Patent ID: 8532488

Claim:
A cable communication system to provide voice and/or data services to a plurality of subscriber premises, the system comprising: at least a first neighborhood node having an infrastructure comprising: a first fiber optic cable; a first node optical/RF converter coupled to the first fiber optic cable; and a cable plant, coupled to the first node optical/RF converter, to convey at least upstream information from the plurality of subscriber premises over an upstream path bandwidth assigned to the first neighborhood node and including a range of frequencies; and a headend or hub comprising: a headend optical/radio frequency (RF) converter coupled to the first fiber optic cable of the first neighborhood node; and a cable modem system coupled to the headend optical/RF converter and including a plurality of demodulation tuners to receive and demodulate a plurality of upstream radio frequency (RF) signals from the first neighborhood node, each upstream RF signal of the plurality of upstream RF signals including an encoded carrier wave having a carrier frequency in the upstream path bandwidth of the first neighborhood node and being modulated, using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), with voice and/or data information constituting at least some of the upstream information from at least some of the plurality of subscriber premises, wherein: the plurality of upstream RF signals includes a first upstream RF signal having a first carrier frequency of greater than or equal to approximately 5 MHz, and less than or equal to approximately 16.4 MHz; the first upstream RF signal defines a first upstream physical communication channel in the upstream path bandwidth; the first upstream RF signal is encoded with at least some of the voice and/or data information using a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) protocol or an Advanced Time Division Multiple Access (ATDMA) protocol; the plurality of demodulation tuners includes a first demodulation tuner configured to receive and demodulate the first upstream RF signal using the TDMA protocol or the ATDMA protocol; and an aggregate deployed upstream capacity of the plurality of upstream RF signals to convey, in a portion of the upstream path bandwidth between 5 MHz and 16.4 MHz, the at least some of the upstream information from the at least some of the plurality of subscriber premises in the first neighborhood node is at least approximately 12 Megabits per second (Mbits/s).