Found this over on GeekNews, which actually updates a story first posted on NeoWin back in September 2001 "NeoWin: Fatter pipe in store for Cable Users (6th Sept 2001)".
The Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs, which is the research and development consortium of cable television system operators representing the continents of North America and South America) have finally completed the specifications to the next phase for transmitting data over cable, DOCSIS 2.0 (sexy name ain"t it... Ed.).
The specs were completed by year end, as promised, and test plans are now being finalized to allow for interoperability testing in the first quarter this year and possible certification testing in the third quarter pending product maturity.
DOCSIS 2.0 builds upon the capabilities of DOCSIS 1.0 and DOCSIS 1.1 and adds throughput in the upstream portion of the cable plant - from the consumer out to the Internet - creating a network that has 30 megabit per second (Mbps) capacity in two directions. That tripling of data capacity enables services such as videoconferencing and peer-to-peer applications. DOCSIS stands for Data over Cable Service Interface Specification.