Policyband Special Report: Five Questions for ... Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, Father of the Cable Modem
Fiber vs. Cable, FWA vs. Cable, Limits to Broadband Speeds, AI and Nuclear Power. And much more. Please read on ...
Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard is a technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. Yassini is best known as the “father of the cable modem,” tracing to the breakthrough achievements around high-speed data technologies pioneered by LANcity, the company Yassini founded in 1988. He was honored with an Emmy Award for this achievement in 2024. Yassini’s Massachusetts-based organization, YAS Foundation, supports innovation and creativity, addressing medical technology, telecommunications advocacy, educational scholarship, and cultural collaboration.
As part of Policyband’s “Five Question for …” series, we asked Yassini-Fard to address fiber deployment models, FWA bandwidth limits, caps on broadband speeds, if any, AI and nuclear power, and more.
1.) AT&T says fiber is the best broadband network certain to prevail over HFC. Do you agree?
Short Answer: If we are talking about greenfield applications, then absolutely yes. Fiber has virtually unlimited bandwidth. Fiber remains the medium of choice and is best where the cost of replacing existing infrastructure is not an object. But of course, it is, and laying fiber takes a long time.
Detail Answer: But most of the modern world already has "brownfield" networks installed. Hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) has many years of cost-effective useful life left in it thanks to the DOCSIS evolution. HFC can handle the growing number of residential applications available today or in the foreseeable future. It does not make economic sense to replace the HFC ... yet. Remember, an HFC network is already 90-95% fiber today. And the fiber continues to get pushed deeper so that it will become 98-99% fiber over the next decade or so. Eventually, in the distant future (2040 and beyond), an application might demand a direct fiber connection, but the HFC will be positioned to make that small evolutionary step to [Fiber-to-the-Home] at that point in time. It is just not cost justified in 2025 to go 100% fiber yet.
Some key points:
· HFC is still very cost effective for areas that it is covering
· Fiber offers highest symmetrical services with most reliability
· HFC-to-Fiber transition started in 1985 and continues till 2040
