White Papers & eBooks

Charting the HFC Evolution in the DOCSIS 4.0 Era

Now in its fifth year, the ATX 2050 Project Survey tracks the evolution of the HFC network by asking cable professionals to share their opinions on ongoing and emerging technology and architecture trends. The 2025 Edition of the 2050 Project Survey Report is based on responses from more than 120 participants and includes insights into DOCSIS 4.0 adoption plans, concerns about competitive threats and the impact of outside plant intelligence on network reliability and operational efficiency.

Assessing how the cable industry has changed since the introduction of DOCSIS 4.0 in 2019 is a major focus of this year’s survey, delivering datapoints that highlight shifts in attitudes among cable professionals over the past several years. First-time questions in this year’s survey focus on more recent trends, such as enthusiasm for so-called Unified DOCSIS 4.0 silicon and best practices for updating outdated energy storage technology.

Track the pace and progress of HFC evolution by downloading the 2050 Project Survey Report.

Key findings include:

• Over 30% of respondents believe HFC networks will eventually support frequencies above 3GHz
• Almost a third (31%) of cable professionals think that DOCSIS 4.0’s speed and capacity won’t deliver enough bandwidth for broadband users in the next 6-10 years
• 40% of respondents say the competitive landscape has gotten much tougher over the past five years
• A little over half (55%) of cable professionals say their companies will have DOCSIS 4.0 up and running by the end of 2027
• Nearly 20% of respondents feel that the expanded capabilities of DOCSIS 3.1 have made the move to DOCSIS 4.0 less strategically important