Cable Show 2010: Arris Readies 320-Mbps Cable Gear

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Arris will introduce several new models in its Touchstone family of DOCSIS 3.0 customer-premises equipment, capable of blasting up to 320 Megabits per second downstream and 120 Mbps up.

The first four "8 x 4" channel-bonding DOCSIS 3.0 models to become available from Arris will be: the CM900 cable modem; the TM802 embedded multimedia terminal adapter (eMTA), with battery backup; the TM902 eMTA, without battery backup; the TG852 wireless gateway, with 802.11n wireless support, battery backup and four-port Gigabit Ethernet routing.

Arris said the new CPE will be available starting in July and debut through the end of August; it did not announce pricing info. The company plans to show off the products at The Cable Show 2010 in Los Angeles May 11-13.

In North America and other parts of the world that use 6-MHz channel divisions, 8 down/4 upstream bonded channels would deliver peak theoretical bandwith capacity of 320/120 Mbps. In Europe and areas where 8-MHz channels are the convention, the 8x4 equipment would deliver 400 Mbps down and 120 Mbps up.

The CPE models will include Touchstone's diagnostics and reporting capabilities and other features and configurations for cable operators worldwide.

"We are excited to extend our line of high performance DOCSIS CPE devices for our customers worldwide," Hans Plug, Arris vice president of product line management, said in a statement. "With these higher downstream bonding rates, cable operators can deliver the highest quality data and voice experience today and be assured of their ability to accommodate sufficient bandwidth to support the converged IP video services of tomorrow."

Arris has shipped more than 26 million Touchstone voice and data modems worldwide.