This reduces reverse path noise, letting us send services bound for a single subscriber to only that subscriber plus a few others, but not to the whole city. Besides enabling technology, it s necessary to have enough market demand for two-way HFC services that are best provided over the new architecture. Interactive video is coming back again as well. Other necessary ingredients are the capital to make it all happen, and the motivation of those who must invest the money. Capital is relatively easy to come by now in many places, and the motivation comes in the form of opportunity for new profits, and, maybe more importantly right now, competition.
Cable operators have real competition in the broadband arena for the first time.
So cable must capitalise on all its assets to continue prospering. One of the prime assets and competitive weapons we have is our return capability. The trend has been toward smaller node sizes. About two or three years ago, people were building nodes with at least 2,000 homes passed. The industry talked about reducing the number of homes passed to about 500 homes per node, but few if any were doing it.