So i got to thinking that coax has been around for sooo long..and here we're using it to get internet/phone and cable tv and now HDTV... all via the same ol cable connection that has been around forever.


What exactly is this coax cable got in store for its future?

Can we see even better/higher picture qualitys and faster transfer speeds via this same cable in 10 more years from now? or are cable providers going to hafta put in new cables at some point?


just something i was thinking about on my hour long 2 mile drive up the 405 today on the way to work..

The physical cable is not a limiting factor!
Verizon FIOS uses coax inside of your home.
And at the plant there is coax used before the signals are digitized and sent optically!

The coaxial cable is merely the medium whereby the signals get from one place to another. Higher transfer rates, higher resolution pictures, etc. are all functions of the electronics.

Pretty cool that something that has been around for so many decades is doing so phenomenally well, isn't it?

yes it is actually :)

The cable itself has changed over the years... modern cable is generally capable of 0 - 3 GHz, though 50 MHz - 1 GHz is generally what is most used in HFC plants. I generally use 6 Gbps as an estimate of what this is capable carrying. (159 QAMs @ 38.8 Mbps = 6169.2 Mbps). The deeper the fiber is run, the less noise, means both higher orders of modulation and additional frequency can be used. Even with the current plant, much of the noise is actually introduced in the customer premises, so plant segmentation will be what provides the next few "bumps" up in bandwidth.

If you want to see old cable, look up P1 and P2 cable. Scarily enough, some of this still exists in plants today.

There is more than just bandwidth that will improve your experience. An uncompressed 1920x1080p HD service would use ~ 3 Gbps (i.e. you could only have 2 on a "modern" coaxial cable) - however, newer compression schemes allow us to maintain much of the video quality while requiring significantly less bandwidth.