Massillon, Ohio-based MCTV is the latest cable operator to eschew DOCSIS 3.1 in favor of fiber-to-the-home deployment.
The company, which bills itself as the leading triple-play provider in the Ohio counties of Stark and Wayne, just announced the launch of its “Excellerate” service, which uses a FTTH combined with Passive Optical Network (PON) technology to provide symmetrical speeds of up to 100 Mbps.
“We’re betting on the 10-year plan, rather than the three-to five-year plan,” said MCTV President Robert Gessner to Broadcasting & Cable.
While MCTV eventually has plans to launch IPTV services, it will continue to QAM-based video through its legacy hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) plant as it overlays its network with fiber.
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“At this point, we are proceeding along a path that says the [HFC] system is working great for delivering television, so let’s keeping using it,” Gessner added.
“Eventually,” he also told B&C, “we believe that video is an app-based delivery that’s all-IP, and maybe all unicast in the long run.”
Cable operators, for the most part, have opted to use CableLabs’ DOCSIS 3.1 standard to deliver 1-gig and higher speeds over legacy HFC infrastructure. But exceptions have emerged.
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Most notably, Altice USA announced in late-November that it would embark on a five-year quest to convert the entire legacy Cablevision footprint, and part of the Suddenlink footprint, to FTTH.