With the cable industry more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it's not exactly news anymore to say that the increased use of video conferencing and other apps taxed the upstream capacity of hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks. That situation caused cable operators to add capacity to their HFC networks, push ahead with node splits and accelerate the use of AI-assisted technologies that enable networks to use the existing spectrum more efficiently. It also caused some projects, including plans centered on a distributed access architecture (DAA) and network virtualization, to be temporarily pushed out. And, thanks to a significant usage increase in historically thin upstream, there's now momentum building for "mid-split" and "high-split" upgrades that expand the amount of spectrum dedicated to the upstream.