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Danish incumbent picks Huawei to provide DOCSIS 3.1 equipment; deployment due to be completed by end of 2017.
TDC on Wednesday announced plans to launch 1-Gbps cable broadband by becoming the first telco in Europe to upgrade its network to DOCSIS 3.1 (D3.1).
The deployment will begin in the final quarter of this year and is due to be completed by the end of 2017, at which point the upgraded network will pass 1.5 million premises.
"We want our infrastructure in Denmark to be the best in the world," said Pernille Erenbjerg, CEO of TDC, at a press conference in London, adding that upgrading to D3.1 is "one of our main strategic goals."
Today, TDC’s cable network currently uses DOCSIS 3.0, which supports a peak downlink speed of 300 Mbps.
"This is definitely the first entire network upgrade [to D3.1] in Europe," declared TDC’s chief technology officer Carsten Bryder.
TDC has already spent a year planning the upgrade, during which Bryder said the company "looked at Cisco and all the usual suspects in this area."
In the end though, Huawei was chosen to supply the required equipment for TDC’s D3.1 rollout. Under the deal, the Chinese vendor will also provide related engineering services to support the deployment.
"Huawei shares our ambition to be a first mover in this," Bryder said.
"DOCSIS 3.1 allows us to use existing infrastructure," which helps to keep a lid on costs, said Daniel Tang, CTO of Huawei’s fixed network business. "With a greenfield deployment, a lot of the cost is civil engineering."
Indeed, according to Bryder, rolling out a brand new fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network would be eight times more expensive than upgrading to D3.1
TDC’s chief operating officer, Peter Schleidt, said that following the D3.1 upgrade, the Danish incumbent will charge customers a premium for 1-Gbps cable broadband, but he declined to disclose exactly how much the service will cost.
TDC does not expect every prospective customer covered by the network to rush out and sign up to 1-Gbps broadband, he said; however, he expects customers will be tempted to take out an entry-level subscription knowing they have the option to upgrade the headline speed at a later date, should they wish.
