Light Reading Podcasts Is cable approaching a tipping point on PON?
Feb 25, 2026
Jay Rolls, CTO of BSP and longtime cable engineering executive, discusses cable operators shifting toward fiber. He covers brownfield vs greenfield decisions, cost comparisons between DOCSIS upgrades and FTTP, fiber’s long-lived outside plant, operational tradeoffs of staying on HFC, and the CFO–CTO dynamics that shape migration choices.
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Fiber Dominates On Core Network Metrics
- Fiber outperforms coax on speed, symmetry, latency, scalability and reliability.
- Jay Rolls notes fiber is a 50-year passive outside-plant investment that avoids many RF-domain failure modes and long-term touchpoints.
Brownfield Fiber Costs Are Highly Variable
- Brownfield fiber conversion costs vary widely and can be counterintuitive, ranging roughly $400 to $1,000 per home passed.
- BSP's models found node configuration and plant specifics can make a newer-sounding node-plus-two upgrade costlier than an older node-plus-three plant.
Operational Savings Make Fiber Economically Attractive
- OPEX savings from fiber can be meaningful: Rolls cites HFC OPEX near $2–3/month per home (power is a big part), adding to ~$200 over five years.
- Those operational savings should factor into long-term ROI versus repeated DOCSIS upgrade costs.