator to resell the wireless service from Verizon under their brand. Reports say that this will result in a much faster wire line service, which according to the Charter CEO, could even open a “whole new industry.”

Rutledge also added that approximately 200 million wireless devices are already connected to the wire line network of Charter Communications. In addition to that, roughly 80% of the bits on the network of a mobile company are also passing through the same network.

The current internet speed offered by Charter Communications is a maximum of 100 Megabits per second in almost all of their markets, and the minimum speed is around 60 Megabits per second. Some of the other operators have been offering an impressive download speed of 10 Gbps in certain markets.

The symmetrical 10 Gbps is actually a part of “Full Duplex” enhancement to the DOCSIS 3.1 standard. It is estimated that the specs for the Full Duplex extension will be finished by next year. However, some reports indicate that its commercial deployment might not happen until 2018 or 2019.

During the UBS conference, Rutledge added that the MVNOs do have their own limitations but the company believes that the possibilities surrounding wireless and hybrid wire line networks are infinite. “I think we’ll begin to move toward building out a 10 Gigabit symmetrical infrastructure that is ubiquitously deployable across our footprint at fairly low capital investments relatively to anybody else,” Rutledge said.

“We can attach wireless devices to that high-capacity wire line network in a way I don’t think anybody else can do at the same level of capital efficiency and get tremendous throughput, low latency, high computer networks that bring the possibility down the road to a whole new industry essentially.”