MoCA to challenge fiber, G.fast for in-building gigabit broadband

The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) has announced an initiative to bring its home networking specifications for broadband over coax to multiple dwelling units (MDUs). If successful, the MoCA Access initiative would create a specification that would challenge G.fast and fiber-optic cable as an option to support gigabit speeds within buildings as part of a fiber to the building (FTTB) deployment.

The alliance says the MDU specification will leverage the current MoCA 2.0 standard, which supports 1-Gbps net throughput. It also will incorporate the recently approved MoCA 2.5 specification as a "technology roadmap" toward support of 2.5-Gbps net throughput.

"Our move into access applications is driven by operators worldwide who told us they need 1-Gbps actual throughputs with a long-term migration path and want to use the existing coax infrastructure," said Charles Cerino, president of MoCA, via a press release. "Our performance and reliability attributes are proving to be a great solution in broadband applications as well as the home network backbone."

MoCA Access would be a natural fit for MDU broadband delivery applications where coax infrastructure is already present. MoCA Access would give operators three options for in-building gigabit broadband pipelines. On the face of it, operators could choose the MoCA approach if the building already had coax, G.fast if it had twisted pair, or fiber cable for greenfield applications or to ensure the most future-proof delivery mechanism.

However, elements of the G.fast camp recently have touted the technology's applicability to coax (see "Sckipio adds dynamic bandwidth allocation to G.fast"). Therefore, MoCA could find itself battling for mindshare once they complete MoCA Access development.

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