Telenet Guns For 1-Gig

Telenet, the largest cable operator in Belgium, said it has kicked off a five-year, €500 million (US$658 million) upgrade plan that will enable the operator to deliver speeds of “at least” 1-Gbps.

The upgrade will center on the additional of capacity as the MSO looks to bulk up from 600 MHz of spectrum to 1 GHz, fueled by the replacement of 150,000 amplifiers and 1.8 million other components such as splitters and taps.

Telenet’s announcement did not specifically identify DOCSIS 3.1 by name as the enabler for its move to 1-Gig, but the deployment of gear based on the new CableLabs spec, which targets widespread support of multi-gigabit speeds, is anticipated. In May, Telenet announced it had selected Casa Systems’ DOCSIS 3.1-pointing C100G platform for its migration to the high-density Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP), which combines the functions of the cable modem termination system and the edge QAM.

Telenet said it is in positon to make Flanders the first region in Europe to get 1-Gig speeds at scale, claiming that the project will create 250 new jobs in the region over the next five years.  Initial work will start September 22 in areas such as Mechelen, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver, Lint, Mortsel and Deinze.

Telenet’s current high-end DOCSIS tier offers max downstream speeds of 160 Mbps. The MSO, majority-owned by Liberty Global, has about 1.5 million broadband subs, and passes roughly 2.9 million homes.

"Telenet has always been a pioneer. Once again we want to make our contribution to the digital future of Flanders,” Telenet CTO John Porter said, in a statement. “We are proud that with this investment we will ensure that Flanders is a front runner in Europe in rolling out a 1GHz network of this scale. With the 1 GHz network we will be able to guarantee that all of our residential and business customers will be able to have access to the bandwidth, which they will need in the future.”