Announced at Cable Congress 2015 in Brussels, NBN Co's proposed timetable will make it one of the first telcos to adopt DOCSIS 3.1, which can provide download speeds of up to 10Gbps with uploads of up to 1Gbps - around ten times faster than the existing Telstra and Optus HFC networks.

Speaking at the event, NBN Co chief technology officer Dennis Steiger said "By re-architecting the ratio of homes to a node and the use of the latest technology underpinning DOCSIS 3.1, Australia's HFC network will become one of the most state-of-the-art technologies used to deploy broadband services."

He added "It's the same philosophy that's driving our entire multi-technology rollout. All the technologies we're using have an upgrade path to deliver higher speeds and greater capacity. That's good news for families and businesses."

Ovum senior analyst Kamalini Ganguly said ""With this announcement, NBN Co joins an elite group of multi-system operator (MSOs) like Comcast and Liberty Global who have committed to significant DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades of their HFC networks."

There is was no indication in the announcement that NBN Co is actually planning to offer services in excess of 1Gbps in the near term.

At one stage the company announced it would offer 1Gbps over fibre, but that service tier did not eventuate.

The DOCSIS 3.1 specification was promulgated in 2013, and the first field trials of the technology are expected in the US later this year, according to NBN Co.

This implies that the HFC construction trial announced by NBN Co yesterday will not include DOCSIS 3.1, even though Steiger said "We're already planning upgrades to the HFC network to enable families and businesses to receive higher speeds. The aim of this construction trial is to deliver valuable insights into how to deploy that upgraded HFC network at scale."

Image: Colin [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.