For about a year now, NCTA has been shining a light on the DOCSIS 3.0 specification. Thanks to channel bonding, cable operators will be able to offer wideband service to consumers, with speeds exceeding 100 Mbps downstream. About a month ago, we noted the first deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 in the U.S.

A new article in CED Magazine (”DOCSIS 3.0 arrives“) takes a look at deployments by Videotron and Comcast.

After a year-long trial, [Canadian operator] Videotron is serving up two tiers of the wideband service with speeds of 30 Mbps and 50 Mbps. The slower “Ultimate Speed” costs $64.95 a month while the faster speed checks in at $79.95 a month.

Currently, Videotron’s Ultimate Speed services are available to 112,000 homes in Quebec, with the goal of offering the service to Videotron’s entire footprint of 933,000 homes by next year.

The article notes that, although Videotron didn’t need to do so, some operators may need to use Switched Digital Bandwidth to free up additional DOCSIS channels.

Comcast also picked a system where it wouldn’t need to clear room for more spectrum when it unveiled its first wideband deployment last month in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area with speeds of 50 Mbps on the downstream and 5 Mbps on the upstream.

The service is available to residential customers for $149.95 a month while small to medium-sized businesses can get the increased speeds for $199.95 a month.

Some operators are apparently planning on deployment in 2009.

I’ve been to CES a few times over the last five years. On my first few trips, it did seem a little odd to notice cable’s absence. Comcast Chairman & CEO Brian Roberts described a very similar experience in his keynote this morning, talking about walking the show floor a few years ago with Time Warner Cable’s Glenn Britt. As Roberts put it, “Cable was almost invisible.”

Following that experience, the cable industry reached out to the consumer electronics industry. He said that they heard complaints that cable was a regional business that operated in silos, that cable set-top boxes are closed and proprietary, and that, in general, cable made it too tough to innovate and to create products and services that could be sold in the retail environment. This morning’s address seemed a valuable pay-off to those efforts, with Roberts describing cable as a real partner to consumer electronics and retail.

He went on to describe the latest stage of his company’s development: Comcast 3.0. As part of the new Comcast, he said they were committing to a series of issues:

• Having the best fiber optic networks and IP infrastructure
• Delivering superior experience in hi-def and interactive
• Providing new levels of excellence in customer service
• Being a leader in innovation by providing “products and services that are converged, plug-and-play, user-friendly, and most important, easily open for third-party innovation.”

Many in the cable industry have debated over whether content is king or distribution. Roberts said that today the answer is clear: The consumer is king. The best way to serve consumers is by offering a wide array of choice.

He went on to profile such new services as wideband, Fancast, Project Infinity, the AnyPlay portable DVR, and the SmartZone communications center. You can read about the details elsewhere, but the important feature was that Comcast was preparing to offer more video that could be consumed in a more flexible fashion, more bandwidth and more features on its communications services. In a word: more.

On May 8th of last year, during NCTA’s annual Cable Show (also held in Las Vegas), Roberts demoed a DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem capable of delivering 160 Mbps using its “channel bonding” technology. You can see a video of that demo here and, as a sign of how far we’ve come over the last decade, you can also see Roberts demo a high-speed cable modem in 1996. Look at how fast the photos download! Check out the White House website!