Add AT&T/DirecTV to the list of MVPDs that are lovin’ it some Android TV.

DirecTV is developing an Android TV-powered box that will rely on OTT distribution and support voice search/navigation and the 4K video format, according to FCC documents that were first spotted by Variety.

The device, referred to as model number C71KW-400 and as the “AT&T/DIRECTV Wireless 4K OTT Client” in the user manual filed with the FCC, ties in a 10/100 Ethernet connector, digital audio, HDMI and USB 2.0 ports, and 802.11ac WiFi. The associated remote features a touch pad and voice recognition capabilities, when it is paired with the Android TV device.

The user’s guide also notes that the voice-controlled remote will work with a “future” model that is called the HS27.

Users will be able to sign in with their Google accounts, and screen shots show the device supporting an array of apps from the Google Play store.

Notably, the new OTT client device can’t be used with existing DirecTV Genie servers (such as the HR34-54 and HS17).

AT&T hasn’t responded to questions about the new Android TV device, so how the company will actually use it is open to speculation.

Because this is an OTT device, my guess is that it will be a device DirecTV will sell or lease to  customers of DirecTV Now, and support a new software platform, referred to on AT&T’s Q3 call yesterday, that that will go wide next year that will deliver advanced features such as a cloud DVR, PPV events and movies, and allow users to tack on more streams to their accounts.

RELATED: AT&T CFO Predicts Video Rebound in Q4

If this end up being a device for  DirecTV Now, it follows that the company would optimize it to default to AT&T’s own OTT TV service when it’s turned on, and still give users the option to supplement it with apps such as Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, etc.

Variety’s Janko Roettgers likewise wonders if DirecTV will make the box available to new or existing customers of AT&T’s U-verse IPTV service or DirecTV’s traditional satellite TV service, perhaps in an effort to more rapidly migrate video subs to its new, more agile digital platform.

To Roettgers' point about how the new Android TV device might factor into the company’s grander pay TV plans, Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s CEO, talked up the company’s software-centric approach to video at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in September.

RELATED: AT&T Looking to Improve on Comcast’s Model

“It’s a software-based solution for cable TV for want of a better descriptive terms,” he said then. “That is going to be the platform for how we deliver all video in the future, software-centric. We’ll be ambivalent as to whose broadband the television service traverses and so a software-based platform will not require a satellite dish on the roof and a very thin client in the home rather than a big set-top box.”

Regardless of the execution, it does indicate that AT&T/DirecTV has joined a growing number of providers and vendors to jump into the Android TV pond. Some recent examples:

-Evolution Digital, a supplier focused on cable’s tier 2/3 operator market, is working on an Android TV-powered box for its new app-based OTT TV offering that will carry the MSO partner’s brand and be leased by the operator. It will also be made to auto-connect/default to the operator’s app when the device is turned on.

-Telus of Canada is selling a 4K-capable Android TV-based “media box” for C$100 that works with its new Pik TV skinny-bundle streaming TV service.

-Dish’s AirTV Player, which integrates  Sling TV and over-the-air TV, is also powered by Android TV.

-Dish’s “Evolve” 4K-capable set-back box, tailored for hotels and other partners in the hospitality market, also runs on Android TV.

And if you wondered if some in the cable industry are sensitive to the momentum that Android TV is starting to build in the cable pay TV sector, one would need only look to some of the curious behavior that took place at last week’s SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

Execs from Amino Communications, Google and Verimatrix were originally slated to appear on a panel about Android TV at the show’s Innovation Theater, but were instead required to move the discussion elsewhere.

SCTE/ISBE is not responding to requests for comment about what transpired there, but nScreenMedia’s Colin Dixon, who moderated the panel, reported that show organizers “decided it was ‘inappropriate’ to include such a detailed discussion of Android TV. Amino, the sponsor of the panel, hurriedly relocated the discussion to its booth on the show floor.”

I was poking around the show floor when this was all going down, and can say that several people were mystified about the decision, to say the least.

Though the message of the panel was still delivered at the show, changing the venue to the Amino booth from the Innovation Theater area didn’t seem a necessary one to me. In fact, it came off looking like a bad move all around by an industry that insists it’s ready to embrace openness and change.

Plus, the decision ended up having the opposite effect of what was intended, giving the panel even more attention (and the unwanted type, at that!) than it likely would’ve received if the event took place at its original location.

 Technicians from Cable One and Comporium Communications took home the top prizes at last week’s Cortex Olympics, held in conjunction with the SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Kevin Troub, an IP specialist with Cable One in Phoenix, won the IP Challenge, a Jeopardy-style event that tests contestants on their knowledge of IP technology.

Troub’s colleague, Douglas Van Gessel, an IP Specialist II with Cable One in Phoenix, finished second, and IP Challenge 2014 champion Jamie Griffin, director of technology, Full Channel (in Barrington, R.I.), placed third. Troub, Van Gessel, and Griffin got into the final by winning preliminary IP Challenge contests held the prior evening.

Meanwhile, Greg Brakefield, a cable line technician with Comporium Communications in Rock Hill, S.C., captured his fourth Cable-Tec Games title since 2011.

Greg Babinski, Tech III, Line/Plant Maintenance with Charter Communications of New Port Richey, Fla. (and the 2016 Cable-Tec Games champion), took the silver medal, and Nathan Sidlinger, a technician with Mediacom Communications in Moline, Ill., took the bronze.

The Cable-Tec Games comprises seven individual contests. Brakefield won gold in Meter Reading, Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR), Cable Splicing, and Metallic Time Domain Reflectometer (MTDR). Shannon Cameron of Ritter and the Razorback Chapter, Region 8, won Fiber Splicing. Jerry Kennicott of Comcast and the Bonneville Chapter, Region 2, won Drop Connection. And, Kyle Halverson of Comcast and the Mount Rainier Chapter, Region 3, won Cable Jeopardy.

For their winning efforts, Troub received a complimentary pass to Cisco Live 2018 and a complimentary registration to Cable-Tec Expo 2018, and Brakefield received a complimentary registration to Expo 2018.

For the first time, the event, held last Thursday (October 19), was run in concert with Expo Evening and collocated on the exhibit hall of the Colorado Convention Center.

Cable-Tec Expo 2018 is set for Oct. 22-25, at the Georgia World Congress Center.

Denver -- The cable industry has no lack of network data. The challenge, according to panelists who spoke at a Cable-Tec Expo workshop on Wednesday (Oct. 18) in the Customer Journey track, is to use that information about the home and plant in the right way.

The common goal is better customer experience. “My job is to capture as much data around the customer as possible,” Comcast vice president of personalization Martin Marcinczyk said, “and to leverage that data to provide context for the workforce, products and customer service.”

To illustrate his point, Marcinczyk shared a video of Comcast going beyond normal operations in support of customers recently upended by disastrous weather. But he also acknowledged the deluge of information that Comcast itself faces: more than 250 pieces of data around the delivery platform multiplied millions of times. “Our customers interact with us a billion times a day,” he said. “And we don’t have one system, we have hundreds.”

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Comcast appears to be making headway in leveraging these massive amounts of data. “We have so much information,” said Marcinczyk, “we can begin to predict when we’ll have successful events -- or not so successful events.”

The vision of proactive maintenance is compelling, but progress is not universal. As a reality check, Gary Cunha, senior director, product management at ARRIS, shared input received earlier this year from one tier 2 operator: “We’re still reactive; when a spike in calls hits the call center, we really have no idea what caused it.”

Step one is a change in mindset. Cunha recommended thinking of the call center not as the first, but the last point of contact, like the goalkeeper on a soccer team. ‘Think of operations as a soccer team,” he said. “There are about seven opportunities to prevent the goal.”

Other winning combinations include optimized technical workforces, proactive home and network management and subscriber self-care. Cunha shared results from two cases. One involved analyzing the root cause of open work orders that were generating a flood of calls. The solution led to a reduction in repeat truck rolls and fault-based service calls, and a $1.6 million savings in one quarter. In the second case, assisting a large European operator burdened with a surge in WiFi-related service calls, ARRIS set up a program for telemetry analysis and evaluation of channel utilization, access points and client received signal strength indication (RSSI).

Customer self-care can be a big win, too. Cunha said the top two reasons for WiFi-related service calls, accounting for 30 percent in this category, are simply requests for SSIDs and passwords. He called that situation “a prime opportunity to exploit customer readiness for technology.”

The industry’s R&D arm has also been analyzing access network data. CableLabs Principal Architect Karthik Sundaresan updated workshop attendees on the organization’s efforts “to learn from that data and take concrete actions or steps to make an experience better.”

Like Cunha, Sundaresan said the right mental framework was essential. “Before I create a machine to do something, first I have to visualize” he said. “Can I understand it?”

Sharing graphical representations of DOCSIS 3.1 modulation error ration (MER) data from Comcast, Sundaresan discussed individual cable modem performances, some less stable than others. About one, he noted: “It’s nice for about two weeks, then something happens and MER drops by about 3dB.”

Plotted by dB level, frequencies and time, these three-dimensional graphs - looking in one case like the Himalayas and in another like the Grand Canyon - revealed much about individual modems. But that kind of analysis only goes so far. “You can see where this is leading,” he said. “Machine learning is the end goal.”

To that end, Sundaresan talked about discovering common characteristics across pools of modems and using algorithms such as a sliding median and threshold comparison for initial anomaly detection. Training a predictive model also involves data labels, such as (in the case of modems) wide, sharp, roll-off and tilt.

Sundaresan described the trained model as a “convolutional neural network,” or a way to understand what each of several layers is learning and then to remember that learning for future prediction. He said the CableLabs predictive engine was built open source, in Python, and with Keras as the neural network API for deep learning systems such as TensorFlow, CNTK or Theano.

SCTE•ISBE announced Friday that this week's Cable-Tec Expo in Denver drew 8,800 registered attendees, down slightly from the 9,100 that the event drew in 2014, the last time Expo was held in the Mile High City.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

The Society neared the 2014 total despite ongoing industry consolidation that contributed to a decision last year by the NCTA: The Internet & Television Association and its members to sunset INTX: The Internet & Television Expo, the event formally known as The Cable Show.

Last year’s Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia, home to Comcast, drew more than 10,000.

SCTE•ISBE said about 22% of this year’s attendees came from outside the U.S., and 19% of the registered total were first-time attendees.

Among highlights this year in Denver, Tuesday’s half-day Remote PHY seminar drew more than 400, more than double the expected number, requiring organizers to open up two standing-room only overflow rooms.

RELATED: Ramping Up For Remote PHY

This year’s show also was home to more than 400 exhibitor booths, a number that included 75 first-time exhibitors.  There were 98 fall Technical Forum sessions, up 36% from last year’s workshop program.

“While all of the metrics around SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2017 were strong, what’s most important is how we’ve continued to improve the quality of the program offered to attendees,”  Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “Thanks to the guidance of multiple supporters – most notably our program chairs, Jim Blackley and Terry Cordova; our outgoing board chair, Tony Werner; and our new board chair, Bill Warga – Expo 2017 set new standards as an event that underscores SCTE•ISBE’s role as the catalyst for new technologies that are the backbone of our industry.”

Cable-Tec Expo 2018 will be held Oct. 22-Oct. 25 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.  Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer for Cox Communications, will serve as program committee chairman for next year’s show.

DENVER — Linear TV isn’t dead, but the ability to search for and find relevant live TV content has historically been limited by the technology underpinning older on-screen guides and the use of static metadata such as a show’s title and baseline description.

In an effort to help viewers discover and surface relevant content from multiple live sources, a unit of Comcast has been hard at work at a smarter search platform that can collect and present clips on specific topics that are powered by deep metadata that’s pulled from the contents of the video itself.

The result can remove friction from finding linear TV content and also help viewers discover programs and content from channels that they perhaps were not even aware of, Chris Lintz, senior principal architect for Comcast’s VIPER team, said here Thursday at SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo on a panel session titled “Enhancing the Interactive Experience.”

Read More: Complete Coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

VIPER (Video IP Engineering & Research) is a unit of Comcast that designs and develops IP video solutions that support products such as X1, the company’s cloud DVR, and apps for mobile devices.

“We don’t have to be bound by the traditional guide and search on static metadata,” Lintz said. “There’s a gap in linear content discovery.”

The system being developed would let a viewer input a query into the platform (i.e., “Donald Trump and health care” or “Amazon and Whole Foods”), which, in turn would engage in a continuous, real-time program dialogue search and video analysis search engine that would look at individual components such as shots and scenes.

When a match is made, the data would be sent to a notification service and a recording would be scheduled based on that information. Results could include video clips from programming that the customer is entitled to as part of their subscription and also list of content that they aren’t entitled to, but maybe could be if they added that programming to their pay package.

In addition to assembling those clips into the DVR, the system could also be made to send alerts to the viewer on their mobile devices when a clip on the query topic is available for viewing.

Lintz said the system is about two years in the making. “Doing real-time search is hard,” he stressed, noting that the VIPER team has some ideas on how to include an alerts feature that doesn’t overwhelm the customer.

Comcast hasn’t announced when it might turn the project into a commercial product. “It’s a real system in our lab,” Lintz said.

Though VIPER has had this under development for some time, some of that work appears to stem from Comcast’s acquisition earlier this year of Watchwith, a video tech firm that had built a deep video metadata system that can decipher what’s happening inside a move, TV show or sporting event on a frame-by-frame basis.

Prior to acquiring Watchwith and its technology, Comcast was using the company’s technology for some relatively new features for its X1 service, including “Auto-Extend,” which automatically extends DVR recordings of sporting events that go beyond their scheduled airtimes, and a sports highlight component that auto-creates metadata tags that let viewers jump directly to key plays or moments in a sporting event that’s recorded to the DVR

DENVER — Just over the past year, connected devices including light bulbs, refrigerators, televisions, automobiles, insulin pumps and the electricity grid in the Ukraine were successfully hacked. All are evidence that the security threat for IoT and connected devices is real, but not insurmountable, according to panelists at a Cable-Tec Expo session, “IoT Security: Is It Really a Risk?”

Answer: Yes. “Security is a process, not a one-time thing,” said Petr Peterka, CTO of Verimatrix. “We need to be thinking about these devices over their entire lifetime.”

Read More: Complete Coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

“We have got to stop this,” said Brian Scriber, principal security architect at CableLabs. “We have the tools.”

Scriber pointed out that manufacturers have little to no economic incentive to provide post-sale updates or security measures, let alone for their anticipated lifetime, Scriber said.

Plus, patches to remedy hacks and not always designed for the everyday person. Light bulbs don’t usually come with USB ports, for instance; depending on the type of IoT device hacked, the remedies can range from requiring special adaptors, custom cables, and even soldering irons.

Hackers hack for different reasons, Peterka said: Academics do it to expose flaws “because they want to protect us.” So-called “hactivists” usually have a political leaning they want known; thieves hack to steal; terrorists hack to cause large-scale damage.

Peterka characterized four levels of threats, associated with IoT hacks: Threats to brand and reputation, threats to lives (e.g. medical aides we have in or on ourselves), threats to national security, and threats to critical infrastructure.

Because set-tops and gateways are, in essence, the very first “connected IP devices” in a home or business, some security elements have already been solved, and can be applied to the IoT scene, he said. In particular, his list of the four corners of IoT device security includes device integrity, secure boot-ups, authentication, and the security of collected data.

He referenced work happening within CableLabs and some of its members with the Open Connectivity Forum, or OCF, as a solid flanking mechanism. “We have leadership there — which matters, because IoT security will absolutely impact our networks … and the fact is that we’ve solved these problems before,” Scriber said.

With the dramatic expansion of applications and OTT content, the demand for bandwidth is constantly rising. As a result, MSOs are currently undertaking a major network transformation towards Distributed Access Architectures (DAA), such as Remote PHY, Remote MAC, and Fiber Deep to drive digital traffic over fiber closer to the customers.

Deploying WDM technologies allow existing fiber infrastructure to be leveraged for DAA.

Driving digital optics out of the headend and into the outside plant presents practical challenges for network operators. DAA nodes exist in the cable plant, outside the relative comforts of the headend, where robust environmental control systems with backup power do not exist. WDM technologies are especially at risk in these environments.

Operation at the extreme temperatures in these environments is critical to network performance, and so there are a few practical considerations that need to be taken into account by MSOs.

Practical Consideration No. 1: Know The Lingo

It’s essential to understand the commonly used terminology that governs how network devices are recommended for deployment, especially in regards to temperature.  

The key terms to keep in mind are Commercial Temperature (C-Temp), Industrial Temperature (I-Temp) and extended temperature. C-Temp is the most common envelope for standard use in controlled environments and stretches from 0°C to +70°C, while I-Temp, which stretches from -40C to +85C, is recommended for devices deployed outside of climate controlled environments, such as customer premises sites, outdoor electronics cabinets, mobile antennae sites, and cable television return path nodes. Extended temperature is not a recognized envelope, but is used when devices can operate properly outside the C-Temp envelope, but fail to meet full I-Temp requirements.

Practical Consideration No. 2: Optical Transceivers are Impacted by the Physical Environment

Wavelength drift impacts all types of optics, WDM and standard gray optics alike. Fiber optic wavelengths fluctuate around their center wavelength over time. Common factors that impact the drift are time and environmental temperature conditions.

WDM technology uses passive WDM devices to multiplex multiple circuits on to a single fiber or fiber pair.  WDM passive devices have a ‘passband’ that essentially acts like lane markers or dividers in a swimming pool. The passband ensures that each wavelength stays in their own lane as it is transmitted across the fiber optic circuit. Like a swimming pool lane divider, there is a certain amount of room for WDM wavelengths to drift within the lane.  As in a swimming competition, should a wavelength drift outside of its assigned lane or passband, the passive device will penalize by dropping the transmission.

Practical Consideration No. 3: don’t Take Wavelength Performance for Granted

Performance over temperature over time cannot be taken for granted. Research has shown that temperature cycles over time can indeed impact the long-term performance of WDM optical transceivers. The behavior of the WDM laser may become less predictable with multiple temperature cycles.

Practical Consideration No. 4: Not All Transceivers are Created Equal

The transceiver marketplace offers two approaches to ensuring performance over temperature. First is the “should be good enough” approach, where transceivers are screened in the factory. The screening may include reading optical test results or perhaps placing the transceiver in an environment chamber. The key point for network operators to consider is that the transceiver may perform at temperature at “birth,” but it does not consider the effect of temperature cycles over time on the transceiver.

The second option available is transceivers that incorporate wavelength stabilization technology to ensure WDM wavelengths remain in their “swim lanes” over time and temperature.

Two of the common wavelength stabilization technologies are heat-assisted and thermo-electric cooling. Both technologies are integrated on to the micro-controller of the transceiver and are transparent to the network switch or element.

In conclusion, practical considerations for distributed access archictectures must account for the impact of the environment on digital optics deployed in the field. Ensuring that your WDM optics deployed in the field incorporate stabilization technology is one practical step to network performance over temperature over time.

Ray Hagen is Americas Product Manager at ProLabs, a maker of OEM-compatible optical transceivers and connectivity products

DENVER — Comcast’s downtown Denver lab is spinning up a proof of concept (PoC) involving the Energy 2020 “APSIS” initiative, which aims to give operators a way to “turn the knob” on energy used by critical network components — in this case, CCAP (converged cable access platform) devices.

RELATED: SCTE/ISBE Goes Open-Source for Adaptive Power Play

“APSIS” stands for Adaptive Power System Interface Specification. It matters because it ultimately addresses the biggest part, by far, of any operator’s electricity bill: The physical infrastructure, from the side of the home to headends and data centers, which represents up to 75% of what’s spent on power.

RELATED: Arris, WES, Concurrent Thinking to Demo Adaptive Power Tech

The APSIS news came out of the Energy 2020 program, which launched at the 2014 Cable-Tec Expo, and met earlier this week. Tracy Baumgartner, executive director of sustainability for Comcast (and yes, she’s married to Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner), noted during her update that “just a few blocks away from here, we are in the midst of a PoC on an APSIS program, specifically with a CCAP device … because we’re looking to prove that we can adjust energy usage with software.”

If everything works out as intended, the APSIS PoC will prove that service flows on a CCAP device can be measured, and, as a consequence, those flows can be programmatically activated and deactivated in the lab.

RELATED: Operators Seek Sustainability, Savings

“It also includes a web app … which makes APSIS more visual and approachable, because it shows how energy can be controlled, and it shows the reduction in energy usage,” Baumgartner said. “It demonstrates how this is really all about just turning the knob,” to turn down electricity consumption on certain components — like CCAP, to start — when the network isn’t actively being used.

DENVER — The pursuit of lower electric bills and systemic sustainability is again a solid undercurrent (pun intended) at this year’s Cable-Tec Expo, in sessions, on the show floor, and within the Energy 2020 community, now in its fourth year.

“We think there’s a $10 million bucket to go after,” said Dan Marut, director of national sustainability for Comcast — which recently created an “office of sustainability,” led by Susan Jin Davis, the company's chief sustainability officer.

Related: Comcast Conducting Proof of Concept Involving Energy 2020 ‘APSIS’ Initiative

When seeking top-level support for sustainability projects internally, “it’s important to lead with the business case,” Marut said. “We have to speak the language of the people around us.”

Here’s a roundup of this year’s energy-related trends:

Airflow is everything: The best way to lower energy costs in facilities, like headends and data centers, is to keep the cold air supply separate from the hot return air. Technologies that can help include computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, which use sensors to measure air temperatures at different places in a facility, then display the results with color-coded “plumes.”

“It gives you clues as to whether there’s enough cooling” or too much cooling, said John Dolan, senior engineer for Rogers Cable Communications, during a Wednesday morning Cable-Tec Expo session. Dolan detailed a “set point study” he conducted to determine the cost savings of raising the temperature (and thus spending less on cooling) in a facility. Results: A $2,000 savings in 1.24 years or $1 million if extended to 50 facilities.

Read More: Complete Coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

A similar approach: Contain things that need a colder environment, like batteries, then raise the set point (temperature setting) for the rest of the gear, which may not be as heat-sensitive. That’s what Liberty Global did in Switzerland, noted Sam Khola, director of sustainability for the operator. “For every single Celsius degree (raised), we could see a 6% savings in electricity,” he said. “That’s quite a lot, at very little cost.”

Being energy efficient doesn’t have to cost a lot of money: A recurring theme, as the energy-minded engineers here continue to secure top-down support for sustainability: Being energy-efficient doesn’t have to break the bank. For instance, hot/cold air containment can be as simple as installing curtains, drilling holes in the bottoms of racks and removing unused cabling underneath raised floors.

“Not having capex doesn’t have to stop you from integrating energy efficiency into your business,” said Liberty Global’s Khola, who encouraged attendees to group all sustainability efforts into an “energy management plan” to better organize available resources.

Other cost-neutral strategies that work: Using Mother Nature. Air is still free, and in cooler climates, it’s a great way to reduce indoor temperatures. “In Canada, it gets hot for maybe a week, then it’s back to freezing,” quipped Todd Musat, director of critical infrastructure services for Shaw, which is using 10 free-air cooling units in its Calgary data center “with remarkable results.”

Equipment refreshes, like moving from “traditional” CMTS units to CCAP devices, are another good way to lower the electric bill inexpensively, Musat said. The proof: By moving to CCAP, energy consumption came down by 31%, even as the number of serving groups increased by 28%. Critical to this technique is the decommissioning of older and unused equipment. “It’s been a key to our success.”

Like it is today with DOCSIS modems and network gear, interoperability between products from multiple vendors will again be a major focus for Remote PHY, an emerging access architecture that will push the electronics deeper into the network.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Tied into that interop effort, Kyrio, a unit of CableLabs, opened up official qualification testing on October 1. Speaking at a seminar dedicated to Remote PHY in Denver at the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, Jorge Salinger, Comcast’s vice president, access architecture, stressed that interoperability between vendors will be a critical requirement for the MSO as it moves ahead with trials and, eventually, with deployments.

RELATED: Ramping Up for Remote PHY

Arris and Cisco Systems, two major cable suppliers, claimed this week that they have made progress on the interop front for Remote PHY and distributed access architectures that aim to help cable operators reduce power and space requirements at hub and headend sites, while also boosting the capacities of their HFC networks.

Remote PHY allows for a reduction of power, cooling and hub site sizing, providing significant total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits to cable operators. Silicon manufacturers, technology vendors and global cable operators have endorsed the Remote PHY architecture and are working toward a common goal for the distributed access architecture (DAA).

Here at the show, Arris and Cisco are demonstrating interoperability of their respective Remote PHY products, including core CCAP technology and PHY nodes.

More specifically, Arris is showing its E6000 Core working with a Cisco Smart PHY Node, and Cisco is demoing the cBR-8 CCAP Core supporting the Arris RPHY Node.

The industry is making significant progress with Full Duplex (FDX) DOCSIS, an extension to DOCSIS 3.1 that will position cable operators to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds on their HFC networks.

Though current consumer demand for an upstream path that’s so speedy isn’t hear-and-now need, FDX will get cable ahead of the curve before it truly is needed and give it a new option that will help MSOs compete with the “billboard” speeds that are being marketed today by telcos and other rivals that are delivering service on fiber-to-the-premises networks.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

“I think the biggest fear that the operators have is that their competition may one-up them and offering 1 Gbps service when they [the cable operators] are limited to 50 Mbps upstream or 100 Mbps upstream,” Tom Cloonan, chief technology officer of network solutions at Arris, said.

Cloonan said the upstream average today is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 kbps, but acknowledged that being able to deliver billboard speed of 1-Gbps in the upstream will give cable operators a way to fire back in the marketing game as MSOs face off against FTTH competition that is already offering speeds of 500 Mbps or 1-Gig in the upstream direction.

Enabling FDX DOCSIS will help cable operators deliver on HFC the kind of symmetrical speeds that are delivered by fiber-to-the-home architectures. Early on, it’s more likely that FDX will help operators meet the upstream demands required by business service customers.  

But starting to pivot in that direction today will also help cable operators future-proof their networks and get the best bang for the buck, according to John Chapman, a fellow at Cisco Systems and the CTO of the company’s cable access business.

“If you’re going to spend money on the plant…do you do a small upgrade, or do you do a big upgrade?” he asks. “Ideally you spend the money on the plant once and it lasts for a long time.”

Operators, he points out, could opt to do a mid-split, raising the available upstream spectrum to 85MHz – enough to open the door to about 400 Mbps.

“It’s not going to be a ten-year plan,” Chapman said. “It’s going to get tight at some point in time.”

Operators can also push the upstream to 204 MHz, sometimes called a “high-split,” which would put MSOs in a position to offer more than 1 Gbps in the upstream.

Chapman points out that it also requires a significant change to the plant, so if an operator is  already committed to changing diplexers and amplifiers and return path amps, why not take the next step and implement a true next-gen frequency plan for the upstream and get ahead of the curve?

“What more bang for the buck could you get for that [work]?” he said. “We’ve Full Duplex lined up for that. It will have built-in future proofing…it negates the need to go to fiber [to-the-home].”

He also sees FDX being deeply coupled with other next-gen access network moves, such as fiber deep, which replaces one node with between 12 to 18, and new distributed architectures. “It’s like a package deal.”

Though there’s no immediate need for FDX, suppliers now have a technical path forward for products that will support it in the years to come.

Earlier this month, CableLabs released the physical layer specifications for FDX, arriving a little over a year after CableLabs started the specification writing process. CableLabs introduced the concept in February 2016.

CableLabs, which released the PHY layer specs on October 5, said this signals that FDX has reached the “advanced maturity stage,” enabling vendors to push ahead with their product development, Belal Hamzeh, vice president, research and development, wireless technologies at CableLabs, said.

RELATED: Full Duplex DOCSIS Plows Ahead 

Cloonan said he expects operators to turn up spectrum in that FDX band in phases. “Maybe they’ll turn on 96 MHz or 192 MHz…and a few years later turn on another 96 MHz, or another 192 MHz chunk of spectrum,” said.

Some industry experts see FDX trials getting underway sometime next year and into 2019, with 2020 seen as the technology’s first significant deployment year.

Demos of FDX-facing technologies and products are expected to be on show at this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

Arris, Cloonan said, will offer an “early stage demo” of its FDX handiwork this week. “We’re not in the end zone yet, but we’re moving down the field quickly." 

Cisco, Chapman said, will follow up on its earlier FDX-based demos, including a recent look at an echo-canceller technology that will be required. This week, it will also demo the concept of “sounding,” that involves the measuring of attenuation between the modems on a particular node. That will be used to put certain subscribers into separate transmission groups and on different frequency plans to ensure that they are not interfering with each other.

RELATED: Cisco Demos Full Duplex DOCSIS 

That, in part, is “how we achieve the trick of Full Duplex” in a point-to-multipoint system, he said, noting that reusing spectrum for both upstream and downstream traffic seemed like a pipe dream just a couple short years ago. “A lot of this is pretty clever rocket science.”

“It’s a challenging design, one of the most challenging DOCSIS specs because of the complexities of managing bandwidth in the upstream and the downstream direction…and the echo-cancellation circuits that are needed to make this work,” Cloonan said.

Denver -- Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson tagged artificial intelligence and machine learning as a next big area of focus, especially to mine device and network data in ways that improve customer care.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

“We just hosted an AI demo day (in Philadelphia), it’s incredible … if there’s ever an industry that’s primed and could benefit from taking data and making it available to agents and customers, it’s ours. I think it’s really going to change the customer experience, profoundly.”

Watson spoke here during Wednesday’s (Oct. 18) luncheon panel at SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, with Arris CEO Bruce McClelland and Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner. Major themes: Gigabit services, WiFi resilience, and mobile 5G.

McClelland, who subscribes to Comcast’s Gigabit service in the Atlanta area, described it as “really responsive and pretty addictive.”

As for what services will warrant that much raw throughput: “The last thing I’m worried about is whether we’re going to consumer all the bandwidth -- I think we are,” in part because of advancements in virtual reality, augmented reality, 4K/HDR video, and the Internet of Things.

Watson also emphasized Comcast’s wireless intentions, both mobile and WiFi.

“By 2020, there’s going to be something like 50 devices hanging off of the WiFi, so it better be good,” he said. To address in-home coverage, he referenced Comcast’s investment in Palo Alto, Calif.-based Plume, which makes WiFi “pod”-styled extenders that will essentially create a mesh network in the home.

RELATED: Comcast Launches ‘xFi,’ Invests in Plume

Arris is similarly focused on mobile 5G small cells, for higher speeds, better connectivity and improved latency.

“It’s not unlike the HFC network, as we continue to split nodes and reduce service group sizes … there’s an opportunity to be very disruptive in the mobile space.”

Watson noted that it took about a decade for 4G wireless to fully launch.

“I’m not sure it’s as dire as an either/or,” in terms of 5G’s potential as both a mobile backhaul opportunity, and a last mile replacement. “It can be complimentary and additive, but it’s going to take a while.”

As cable operators form and evolve their mobile and wireless strategies, a swath of spectrum that’s opening up could very well take them down a new path that can not only enhance their existing offerings but also open doors to new ones.

That all centers on Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), a 150 MHz-wide batch of what will become shared-use spectrum living in the range of 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz. The FCC established rules for enabling that shared-spectrum band in April 2015.

That spectrum has been underutilized, with the bulk of it used by the U.S. Navy for flight operations for aircraft carriers, along with some satellite uplinks.

The FCC rules create a way to reapply that lightly-used spectrum to complement and enhance the limited pool of licensed spectrum that carriers have paid dearly for.

But the rules also support an engineering-focused approach to ensure that usage of the CBRS band doesn’t interfere with the incumbent users in the form of new spectrum allocation servers that are authorized by the FCC. Generally, those servers check for interference issues with the Navy, for example, before providing a spectrum grant in the CBRS band.

CBRS radios will need to be in constant contact with the spectrum allocation servers, and there’s work underway to build a sensor network along the coastline to detect Navy flight operations. If there is an interference issue, the radios would be commanded to move to a clean channel.

“It’s like a grand experiment,” Steve Martin, chief technology officer of Ruckus Wireless, said, noting that the coordinated, shared aspects of CBRS are unique.

CBRS is being set up as a three-tier system, with the top level for the Navy and other incumbents, a middle, priority access license layer that covers a portion of the band that will be tied to future FCC spectrum auctions, and a general authorized access layer. If licenses aren’t taken, that spectrum will also be open to unlicensed use.

That middle layer, Martin said, could be licensed by a service provider to hit a certain area that has a clear channel, and could also be cheap enough for an airport, for example, to license a 10 MHz slice to serve the facility.

One company that’s placing a big bet on CBRS and spectrum controller systems is Federated Wireless, which recently wrapped up a $42 million “B” round that included participation from two big names from the cable industry -- Charter Communications and Arris, which is in the process of acquiring Ruckus Wireless. The system Federated Wireless is building will run on a cloud-based service, network of sensors that identify and protect incumbent users of the CBRS band, spectrum sharing tools, and an “open” ecosystem for CBRS-based products.

“From our point of view, this is an absolutely fascinating area,” Duncan Potter, senior vice president of marketing, said of CBRS.

The rules around CBRS don’t speak to specific types of radios, but it’s viewed as a major opportunity for LTE-based technology.  The CBRS Alliance (Federated Wireless, Comcast, Ruckus Wireless, Charter, Comcast and Cox are among its members ) is evangelizing LTE-based solutions in the CBRS band for in-building and outdoor coverage, holding in part that it will help to ensure product interoperability.

“It doesn’t take a lot of effort to move the needle on chipsets and that while ecosystem to support it,” Martin said, noting that the spectrum for CBRS is gaining momentum worldwide as an LTE mobile band. Theoretically, it could be implemented for WiFi, but that would make it unique to the U.S. and make it less commercially desirable, he said.

“The first segment of companies that are going after this are the cable companies, especially the leading cable companies,” Imran Akbar, vice president and general manager, wireless enterprise, at Samsung Electronics America, said.

But what, precisely will CBRS have to do with cable? Plenty of potential use cases are emerging.

The CBRS band could, for example, help MSOs get access to spectrum that augments the spectrum they are using in their MVNO deals. Comcast is using that model for Xfinity Mobile (with Verizon as the partner) and Charter has similar plans underway.

While the MVNO gets them into the mobile business, terms were negotiated years ago, with certain fixed costs, and it’s likely that Verizon wouldn’t be champing at the bit to give everyone a better deal.

It’s possible that cable operators will build CBRS-based small cells and supply the backhaul, effectively accessing capacity and spectrum that is less expensive than what comes way of their MVNO agreements.

Martin said it could make sense for an operator to build out CBRS infrastructure in areas with high concentrations of subscribers. When customers aren’t in reach of that network, they roam to the MVNO network.

“The economics are good for [CBRS] spectrum, and it’s good spectrum, too,” said Ralph Brown, chief technology officer at CableLabs, which is also a member of the CBRS Alliance and contributing to its scope of work. The CBRS work adds to that it’s doing with technologies such as WiFi and 5G. “The broader strategy we’re pursuing is to make sure our members have competitive positions in any one of those [areas], depending on what their business objectives are,” Brown said.

Cable operators might also use CBRS as a fixed wireless technology that helps them reach areas that are not covered by their wired networks, or as a solution for business service customers that want to beef up wireless coverage in their buildings.

Citing the airport example, Samsung’s Akbar said CBRS will open the door to “neutral host companies” that build the infrastructure there and sell access to carriers. That same model could be used in multiple-dwelling unit sites, he added.

Potter said the proximity of HFC and fiber networks make them well-positioned to backhaul CBRS-powered services, noting that their nodes are essentially “beachfront property” for such use.

But the exact timing of when this will all come together, though some in the industry hope it will be ironed out by the FCC in the first half of 2018, with buildouts to follow in the second half.

“We are neck-deep in trials today with cable companies and starting with some neutral cost companies and tower companies,” Akbar said, predicting that CBRS will begin to take off in a big way by 2020.

DENVER – Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge preached to the cable engineering choir about the cable network’s “superior infrastructure” and future “6G” wireless products while pointing out how the industry has suffered because of poor service.

In a keynote speech to the Cable-Tec Expo here Wednesday, Rutledge – who was chided in a leaflet handed out near the convention center, tied to Charter’s strike situation in New York – also called password sharing a “significant issue” affecting the video business.

In a speech given from notes, Rutledge cited various companies he’d worked for in cable dating back to 1972, lastly Charter, which he noted was not long out of bankruptcy reorganization when he joined it six years ago. Today it’s the second-biggest U.S. cable operator, with a $350 stock and $90 billion market cap.

“We have been building connectivity and capacity for decades and we will be for decades to come,” he said.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Wireless – already a big part of Charter’s business, via WiFi, with mobile services on the way next year – is poised for big growth inside the home, using techniques such as 802.11ax, he said. “We’ll be able to go from eight simultaneous streams of wireless to 64 and manage the quality throughout the home.”

He talked about the potential to combine licensed and unlicensed spectrum to get 10-gigabit per second broadband speeds in the home and enhanced WiFi. “I call it 6G inside wireless speeds,” he said. “Why 6G? Just because it’s something we have and the phone guys don’t and I want to have it.”

He described a pathway being developed with CableLabs to use coherent fiber and two-way DOCSIS to help enable future data-heavy consumer applications that haven’t been invented yet, such as creating holograms in a personal-space environment.

As for the overhang of poor service by cable companies, he called it “an issue that has affected the industry.”

“Service is a business,” he said. “Service itself is a product, and it’s also an attribute of how we’re perceived from a regulatory perspective. Which has dramatic impacts on the way our business grows and attracts capital.”

Security was another term he stressed, both in terms of protecting customers’ privacy and in terms of over-the-top providers protecting against over-use of sharing online accounts.

“It’s a significant issue and it’s not well appreciated by the people who are new to distribution,” Rutledge said. “And everybody with an app, including the programmers that we pay, are in the distribution business now, whether they know it or not.”

He said “they have an obligation to protect their product and they don’t do a very good job and that’s affecting the business.”

Rutledge said he was confident those issues would get resolved over time. Charter will integrate more apps and popular OTT services like Netflix and Hulu and make it easier for customers to find what they want. New bundles will emerge to break up “the big fat video package.”

Charter is going to continue to build its network, he said, using all-fiber infrastructure “on the increment” toward new homes.

“We have a great future doing what we’ve always been doing in a much more sophisticated way,” he concluded. “We have an industry built to grow and last.”

Rutledge led off by saluting Charter employees recognized during the conference: Debi Picciolo received the Women in Technology award; Tom Adams, Cynthia Carpenter and Charlotte Field were inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers.

But Charter’s labor problems in New York City – where 1,800 members of Local 3 of IBEW have been on strike since March 28 and getting increasingly vocal in agitating against Charter – also were present here as union workers handed out a flyer to people walking into the Colorado Convention Center.

It cited Rutledge earning $98 million in 2016 (reported at the time to include $78 million in performance-related stock options) and said that salary “should buy better customer service.”

Denver -- At its annual awards luncheon here Wednesday, SCTE•ISBE honored Comcast Cable’s Ed Marchetti as the organization’s Member of the Year, while two other industry vets – David Fellows and Dr. Rickey Luke – were inducted to the SCTE•ISBE Hall of Fame.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Member of the Year, and David Fellows of Layer3 TV and Dr. Rickey Luke of Cable TV of East Alabama are the newest inductees into the SCTE•ISBE Hall of Fame, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), announced today.

A Society member since 1994, Marchetti is the senior vice president of technical operations for Comcast and has been a staunch advocate for SCTE•ISBE and its training mission, engaging Comcast’s engineering and technical operations with his nationwide ambassador program, the organization said.

Marchetti is also helping Comcast to realize maximum benefit from its SCTE•ISBE Corporate Alliance Partnership, the organization said.

Among the new Hall of Famers, Fellows is a co-founder and current CTO of Denver-based next-gen MVPD Layer3 TV and a former Comcast CTO. He is a pioneer who has been instrumental in bringing fiber optics and digital technology into the satellite and cable industry, and helped to achieve that when he was president of the transmission systems business division for Scientific Atlanta (now part of Cisco Systems) from 1987 to 1992.

Fellows, a longtime chair of the Society’s Data Standards Subcommittee, also received the SCTE•ISBE Excellence in Standards Award at this year’s luncheon.

Fellow HoF inductee Luke is CTO and vice president, engineering at Cable TV of East Alabama, and a 45-year vet of the cable industry. He is credited for being active in deploying fiber architecture while the technology was still in the early stages of development.

Other awards bestowed by the Society this week include:

-Guavus earned the Society’s Innovators Award for its Reflex platform, which provides critical context and the ability to predict outcomes with deterministic data.

-Comcast University’s Dr. Martha Soehren was presented with the Chairman’s Award by the outgoing chair of the Society’s board of directors, Tony Werner of Comcast Cable. Dr. Soehren is chief talent development officer and senior vice president of Comcast Cable Communications.

-Deborah Picciolo, senior vice president of the west region, Charter Communications, was the recipient of the Women in Technology Award, which is presented each year by WICT, SCTE•ISBE, and Cablefax.

-Rolando Barja, director, redes coaxiales, COTAS RL, will be presented with the International Engineering Professional Award on Friday (October 20) at the ISBE International Attendee Breakfast.

-Lisa Leaunvankham, procurement analyst 2 (NGAN), Comcast Cable Communications, received the inaugural Rising Leader Award during the Member Appreciation Reception on Tuesday.

-Two professionals gained Senior Member recognition during Tuesday’s Member Appreciation Reception: Jason Hibbard, director of engineering, Comcast Cable Communications, and Daniel Howard, director of consulting services, Hitachi Energy & Environmental Efficiency.

-The Society’s South and Central Americas Meeting Group was elevated to Chapter status during the Chapter Leaders Breakfast on Wednesday morning.

-Ron Hranac, technical leader, engineering, Cisco Systems, was presented at the luncheon with the David Hall Award for Best Presentation 2017, an honor bestowed by the Society for Broadband Professionals and typically presented each year at this sister organization’s annual gala, in London.

Denver – With Remote PHY trials underway and deployments to soon follow, CableLabs has launched a qualification testing process that aims to ensure interoperability between Remote PHY Devices (RPDs) that are made by multiple vendors.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

“We are open for business,” Jon Schnoor, distinguished technologist at CableLabs, declared  here Monday at Cable-Tec Expo during a half-day seminar deviated to Remote PHY that included a deep dive on drivers and benefits, product updates, and lab and field trial activity for the emerging architecture.

RELATED; Ramping Up for Remote PHY  

Schnoor said Kyrio, a for-profit spin-off of CableLabs formerly known as NetworkFX, is now accepting submissions, and that it expects to see RPDs start to come in the door for official qualification testing by the end of the year.

RELATED: Kyrio Takes Over CableLabs Certification Testing Program

Testing will be conducted on two types of RPDs – the Remote PHY Node and the Remote PHY Shelf.

Earlier on the panel, Schnoor said there are eight specs for Remote PHY, including seven that are specific to it, alongside an annex to a spec for the Downstream RF Interface (DRFI).

Schnoor called Remote PHY a “first step” for the industry’s next-gen access networks.

“We are desperately trying to finish the specifications,” he said. “But we want to make sure that we’re doing it right…The idea of remote PHY is simple, but the implementation and the design of it is very complex.”

Heading into the availability of official qualification testing, CableLabs has been holding several interop events with vendors and chipmakers, along with help from a set of cable operators that includes Comcast, Shaw Communications and Cox Communications.

CableLabs completed its tenth Remote PHY interop event in November, and had 18 companies participating, Schnoor said.

Denver -- Cable operators are facing competition on all fronts, requiring them to develop and launch new services at a clip that’s never been as rapid.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

But staying ahead of old and new rivals also means that MSOs must continue to invest in their “core competency, which is our networks,” Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global said here Wednesday in a keynote conversation with Tony Werner, president, technology and product at Comcast Cable. 

“This [the network] is the secret sauce for us,” Fries said. “We fight fire with fire.”

Keeping those networks humming and updated keeps cable ahead of the capacity curve while also keeping new competition in check.

One such competitor that came up was Amazon, which has “unprecedented scale” and “unquenchable ambition.”

“A press release from these guys can disrupt industries,” Fries said.

Though video represents just one-third of Liberty Global’s revenues, advancing that platform remains paramount, Fries said, citing his company’s work on its Horizon service and the company’s adoption of the Reference Design Kit, a preintgrated software stack for IP-connected set-tops and gateways.

He said Netflix proved out how seamless functionality and navigation across screens is now critical, believing that Liberty Global, which is integrating Netflix on its own boxes, has bridged that “functionality gap.”

Tying in Netflix is leading to more video consumption on Liberty Global’s platform and those customers tend to churn less and pay more. “Why wouldn’t you put Netflix in that box?” Fries said.

RELATED: RELATED: Liberty Global: Netflix for All

Turning to broadband, Fries said that service has been “the weapon of choice for us for some time” in Europe, calling it the company’s “killer app.”

The average customer, he said, now gets a 100 Mbps service on average, with “bull’s eye” speeds of 150 Mbps and 250 Mbps.

“We’re not selling anything with two digits anymore,” Fries said, adding that 90% of Liberty Global is now DOCSIS 3.1-ready, and is moving ahead with a D3.1 trial in Germany.

But Liberty Global, as some of its U.S.-based peers are becoming, is also a mobile company that delivers a quad-play largely through agreements with carriers that lets the MSO control the experience and essentially rent the towers.

“We’re all-in on mobile,” Fries said.

Fries also addressed the challenges Liberty Global and others in the industry face when it comes to attracting top talent.

He said Liberty Global, despite being a large company, has become “agile” in an entrepreurual sense.

“We’re bobbing and weaving where we need to be…We’re also in the center of everything that’s cool that’s happening,” he said, citing areas such as internet video, broadband, the Internet of Things and the content business. “Things are pivoting around us.”

Werner acknowledged that cable might not always be the first choice for some, “but we can compete in that [talent] market.”

Earlier in the conversation, Fries also addressed the massive challenges Liberty Global has been facing in Puerto Rico and other islands that were devastated by massive hurricanes.

“It’s about as bad as it gets,” Fries said, noting that the company has about 1,000 employees in Puerto Rico alone. Of the 1 million homes passed there, less than 1% are currently online.

“We’ll rebuild the networks,” Fries said. “But [it’s] more important to rebuild communities.”

Liberty Global has raised about $1.5 million for relief efforts. “It’s been rough, but I think we’ll rebound,” he said.

Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer for Cox Communications, is set to chair the Fall Technical Forum for SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, which heads back to Atlanta next year.

In that role, Hart will lead the committee that builds the Expo Fall Technical Forum, which includes an array of workshops on key industry engineering and business topics, and is a joint production of SCTE•ISBE, NCTA, and CableLabs.

Cable-Tec Expo 2018 is set for Oct. 22-25, at the Georgia World Congress Center.

RELATED: Talkin’ Tech

Hart, who chaired Cable-Tec Expo when the vent was held in Atlanta in 2013, takes over for co-chairs of this year’s show in Denver – Terry Cordova, vice chairman, business development-network and technology services, Altice USA; and Jim Blackley, executive vice president, engineering and information technology, Charter Communications.

“Year in and year out, Kevin Hart’s vision, commitment to excellence, and technology expertise have helped Cox be among the very best at transforming the lives of consumers,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “Kevin’s leadership will be key to shaping an Expo program that will help to drive deeper understanding of the value of training, standards, and thought leadership as catalysts for improvement in operators’ bottom lines.”

“In a rapidly-shifting media landscape, it’s essential for cable to continue to prepare the technology workforce for the changes ahead,” said Hart, who took part in this year’s Multichannel News technology roundtable. “I look forward to working with the Cable-Tec Expo 2018 Program Committee to create an agenda that will provide SCTE•ISBE members and Expo attendees with the technical knowledge and industry insights they need to maintain our competitive edge well into the future.”

Before joining Cox, Hart was CIO of Clearwire and Level 3 Communications. He started his career with SBC Communications.

After starting out as a video-centric platform, the Reference Design Kit (RDK) has branched off to support broadband gateways as well.

The RDK, a preintegrated software platform for IP-connected set-tops and gateways managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Charter Communications, has been ramping its adoption curve as more service providers lean on it for their next-gen services and a growing group of vendors add support.

To catch up on all things RDK, Multichannel News recently caught up with Steve Heeb, president and GM of RDK Management LLC. An edited transcript follows.

Multichannel News: Can you offer an update on RDK stats in terms of overall licensees as well as service providers that are on board?

Steve Heeb: Things are going great with the RDK thanks to the passion, and maturation, of our community. The RDK has become a prime software development platform supported by more than 300 technology companies across OEMs, SoC vendors, software developers, system integrators, and service providers.

More than 25 service providers across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia are members of the RDK community and are in various stages of evaluation, testing, trials, or deployment. Notable service providers that are implementing the RDK include: Comcast and Cox in the United States; Shaw, Rogers, and Videotron in Canada; Liberty Global, NOS, The Quickline Group, Vodafone (formerly Kabel Deutschland), and Tele Columbus in Europe; and Liberty Global in Latin America.  And, just last month, Japan’s J:Com announced its intention to go RDK.  On both the video and broadband front, operators are actively embracing the RDK open-source software solution to help power their next-gen devices.

RELATED: IBC 2017: J:COM Taps Ericsson for New Multiscreen Service

MCN: Where do you expect the next wave of growth to come from?

SH: While RDK-V (video) continues to be a key growth driver, we anticipate that the impact of RDK-B (broadband) will likely be more significant over time. As service providers look to provide a range of new services for connected-homes, the need for common underlying software in broadband gateways is growing more acute. RDK-B provides this common method to manage various broadband functions, such as home-networking interfaces (e.g. WiFi and MoCA), device management, diagnostics, and smart home/IoT interfaces (e.g. Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee). Over the past year, we’ve seen greater interest from service providers, and wider adoption of RDK-B by leading chipset manufacturers and OEMs.

MCN: What are some of the latest advancements or enhancements that have been made to RDK?

SH: RDK-V has moved to embrace the WPE [Webkit Pure Embedded] browser, a high performance, resource efficient implementation of WebKit specifically targeted for embedded software devices such as IP set-top boxes.

Related to this, we have ports of the RDK running on open test platforms such as Raspberry Pi and x86 PC emulators. We use these devices as our primary test platforms when making our software releases. On the RDK-B side, we continue to work to drive greater standardization with some of the key silicon vendors. In addition, we have received positive feedback on some of our device management features such as WebPA & xconf which enables real time control, configuration and feedback from RDK-B based devices.

MCN: What are some features that are on the roadmap?

SH: Our roadmap is driven by the RDK community, so they set the course. For RDK-V, we are looking at opportunities to standardize common elements of the application framework enabling common APIs and easier portability of premium apps across RDK implementations.  For RDK-B, more and more service providers see the RDK as the foundation for a range of new IoT services, so you can expect to see more on that front. Plus, you can expect to see new RDK “software profiles” for devices in the connected home from cameras to Wi-Fi extenders and more. 

MCN: We sometimes think of RDK being for set-tops and broadband gateways, but are there other devices that will fit into the RDK ecosystem, like smart home hubs and other IoT-style devices?

SH: Any device in the connected home today relies on an OEM with chipsets, and these OEM/chipset solutions have a software layer. Right now, much of this software is proprietary and widely divergent, making it a challenge for service providers to deliver unified experiences or gather common key data needed to serve their subscribers. RDK-B offers the ability to help address these underlying issues, while still giving companies the flexibility to innovate on their customer-facing software. So, there are certainly plenty of new kinds of devices that could benefit from the RDK.

MCN: As you try to gain more ground in the market, what is your biggest challenge to overcome with respect to service providers? That they’ve already picked a horse to ride for their next-gen platforms?

SH: If there is one thing that is universal, it’s that service providers tend to have very particular points of view when it comes to their next-gen platforms. Our role at RDK Management LLC is to be an educational resource for them, and to facilitate the sharing of best-practices among our community.  Fortunately, we now have the scale we need to be self-sustaining, and our software is available in open-source for service providers to adapt as they see fit.

We assume that the video and broadband landscape will be even more competitive in three to five years and that operators will require a modern software platform with access to real time data to run their products and services in order to be responsive to customer demands and competitive solutions. The RDK can provide this and act as a catalyst that enables real time data collection, the ability to implement agile software development, and the ability to utilize a Dev-Ops product development and operating methodology. It’s really powerful with the results you can achieve. The main misconception is that you have to transition to a Dev-Ops methodology day one, and that’s not true.

The beauty of the RDK is that the operator can utilize the RDK for what best fits their operating model. If they want to start fast, great. If they want to start slow, they can outsource the software management to a SI or OEM and transition to an agile software development and Dev-Ops product methodology on their own timeline. The key is that they will have real time data to help make this decision, and they are in control of the schedule.

MCN: Comcast, Liberty Global and Charter (via Time Warner Cable) have been heading up RDK for years. Has there been any interest from other companies to become a formal part of the co-venture?

SH: We are continually talking with service providers and technology companies about ways to become more involved with the RDK. We operate the RDK as an open source project, so we are open to suggestions by companies in the community, but most companies prefer to be involved through our technical working committees similar to other successful open source projects.

MCN: For operators that are outside that mix, what avenues are available to them to voice their needs or influence the direction of RDK?

SH: Like I previously mentioned, the RDK is an open-source community established to serve the needs of service providers and technology companies. Any service provider can contribute or receive code. They can join working committees, participate in RDK events, and propose code changes or roadmaps, and more.  Our mantra is “vote with your code,” which means all of community members, not just service providers, have the ability to influence the direction of the RDK.

Arris International said it has reached general availability for its second-generation of active modules for its flagship converged cable access platform (CCAP), the E6000, that puts operators on a path to support Remote PHY architectures.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

The Gen 2 modules consists of the Downstream Cable Access Module 2 (DCAM-2), the Upstream Cable Access Module 2 (UCAM-2), and the Router System Module 2 (RSM-2).

The approach enables MSOs to upgrade existing E6000 Integrated CCAP (I-CCAP) chassis to “unlock” Remote PHY capabilities, Arris said, noting that the Gen 2 modules allow operators to boost the number of service groups and related channels over time, without consuming more rack space. Arris is showing off the new wares at this week’s SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

"The E6000 Gen 2 modules realize the potential of next-generation services and make it easier for providers and customers to seamlessly transition to Gigabit broadband and IP video services,” Dan Whalen, president of Arris’s Network & Cloud, said in a statement. “This upgrade dramatically increases the capacity of our market-leading E6000 CER as consumer demand for streaming high-bandwidth content continues to grow.”

Comcast is among MSOs that are using the new modules.

"Comcast is leading the way in Gigabit services with our wide-scale deployment of DOCSIS 3.1. The Arris Gen 2 modules support our objective of efficiently expanding these popular services," Dr. Robert Howald, VP, network architecture at Comcast, said. "The flexibility to be upgradeable to Distributed Access Architecture makes for a compelling addition to the E6000 platform."

Signaling some early progress for an emerging HFC architecture, Cisco Systems said it has landed agreements with operators around the globe for its “Infinite Broadband” Remote PHY platform.

RELATED: Ramping Up for Remote PHY

Cisco said some early takers include South Korea’s D’Live as well as Blue Stream, a cable operator based in south Florida formerly known as Advanced Cable Communications that is pushing ahead with a 1-Gig broadband service deployment.

RELATED: Blue Stream Makes 1-Gig Waves

Cisco touted that deployment progress as Remote PHY becomes a priority for several MSOs. Rather than using a highly centralized architecture with massive chassis in headends and hubs, the new architecture places more electronics and network smarts toward the edge of the network, a move that can boost capacity on the HFC network while also reducing power and space requirements. It also puts cable operators on a path toward more agile network functions virtualization and software-defined networking systems.

Cisco’s version of the architecture removes the PHY circuit layer that is typically housed in a traditional Converged Cable Access Platform chassis and places that functionality into a Remote PHY Node or a smaller hub site, called an RPHY Shelf. Some vendors are also advocating architectures that placed the PHY and MAC at the edges.

RELATED: Nokia Touts Versatility With Virtualized Distributed Platform for Cable Operators

Cisco’s RPHY platform also features open, standardized software that was contributed to the CableLabs OpenRPD forum in 2015.

RELATED: CableLabs, Cisco Get Real About Virtualization

Along with the deployment update, Cisco also introduced the GS7000i Smartnode, a product that is based on its GS7000 Optical Node that adds in telemetry and proactive control automation capabilities.

Here’s a snapshot of what else will be making news and will be on show at this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

-Hitron Technologies (Booth #395) said it will team up with Cisco Systems on a Full Duplex DOCSIS demo that will show how DOCSIS 3.0 modems (including Hitron’s “Coda” family of products) can operate on the same network as FDX-capable DOCSIS 3.1 modems. That demo will work in tandem with some new D3.1 interference group capabilities that are required for FDX, which will support upstream and downstream traffic in the same block of spectrum and help cable operators bring multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds to their HFC networks. Cisco intends to demo seven modems based on Intel Puma silicon. Hitron noted that its CODA-45 models use a 5-85 MHz front end, and the CODA-47 models can be switched to support networks that support a high-split that enables a wider upstream block of 5-204 MHz.

-MaxLinear announced that its D3.1 chipsets will be used to help power Hitron’s FDX demo at the show, including its MxL277 and MxL278 Full-Spectrum Capture digital front-end receivers and its MxL236 upstream programmable gain amplifier. Those products are being used in tandem with Intel Corp.’s Puma 7 DOCSIS 3.1 SoC.

-ATX Networks (Booth #895) said it will highlight its range of devices for encoding, decoding, video insertion and transcoding. ATX noted that its DVIS and DigiVu line for insertion of local content has traditionally been used for on-premises local inserts into HFC-based multiple-dwelling u nits, but recently evolved them to also support inserts into RF-over-Glass, PON fiber deep, and several IPTV-based environments.  ATX, which acquired Pico Digital last year, also will show off a lineup of video encoders, including the PD1000 and PD100, DVB gateways, and a mini cable modem termination system (CMTS). Also on show will be the VersAtivePro, a  license-free transcoding platform.

-Teleste Intercept (Booth #177), a Teleste-Antronix joint venture announced in July, will show off the ICON9000, a remote PHY node that aims to help operators shift to a next-gen architecture that promises to drive more capacity and power-efficiency into the HFC network. Teleste Intercept said the ICON9000 has been designed to offer operators 1.2 GHz capacity with remote PHY capability and a transition path to distributed network architectures. The product, manufactured by Teleste and equipped with a built-in spectrum analyzer, meets North American cable industry requirements, the JV said.

 -Espial (Booth #959) said it’s focusing on showing products that can help operators deliver IP video services, and will demo its Elevate cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) video platform, which is now in use by about 40 operators around the world. Elevate supports a variety of video services and apps, including IPTV, support for Android TV, and an interface that ties it together. It’s supporting voice control on its platform through Amazon Alexa.

-Alpha Technologies (Booth #677) has launched the AlphaGateway BSC, a small cell broadband platform for HFC networks. Alpha views the new gateway, an addition to its lineup of outside gateways, as a way to bridge the mobile capacity that a cell operator needs and what a cable operator can provide. The AlphaGateway BSC connects to the HFC network through a power-passing tap on the strand. The four power outputs on the device provide 80-90VAC connections, totaling 300W. An internal DOCSIS 3.1 modem provides 1 Gbps backhaul for an external router, the company said.

-Broadspeak (Booth #1653) will show off its multiscreen video capabilities, led by demos of the nanoCDN multicast adaptive bitrate platform that works in tandem with broadband gateways, cable modems, WiFi routers, and set-tops. Use cases on show this week include “zero latency” for live video streaming and cloud DVR options for start-over, time-shifted and catch-up TV applications.

-ProLabs (Booth #1412) will show off its “unlimited” fiber connectivity products for MSOs that are facing pressure to accommodate node splits as well as emerging Remote PHY and fiber deep architectures. ProLabs said its High Density CWDM transceivers are tailored for node splitting, as it enables operators to pack more into a fiber by carrying multiple signals down an individual fiber connection. ProLabs is also set to relaunch its Passive WDM Multiplex (Mux) and Demultiplex (Demux) portfolio, including “slim” Head End Demultiplexers; its Compact and Field Multiplexers, and its High-Density Mux/Demux solutions.

-Viavi (Booth #1387 and #153), fresh off its acquisition of Trilithic in August, will show and demo a complementary mix of test and measurement products for operators from its newly combined portfolio. Notably, Viavi’s XPERTrak virtualized assurance system now integrates Trilithic’s plant leakage data for a converged, cloud-based, contractor-friendly test and measurement portfolio. Viavi has also made updates to its OneExpert CATV signal meter that streamlines testing, verification and troubleshooting, the company said. It will also show updated fiber-to-the-home solutions and its lineup of multifiber test tools, including the SmartClass Fiber MPOLx (MPO optical loss testing), FiberChek Sidewinder (MPO inspection), and the MPO Optical Switch Module (MPO OTDR certifying) for the T-BERD/ MTS-4000 platform.

-ATX Networks (Booth #895) will show a range of optical transport products aimed at helping MSOs boost capacity and efficiency of their HFC networks while supporting DOCSIS 3.1, a new platform that delivers multi-gigabit speeds on cable networks. ATX’s Chromadigm hybrid transmitter technology is aimed at long haul multi-wavelength transmission, hub collapses, fiber deep node deployments and RFoG/PON architectures, the company said. ATX Networks will also highlight the new ChromaFlex II, a chassis that integrates RF management into the modular optical platform that, it claims, can reduce rack space in the headend by up to 75%.

Hitron Technologies, a maker of cable modems and other types of consumer premises equipment and software, said Canada’s Westman Communications Group is the first operator to roll out the vendor’s new whole-home WiFi product set.

RELATED: Hitron Launches Video Campaign Focused on Cable Ops

Following a two-month trial, Westman, based in Manitoba, will deploy Hitron’s “Unleash Your WiFi” solution, which includes the vendor’s gateway and MoCA-to-WiFi extenders that work in concert with Hitron’s EasyInstall and MyHitron apps. EasyInstall helps technicians setup the whole-home platform, while MyHitron is designed to help users manage and troubleshoot their home WiFi networks.

Westman is also using OptiMy, a cloud-based machine learning and big data analytics system from Hitron, which is showing off its new wares at this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Westman joins a growing group of cable ops that have launched premium whole-home WiFi products.

RELATED: Blue Ridge Greenlights Eero for Whole-Home WiFi Offering

“Our customers demand reliable and fast Wi-Fi coverage in every corner of their homes. At Westman, the demarcation point is our customers’ fingertips. It’s our company’s mandate to deliver this experience in the most efficient, customer friendly and cost-effective manner,” Jeffrey DeSarno, Westman’s chief technology officer, said in a statement.

Denver – Though it’s a concept that’s a decade in the making, the time has come for Remote PHY.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Remote PHY, an emerging access network architecture that pushes key electronics toward the edge of the network, is rapidly becoming an important component of cable operator engineering strategies as they look to stay a step ahead of space, power and capacity requirements.

That much was clear here among a set of MSO executives who kicked off a half-day seminar at Cable-Tec Expo Monday that explored all facets of Remote PHY.

The operators, which focused on the “why” for Remote PHY, said multiple benefits are factoring into their desire to put Remote PHY into play.

While driving more fidelity and capacity into the network are among the advantages, the space and power savings appear to be rising to the top of that list.

“Facilities costs can be a killer,” Jon Pederson, chief technology officer at Midco, said.

Midco has centered its broadband strategy for HFC on DOCSIS 3.1, and is looking for Remote PHY to help the operator reach out to some rural areas that are not suitable for a traditional, more centralized cable modem termination systems or converged cable access platforms (CCAPs).

Pederson said D3.1 service is available to 75% of its network today, but noted that there are about 14 hub sites, representing about 9.5% of Midco’s subscriber base, that the operator is targeting for Remote PHY.

He said Midco has Remote PHY working in the lab today, and has equipment on order for field trials that are expected to get started later this year. Additionally, all of Midco’s new nodes are Remote PHY-capable, Pederson said.

Jorge Salinger, vice president of access architecture at Comcast Cable, agreed that the power and space savings that come with Remote PHY are main drivers, while the increased performance that comes with the architecture is “a nice to have, to some extent.”

Remote PHY, Salinger said, “is a fundamental component to our strategy,” noting that it fits in well with other, related initiatives such as Full Duplex DOCSIS, an annex to D3.1 that will support multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds. 

Though product development is well underway, deploying Remote PHY won’t be simple.

Salinger called Remote PHY “the most complicated technology we’ve deployed to date…The basic implementation itself is complex.”

He also stressed that Remote PHY products, which include new nodes that support the architecture, will need to work together, just as DOCSIS modems and network gear do today. Interoperability between vendors “will be a requirement” for Comcast, Salinger said.

He noted that lab work is ongoing today and that Comcast has been working with multiple vendors on Remote PHY projects since early 2016.

Like other cable operators, Liberty Global, which operates systems in parts of Europe and Latin America, also sees space and power at the top of the Remote PHY agenda as it is pressed to keep up with the ever-increasing customer demand for bandwidth.

“We’re challenged to grow within our means,” Phil Oakley, head of access architecture at  Liberty Global, said.

Oakley also outlined some potential use-case scenarios for Remote PHY that could fit into Liberty Global’s multi-region architecture.

In the U.K., Virgin Media has a major new-build initiative underway, which causes some challenges on the MSO’s existing hub sites. Remote PHY, Oakley said, will help to reduce power and space requirements in those situations.

Germany, where Liberty Global is employing analog DWDM, is also faced with some field-power issues. Liberty Global is also facing challenges as it reaches out to some low-density hub sites in other parts of Europe that might not fit well with legacy platforms and technologies.

DENVER -- Following a vote here at the show, SCTE•ISBE announced Tuesday that Bill Warga, vice president, technology for Liberty Global, has been elected as chairman of the organization’s board for the 2017-2018 term.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Warga is to be joined on the 2016-2017 SCTE•ISBE board’s executive committee by newly-elected vice chairman Tom Adams, executive vice president, field operations for Charter Communications, and two  returning officers: Christina Whitaker, senior vice president, Keystone, Region, Comcast (Treasurer), and Steve Williams, director, DOCSIS network operations, Charter (Secretary).

Warga most recently served as vice chairman of the SCTE•ISBE board.  He also is chair of the SCTE•ISBE Engineering Committee, which has responsibility for the Society’s standards and operational practices activities.

In his new role at the Society, Warga succeeds Tony Werner, president, technology and product for Comcast Cable, who last year was re-elected chairman of the SCTE•ISBE for the 2016-2017 term.

“We’re grateful to Tony Werner for providing the guidance and support that have helped SCTE•ISBE adapt to changes in the industry environment,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE, said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Bill Warga as we continue to build domestic and international partnerships that can deliver business value to our operator, technology partner and individual members.”

MCTV, the Ohio-based cable operator formerly known as Massillon Cable TV, said it has launched an IPTV service that is powered by Espial’s “Elevate” software-as-a-service platform.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

The companies said the platform will enable MCTV to manage services across its cable RF and fiber IP customers.

The new IPTV service will support traditional live TV and whole-home DVR capabilities as well as OTT apps and an advanced user interface that can be personalized, they said.  

The video deal comes soon after MCTV announced “Excellerate,” a fiber-to-the-premises deployment/initiative that will result in a GPON network that will overlay its existing hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) plant.

RELATED: MCTV Pushes Fiber-to-the-Premises Overlay With ‘Excellerate’ Initiative

"MCTV is a leading-edge provider of home entertainment services for consumers in our markets," Robert Gessner, president of MCTV, said in a statement. "We recognized an opportunity to embrace IPTV and introduce a new platform that will mimic our RF products and bring the latest IP technology to our customer base. Espial's Elevate cloud platform will allow us to improve our customer service and support operations by providing a single cloud-managed platform with a consistent, unified user experience across our RF and IPTV networks, as well as our managed and consumer-owned devices. Espial also allowed us to seize this opportunity quickly by delivering the IPTV solution in under 90 days."

Espial, which acquired Arris’s Whole Home Solution business last year, said it will show its cloud-based video platform at this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

No better place than this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, in Denver, for an ample jargon immersion. This quick descrambler aims to reveal the larger trends underneath a roiling sea of Impressively Nerdy Terms. Here goes.

Capacity: Densification and Latency

While this year’s Expo contains a smattering of tracts focused on non-engineers, the bulk of the tech-talk will tackle the eternal quest to ensure that the supply of bandwidth is at least a step ahead of demand, which continues to steamroll. If last month’s tech activities at IBC in Amsterdam are any indication, tune your ears for “densification,” as a way to solve for network latency.

“Densification” is in the jargon swirl as shorthand for sub-dividing the physical infrastructure for increased consumption, by taking fiber deeper into neighborhoods. It’s all about subdividing the traditional 500-home serving area into multiple, smaller segments -- via “node splits” -- so that fewer people (and their devices) are sharing the same bandwidth. Fewer users, more capacity for each.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Hey, You, With the Big Node

Know going in that what’s “split” in a “node split” isn’t the node itself (nor does it require a really big splitter), but the number of homes it services. The 500-home node, long a staple in capacity tech-talk, goes to 250 homes, or maybe even 10 pockets of 50 homes. That’s the work of “deep fiber,” or “fiber deep,” used interchangeably.

“Latency” keeps cropping up in capacity discussions because in the landscape of Gigabit services, it’s one of the things to “solve for” -- to reduce the amount of time it takes for a packet to get where it’s going, from wherever it starts out.

It used to be (and still is, really) that “rate and range” were the most important considerations in broadband connections. Think of the WiFi in your home -- it needs to be fast enough to feed all devices. It needs to work everywhere, even those hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. Like carpeting, wall-to-wall is the goal.

Now think of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Discovery, all emerging as heavy (heavy) bandwidth partakers in the “Gig” landscape, and all needing low latency networks for best results. (Notably, online shoot-em-up games always seem to crop up first, when asking what use cases really need low latency; when pressed for other, less teenager-y examples, online financial trading comes up.)

So, going forward, providing a solid quality-of-service (QoS) for Gigabit services will mean reduced latency. While it’s unlikely anyone will get latencies down to the ultimate (the speed of light), a ton of mostly under-the-radar work is underway to make our mobile and wired transmissions go faster.

My “hot ticket” pick on this topic at Expo, for what it’s worth, is Cisco Systems CTO John Chapman’s paper/presentation on the topic, titled Mobile Backhaul for DOCSIS, scheduled for Friday from 11 a.m.-noon (Rooms 109/111/113). The gist: When the small cells of mobile 5G networks start going in, next year or the year after, DOCSIS will already be there. Fiber may or may not. Best use the resources at hand.

Innovation and Stuff to See

Events like Cable-Tec Expo always aim to showcase a smorgasbord of “innovations,” and a handy, one-stop shop to see some will be in the “Incubator Alley” area, where the CableLabs UpRamp folks will be showcasing their last two “Fiterator” cohorts, comprised of eight startups.

“Fiterator” is a 12-week accelerator program that helps later-stage startups find “fits” within the industry. The roster includes DeviceBits, an artificial intelligence and machine learning platform for customer experience; Teltoo, software for delivering over-the-top video at scale; King & Union, on cybersecurity mitigation through collaboration; and Bansen Labs/Xogo, maker of an adapter aimed at helping the aging-in-place community and people with disabilities get along better with consumer electronics.

RELATED: Four Startups Picked for CableLabs-Backed UpRamp Program

There’s tons more than can fit here. Hope to see you in Denver, the city that loves the industry we used to call “cable"!

Australian government-backed National Broadband Network (nbn) said 3 million premises on its broadband access network have been activated, with another 3 million that are now ready to connect.

Nbn said about 1 million premises have been activated in the past six months, with 1.4 million premises connected to fiber-to-the-node and HFC networks activated in that past 18 months.

That’s significant, nbn said, because it took nearly five years for it to reach 1 million activated premises using mostly fiber-to-the-premises access network technology.

Nbn currently expects to activate a total of 4.5 million premises from June 2017 to June 2019.

Nbn has been working toward a goal to provide high speed wholesale access and connect 8 million homes and businesses by 2020 using a mix of access technologies, including HFC, fixed wireless, satellite, fiber-to-the-node, and fiber-to-the-premises. Arris is a key player for the HFC portion of nbn’s upgrade plan.

RELATED: nbn Lowers HFC Goals

“We’re regularly activating more than 40,000 premises every week, which means we’re pretty much activating a city the size of Canberra every single month. This huge increase naturally puts pressure on the customer service experience,” Peter Ryan, nbn’s chief networking engineering officer, said in a statement

Expect more insight on nbn’s progress this week at the SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

The ISBE International Attendee Breakfast, set for this Friday (Oct. 20) from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. MT (rooms 605/607) at the Colorado Convention Center, will feature a panel with Andrew Baxter, general manager, HFC engineering, nbn; Steve McCaffery, president, international sales, international business operations, Arris; and Chris Bastian, SVP, engineering/CTO, SCTE•ISBE.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

The discussion is expected to cover topics and technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things, 8K, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Nbn recently became a member of the SCTE•ISBE Corporate Alliance Partner Program, and joined the service provider ranks at CableLabs earlier this year.

WiFi is the foundation for the super-connected home. With escalating device counts, increased video streaming, and the rise of the Internet of Things, the need for a new approach to whole-home WiFi has never been clearer. But, not all whole-home WiFi solutions are created equal.

Retailers are aggressively marketing new kinds of whole-home WiFi solutions to consumers that circumvent service providers. At the same time, service providers have an array of whole-home WiFi choices from suppliers. In evaluating what to do, several key things should be considered.

Retail vs. Managed Solution
Improving in-home WiFi should not be a consumer’s problem to solve. Most consumers are not IT experts – nor should they be. In fact, survey research commissioned by AirTies across the U.S. and UK found that nearly 80% of consumers would prefer that all their WiFi equipment be supplied by their service providers – versus having to try to solve this issue on their own. There is a comparable history lesson from DVRs, which first gained popularity in retail, until operators seized on the opportunity themselves. WiFi remains the number one customer care call for many service providers. Service providers cannot afford to cede this new market opportunity to retail competitors.

Multiple Access Points: Tree vs. Mesh Topology
There is a growing consensus that multiple WiFi access points are required to provide consistent, quality coverage throughout the home. One approach is a “tree” topology whereby WiFi is extended from the core gateway using repeaters/extenders that can only make a single path to the gateway node without any alternative paths for in home data flow between devices. Another is to use a “mesh” topology whereby every extender connects with each other simultaneously to manage data flow dynamically.

New advances in repeater technology and adaptive cloud management software, coupled with a rise in devices that support 802.11v, can certainly make a multi-AP tree topology more effective that having a single WiFi router in the home. However, there are some key issues to consider.

Most homes have numerous legacy devices that lack 802.11v support, meaning the gateway can’t be relied upon to command a device to connect to a closer AP, thus increases latency and bandwidth consumption. For devices that can, the AP switch can cause an interruption in the signal flow as the transfer to the new AP occurs. Such disruptions can impact streaming video quality, especially live broadcasts, a “no-no” for many service providers. Most repeaters also cannot prioritize video over other in-home network traffic. In addition, simply forcing a device to connect to the closest AP isn’t always the best option based on network conditions, if that closest AP has more hops compared to a slightly further gateway.

Tree topologies rely heavily on the gateway for network intelligence, which presents its own challenges. Most gateways do not support WiFi’s Wireless Distribution System (WDS) technology. Implementing a repeater technology without supporting WDS requires a manipulation of users’ device MAC addresses when roaming between gateway and repeater nodes, which often creates problems such as a DHCP server assigning a new IP address, device applications getting disconnected, or connection drops. In addition, a single gateway can only measure the interference from where it’s located, thus it may not make the best WiFi channel selection for extenders in the home, which may be experiencing very different network conditions. Repeaters also do not obey the rules of regulators for radar detection, because they ignore radar signals detected by the repeater which is located in a different location compared to the gateway node.

Mesh systems, in contrast, rely on more sophisticated approach because every extender has the intelligence to participate in determining optimal use of aggregate resources.

The internet itself is based on a similar principle. Mesh technology avoids the inherent challenge with tree topology-based repeaters because it uses WDS protocol, which employs additional MAC address fields to carry the original MAC address of the client devices when they roam between the gateway and extenders, enabling fast and seamless roaming. Mesh systems also fully comply with DFS rules as the radar channels are vacated even when only one extender detects a radar signal.

When evaluating Mesh systems, ISPs must consider whether it can continuously calculate the best data route and dynamically adjust to changing conditions in real-time, based on the number of active devices, the traffic profile, and any QoS required. This intelligent routing should also enable client steering, which dynamically connects devices to the best available WiFi channel and frequency (2.4GHz or 5GHz), based on actual network conditions in the home to ensure optimal performance. The system should be able to leverage client steering to sequester slow performing devices so they don’t degrade the performance of other devices in the home, and should work with any legacy WiFi device, which account for most of all devices in use today -- not just those with 802.11v/k/r.

Other considerations
Selecting the right in-home hardware is not enough. Service providers should also consider whether their whole-home WiFi software is portable across original equipment manufacturers and chipset suppliers. They should also look for a cloud-based solution that can provide real-time monitoring, analytics, and remote control of in-home WiFi to assist field technicians, call center operators, and subscribers.  

Service providers now realize that they can either view WiFi as a problem, or as a significant new opportunity. Relying on outdated WiFi is no longer a viable option. Subscribers demand and deserve more. Fortunately, new innovations in whole-home WiFi will enable service providers to reap the benefits, including: competitive differentiation, the ability to upsell subscribers to higher broadband plans or generate new monthly subscription revenue, and to better serve all of their subscribers.

Metin Taskin is CTO and co-founder of AirTies.

[Image Source:  Best  Buy]

As home security and smart home services become a new cornerstone for cable operators, customer demands are causing vendors to rethink and expand how they support their MSO partners.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

For Universal Electronics, a company known for making remote controls, its aggressive push into the smart home sector has been followed with the recent launch of call center support services that are tailored for helping consumers find answers and troubleshoot their connected home devices.

Universal Electronics, which acquired smart home product specialist Ecolink Intelligent Technology in 2015 and counts Comcast as a key customer, said consumer demand in that sector has led to a 30% increase in home security call volume at its Technical Support Services (TSS) center over a period of about six months.

Universal Electronics, which will show its latest wares at this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, has been able to generate some serious scale from those businesses. The company, for example, buys chips in quantities of about 100 million per year using technology that works with both its remote controls as well as smart home devices, according to Lou Hughes, Universal Electronics’s chief operating officer.

In addition to teaming with Comcast on certain types of smart home products and sensors, such as door contacts and motion sensors and keypads, Universal Electronics also supports the Samsung SmartThings ecosystem, works with several do-it-your-self smart home companies, and sells its own products under the Ecolink brand at retail outlets such as Amazon.

RELATED: UEI, Comcast Sign Warrants Agreement

“All of that work has required us to support [smart home] devices out in the marketplace,” he said, noting that some smart home products “aren’t trivial to install.”

To support its growing smart home businesses, Universal Electronics has been training its people to become experts in that area so they are knowledgeable about wireless networking, how to pair devices, and relay that information to consumers in plain English.

Universal Electronics also brings this support capability to its cable operator customers, typically providing a second tier of help in a subcontracted role. For instance, if a consumer contacted an MSO about a smart home-related technical issue that the rep couldn’t figure out, that customer might be relayed to a Universal Electronics representative to get it resolved.

As thousands converge on Denver for this week's SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, the industry continues to evolve to keep ahead of the changes that are affecting every facet of the cable business as well as technologies that are fueling it.

There’s ongoing consolidation of major and independent operators, increased competition from over-the-top video services and wireless-driven broadband services, and a critical need to train and develop a workforce that can keep pace with the ever-changing landscape.

Though change happening everywhere and a more diverse crowd than usual is expected to be on hand at this year’s show, execs there plan to put on an event that sticks to its knitting, with a focus on its hands-on approach to applied science along with a high-level view on how the industry’s technology and business initiatives are working hand-in-hand.

To get a fix on what’s new and coming up at this year’s show, Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with Mark Dzuban, SCTE•ISBE’s president and CEO, and Terry Maloney, the Society’s vice president of marketing and business development.

A key difference heading into this year’s show will be the return of Dzuban, who was forced to miss last year’s show in Philadelphia in order to undergo a heart procedure. “I’m just elated that the team fulfilled the obligation to make sure it was a great show,” Dzuban said. “But [the procedure] went well and I’m excited about being there this year.”

An edited transcript of the discussion with Dzuban and Maloney follows:

Multichannel News: What's your sense on the top two or three themes that are going to be the centerpiece of this year's show? 

Mark Dzuban: I think this show is a good example of the community pulling together. I don't know many industries of this size and this maturity that do it. If I look at our two co-chairs -- Jim Blackley (Charter Communications) and Terry Cordova (Altice USA) -- they are experiencing some of some of the dynamics of consolidation [occurring] in our industry’s evolution. And I think they've done a tremendous job of leveraging Expo as the go-to, hands-on, applied science [event]. 

[Among other focuses of this year’s show include] the wireless component, continually developing IP networking, cybersecurity – they are three big hitters. But you'll see a program on Energy 2020, you'll see a program on innovation and what's coming down the pike.

CableLabs has about 1,500 square feet. So it's really filled the space that was needed, from an applied science perspective, and I look to our partners at NCTA and CableLabs to fulfill the opportunity for the thinkers and the people who are really the deployment folks, the implementers, to get together, to say here's where the rubber meets the road, and to share thinking and get the most current knowledge. 

MCN: What's going to be new and different at this year's show? 

MD: One is if you look at our opening session as an example. We've been through our evolution, focused on business results and not just an event for folks to get together. If you look at the opening session, we've got the home court, which is Mike Fries [CEO, Liberty Global], that will provide a lot of innovative thinking on how you deploy and operate.

We've got also Tom Rutledge [chairman and CEO of Charter], who is following up his keynote around the vision of Charter and where we're going.  And then you'll look at where we go with Dave Watson, another CEO [of Comcast Cable], who will be at the luncheon panel. He's joining Bruce McClelland, another CEO [of Arris], on that panel. 

We've evolving as key and instrumental to driving business results through collaboration and understanding of what the issues are and how SCTE, as a community solution provider.

I think that acknowledgement is improving. It's always been there to some extent, but I think from a C-suite [perspective] this is probably the most C-level folks we've had since I've been here.

MCN: How has, for example, consolidation and the sunsetting of the Cable Show/INTX affected how you assembled this year's program? Has that had an influence on how this year’s show has been put together? 

MD: There is some, but we're focused on the applied science and not getting distracted to recreate something that really isn't our focus. 

Terry Maloney: It provided us with an opportunity for collaboration with NCTA and CableLabs, even more so. They are co-sponsors of the Fall Technical Forum, which drives all of our workshops [and] a cornerstone of our show. 

They were instrumental in partnering with us in collaboration across the industry to drive those workshops and those papers to an increase of 32% of submissions and more workshops -- we're approaching 100 workshops at this year's Expo.

MCN: Given this complementary aspect, are you expecting a more diverse crowd this year than you've seen in prior years? 

MD: I think there will be to some extent. We certainly have the international side, which is continuing to grow, to about 15% of our attendance. They look at us as the center of gravity around not only the science, but how you operationalize some of the technology.

We’re having a special event, for the first time this year, about learning and development, which is the science around how you develop workforce skills for deploying and operating sophisticated technology.  Dr. Karl Kapp [director of the Institute for Interactive Technologies and professor of instructional technology at Bloomberg University in Pennsylvania] and Dr. Martha Soehren [senior vice president and chief talent development officer at Comcast] are going to represent that. [That invitation-only event is set for Wednesday, Oct. 18.]

I think you’ll also see some of the folks from the Pioneers attending our show (the Cable TV Pioneers banquet is to be held Tuesday, Oct. 17 at The Brown Palace in Denver), and that's related to technology to some extent, but there's some programmers and service and support folks involved there too. 

I think we will some more diversity, but it was made very clear to me by our partners to do what we do best, and that's the partnership with NCTA and CableLabs, and focus on the current science and applied science of legacy deployments, current deployments and forward-looking within three years. 

MCN: As you put things together, how has this affected your registration numbers heading toward the event? Are you ahead of schedule? What is your expectation for this year? 

TM: Right now we're trending very well compared to the last time we were in Denver [the 2014 event in the Mile High City drew about 9,100], so we're very optimistic.

Even though we start planning Expo a year in advance and start messaging and marketing it six months in advance, the industry doesn't respond with registrations until the week of. We have this huge hockey stick that happens to us, but we are trending year-over-year. And especially compared to the last time we were in Denver, we're trending very well.

As for our booth sales -- we had our best Expo ever in Philadelphia [in 2016] -- we've already matched the floor space sales for exhibitor space, and we’re still selling booth space.  

Metrological and ActiveVideo, a joint venture of Arris and Charter Communications, said they are working together on a platform that enables pay TV operators to integrate OTT fare on existing set-top boxes.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

The technology link-up, they said, will give service providers the ability to deploy OTT content and advanced interfaces to older set-tops that “have limited resources and lack full HTML5 support.”

Early on, two operators in the Caribbean and Latin America region plan to launch the integrated solution next year, they said. They didn’t identify those operators, but Liberty Puerto Rico is among ActiveVideo’s existing customers in that region. Metrological, meanwhile, has already teamed up with Liberty Global to help the operator bring Netflix to IP-capable set-top boxes. Comcast has a similar agreement with Metrological. 

RELATED: Liberty Puerto Rico Socializes The UI

The vendors said the coming joint solution will tie together ActiveVideo’s CloudTV product with the Metrological Application Platform. They plan to demo the joint offering at this week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo at the Metrological booth (#1638). 

“By leveraging the cloud to virtualize CPE functions, we enable operators to quickly deploy and easily manage new OTT services on the millions of STBs that already are in the field,” Joroen Ghijsen, Metrological’s CEO, said in a statement.

 “Working with Metrological gives operators a new way to unify the customer experience across their entire CPE footprint, by using cloud-based technology to bring the latest OTT content and applications to their subscribers,” added Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo.

Moving HFC networks a step closer to supporting multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds, CableLabs said Wednesday it has released the physical layer specifications for Full Duplex (FDX) DOCSIS.

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

FDX, an annex to DOCSIS 3.1, will put cable operators in position to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds – up to 10 Gbps -- by allowing both upstream and downstream traffic to run on the same swath of spectrum. By comparison, DOCSIS 3.1 was initially designed to support up to 10 Gbps down in the neighborhood of Gbps-plus upstream.

RELATED: Cisco Demos Full Duplex DOCSIS

The PHY layer specs arrive a little over a year after CableLabs started the specification writing process. CableLabs introduced the concept in February 2016.

RELATED: CableLabs: ‘Full Duplex’ Reaches Specification-Writing Phase

The release of the PHY layer specs signals that FDX has reached the “advanced maturity stage,” enabling vendors to push ahead with their product development, Belal Hamzeh, CableLabs’s vice president, wireless technologies, said.

Hamzeh said the MAC layer specs for FDX are in the working-group stages, but couldn’t say when they would be completed other than to expect that to occur “in the near future.”

He also stressed that FDX is 100% compatible with DOCSIS 3.1. Per the specs, the FDX band will reside between 108 MHz and 684 MHz (regardless of whether FDX channels occupy the whole band), so it’s possible for existing D3.1 modems to also use some spectrum set aside for D3.1. By comparison, D3.0 modems, which relies on channel bonding, can’t use D3.1 spectrum, which taps into blocks of tiny OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) subcarriers. However, first batch of DOCSIS 3.1 modems are hybrids in the sense that they can deliver traffic in spectrum set aside for D3.0 and D3.1.

Per the FDX DOCSIS frequency plan, the ceiling is 684 MHz and derived from starting with the lower band edge of a “mid-split” (which raises the legacy spectrum ceiling to 108 MHz), allowing for three OFDM channels at 192 MHz each.

Demos of FDX-facing technologies and products are expected to be on show at next week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

Read more: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Hamzeh added that CableLabs is already working on process to conduct interoperability testing for FDX.

Operators looking to deploy FDX DOCSIS will need to move to a node+0/fiber deep architecture, whereby there are no amplifiers between the node and the premises. Per the specs, a distributed architecture is also assumed due to the echo cancellation functionality that FDX requires. FDX-complaint nodes will be made to support simultaneous upstream and downstream communications over each FDX channel, enabled by cancelation techniques for self-interference and echo cancellation.

Enabling FDX DOCSIS will help cable operators deliver on HFC the kind of symmetrical speeds that are delivered by fiber-to-the-home architectures and, early on, will likely be used for commercial-grade services.

Some industry experts see FDX trials getting underway sometime next year and into 2019, with 2020 seen as the technology’s first significant deployment year. Much more on FDX product development, use cases, and deployment expectations will be covered in Multichannel News feature story to appear next week during Cable-Tec Expo.

For more color on how some top cable operators see FDX DOCSIS factoring into their plans, please see this Q&A (subscription required) with execs from Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Liberty Global, and Mediacom Communications.

The CableLabs FDX DOCSIS PHY layer specs lists contributors from a mix of service providers and vendors, including Adtran, Altera, Analog Devices, Arris, Broadcom, CableLabs, Capacicom, Casa Systems, Charter, Cisco Systems, Cohere, Comcast, Cox Communications, Emcore, Harmonic, Huawei, Intel, Maxim, MaxLinear, Nokia, Qualcomm, Rogers Communications, SCTE, SED Systems, Sony, STMicro, Teleste, TI, Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter), Vecima Systems, and Xilinx.

A half-day seminar on Remote PHY at next week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver will all facets of an emerging architecture for HFC networks that has steadily climbed atop the industry’s engineering agenda.  

Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

The seminar, set for Tuesday, Oct. 17 at the Colorado Convention Center (Room 401/402), is slated to get underway at 8 a.m. Below is the latest agenda (subject to change):

7:30-8:00 a.m.: Breakfast

8:00-8:15 a.m.: Welcome, Introductions and Agenda

-Chris Bastian, CTO, SCTE•ISBE

-Jorge Salinger, VP Access Architecture, Comcast

8:15-9:00 a.m.: Section 1: Why is Remote PHY useful to MSOs?

The session will cover the rationale and benefits of Remote PHY, which include reduced stress on headend space and power requirement and improved network performance and capacity. The session will also cover drivers for Remote PHY, including the growth in the number of service groups, and the concentration of headend equipment in fewer locations.

The session will also explore use-cases, such as service group segmentation, new-build deployments, how Remote PHY fits into brownfield scenarios, and discuss synergies with other initiatives such as Full Duplex DOCSIS.

Speakers and presenters:

-Jorge Salinger, Comcast

-Phil Oakley, head of access architecture, Liberty Global

-Jon Pederson, CTO, MidCo

-Jeff Baumgartner, technology editor, Multichannel News (moderator)

9:00-10:00 a.m.: What is Remote PHY?

Presenters and topics:

-John Chapman, fellow and CTO of Cisco Systems’s cable access business unit (fundamental architecture of Remote PHY and performance benefits). 

-Tom Cloonan, CTO, network solutions, Arris (Remote PHY core and device, and interoperability).

-Asaf Matatyaou, VP of solutions, Harmonic (virtualization of the core).

-David Eckard, CTO of fixed networks, Nokia (generations of Remote PHY Devices).

10:00-10:15 a.m.: Break

10:15–11:15 a.m.: Implementation of Remote PHY

-Comcast (presenter TBD): Single versus multi-core architecture; CMTS core, video core and OOB core; GCP principal core.

-Brian Kurtz, cable architect, Intel: Customizing network ops and management, and converging access technologies.

-Jan Ariesen, CTO, Technetix: Operations of Remote PHY

-Jon Schnoor, distinguished technologist, CableLabs: Remote PHY specifications, interops, testing and certification plan.

11:15 a.m. -Noon: Remote PHY Plans and Activities

-Q&A with all participating MSOs and vendors, covering vendor product plans, interoperability activities, trial approaches and service migration strategies, and deployment plans.

SCTE•ISBE said its “Corporate Alliance Partner” program has hit a milestone, as its ranks has risen to 30 members.

The organization introduced the CAP program in 2014 as part of an effort to bring new training tools and education programs to its partners and to broaden its membership base. Comcast, Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter Communications) and Suddenlink (now part of Altice USA) were CAP’s charter members.

RELATED: SCTE Launches ‘Corporate Alliance Program’

Benefits include discounts on individual employee memberships, downloads and regigrations for online courses, and seats at SCTE•ISBE Leadership Institute programs.

Other operator members of include Access Communications, Cablevisión, Charter, Cox Communications, GCI, Liberty Global, Midco, NBN, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications, Shentel, Unity Media, and VTR. Vendor members include Adtran, Alpha Technologies, Amphenol Broadband Solutions, Arris, ATX, Cisco Systems, CommScope, Communication Associates, Corning, Decisive Communications, Exfo, Kaon, Kentik, Technetix, VeEX, and Viavi.

“The continued growth of all categories of our Corporate Alliance Program underscores SCTE•ISBE’s critical role in driving continued success for our industry,” Matt Aden, vice president, sales and operations for SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “As the technology hubs for the entire industry, SCTE•ISBE and its CAP program are able to directly impact bottom lines by accelerating technology implementation that enables revenue-generating services.”

WideOpenWest announced that it has begun to deploy a new virtualized Distributed Access platform from Nokia as it looks to mine more capacity from its HFC network in certain scenarios.

WOW isn’t going for a wholesale move…at least not yet. Early on, WOW has identified some legacy brownfield markets (in Chicago and Cleveland, Ohio, according to Light Reading) where it will use Nokia’s Unified Cable Access platform (including the Gainspeed Controller and Gainspeed SC-2D Access Node and Gainspeed Video Engine) to help it pack on more capacity.

RELATED: Nokia Touts Versatility With Virtualized Distributed Platform for Cable Operators

“We have a couple of markets where we’re launching [Nokia] in locations where we are at exhaust on particular nodes and particular CMTSs [cable modem termination systems,” Cash Hagen, WOW’s chief operations officer, said. “The initial deployment allows us to go in and get immediate relief for those…Ultimately, the goal is to get to a point where this proves itself out and potentially could be [used] on a go-forward basis.”

WOW has been rolling out 1-Gig service on HFC using DOCSIS 3.1 and Arris E6000 CCAP chassis.

Hagen stressed that the work with Nokia isn’t a test or a trial, as WOW has had the company’s equipment (initially from Gainspeed, a startup acquired by Nokia last year) on its network for about two and a half years.

“It’s been through the paces…and we’re ready to go,” he said, adding that WOW plans to identify more brownfields to deploy Nokia’s solution next year, as well as some greenfield opportunities.

Though WOW’s DAA-focused work centers on fidelity and capacity gains as utilization of the DOCSIS network continues to rise and as the operator continues to split nodes and shrink down the size of individual service group, Hagen said a secondary benefit will be the relief it gives for power and space requirements at the headend.

Nokia’s new platform can run in Remote PHY or Remote MAC/PHY mode, as functionality has been reduced to a software element. Hagen said WOW is in the Remote MAC/PHY camp.

There’s been a debate roiling in cable engineering circles about the pros and cons of Remote PHY and Remote MAC/PHY, options being weighed as operators mull new Distributed Access Architectures (DAA) that aim to boost capacity while also reducing their power and space requirements in the headend or hub.

Nokia holds that the debate has been rendered moot following the debut of a new virtualized DAA platform that features a “universal” cable access node that can be configured to run as a Remote PHY (RPD) device or Remote MAC/PHY (RMD) device.

In addition to reducing space and power requirements, cable operators are also looking for DAA to improve the fidelity of the outside plant and to help them drive more capacity for DOCSIS 3.1 and set them up for Full Duplex DOCSIS, an annex for D3.1 that will support multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds and require a node+0/deep fiber network in which there are no amplifiers between the node and the home.

The new node, Nokia claims, can turn the MAC portion on or off, because it’s been reduced to an independent software virtual network function that can be controlled remotely by the cable operator.  

“We believe we’ve ended the debate,” Jeff White, head of cable strategy at Nokia’s fixed networks group, proclaimed, holding that the dividing line between the two options is now “quite small” and that this is the sort of breakthrough that makes this part of the architecture decision a secondary one for MSOs.

He added: “It’s a piece of software” that can run in a server, in a traditional CCAP [converged cable access platform] chassis or in the node itself.

Nokia, whose work in this area stems from its 2016 acquisition of Gainspeed, plans to show off its new platform at next week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

RELATED: Nokia Nabs Gainspeed

The product set and features for Nokia’s virtual DAA platform include a virtualized CMTS (that includes the DOCSIS MAC), the aforementioned universal node, and an access controller that can support both Remote PHY and Remote MAC/PHY.

Nokia’s move will also put some completive heat in other vendors that have launched or are developing DAA products, a group that includes Arris, Cisco Systems, Casa Systems, Harmonic and Huawei.

The toggling capability represents a new approach for Nokia, as Gainspeed had previously been pushing a technology agenda that centered on Remote MAC/PHY. White said the “light bulb went off” about this more flexible approach as operators started to think more critically about their network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) strategies.

White said Nokia has found that operators are looking at both options, as one or the other might work better under circumstances, scenarios and conditions.

If space in the headend is major issue, he said, a Remote MAC/PHY approach might make more sense, and allow operators to reduce or eliminate hubs. Remote MAC/PHY might also be better suited for a strategy in which an MSO is looking to centralize and virtualize the bulk of the command and control mechanisms from a centralized system or data center.

Remote PHY, he added, might be a better option if power is limited in the cable operator’s outside plant, as a Remote MAC/PHY node is likely to require between 5% to 10% more power than a Remote PHY node, which requires less processing horsepower.

White said operators are looking at a “cap and grow” approach to DAA as well as some specific use cases, such as a “hotspot” on the network or in contested MDU environments. Still others might go at it hub-by-hub as they look to consolidate those.

Nokia hasn’t announced any deployments, but Comcast, Liberty Global and WideOpenWest were among the MSOs that praised Nokia’s acquisition of Gainspeed last year. At the time, WOW said it was “well down the path" with testing and "preparing for deployment" of Gainspeed's vCCAP.

“Nokia is revolutionizing the cable industry with an innovative new cable solution that gives operators the flexibility to implement a distributed access architecture without being handcuffed to a specific approach,” Cash Hagen, WOW’s chief operations officer, said the release issued Monday. “Virtualizing the DAA not only simplifies the network and drives cost savings, it also allows us to accelerate the delivery of new services that ultimately provide a better customer experience.”

SCTE•ISBE will use this month’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver to debut a 3D-powered platform aimed at boosting training efficiency and effectiveness in areas such as home-side service installation, as well as for  maintenance and troubleshooting for outside plant and at the headend.

The Society said this will be part of a demonstration of its CORTEX VirtuLearn suite of tools this month at SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo. Its CORTEX NetworkSim is an online training environment that uses 3D simulations to provide virtual hands-on training.

CORTEX NetworkSim, designed for the organization by opXL Learning Systems, aims to help cable techs become more proficient in areas such as installs of video, voice, data services, Wi-Fi and security equipment, as well as work tied to the outside plant and the headends.

SCTE•ISBE said it will also show NetworkSim and other elements of VirtuLearn: LightningMods (quick learning tools and eBooks); VirtuGame (an element that reinforces learning concepts, at the CORTEX Lounge (Booth #451) during show exhibit hall hours from Wednesday, Oct. 18 through Friday, Oct. 20.

“As learning technology has improved and the needs of the industry have changed, SCTE•ISBE has been committed to finding new ways to implement training that minimizes impact on field operations and optimizes ROI,” Matt Aden, vice president, sales operations for SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “By collaborating with opXL, we’ve created a unique platform that enables workforce team members to independently learn, gain real-time feedback, and retain their newfound knowledge.”

“The need to maximize training without impacting field engineers’ day-to-day operational availability historically has been an important consideration for cable system operators,” added Tom Gorman, president of opXL.  “CORTEX NetworkSim has been designed to enable cable technical workforce members to increase skills and knowledge anytime, anywhere, and to serve as an essential technical resource that can provide on-the-job guidance when needed.”

SCTE•ISBE, with input from the American Cable Association and the National Cable Television Cooperative, said it has created a special track for this year’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver that is tailored for execs and staff of small- and mid-sized cable operators.

The organizations said the “Experience” for that group includes a mix of seminar activities, VIP seating, workshops, and other events during the event, which runs from October 17-20 at the Colorado Convention Center.

Among specifics, the Experience will include an NCTC member gathering on October 17; an ACA State of the Industry/Washington Update on Oct. 19; and an Innovation Theater in the Exhibit Hall to discuss issues impacting small-/medium-sized market operators and members;

Additionally, there will be VIP seating for the Opening General Session the morning of October 18, preferred seating at the Annual Awards Luncheon later that day, and attendance at the ribbon-cutting ceremony opening the Exhibit Hall. Also on tap is a guided tour of the exhibit hall, conducted by NCTC and ACA guides, and a private demo of the new “3D Cable World NetworkSim” learning environment at the SCTE•ISBE CORTEX Expert Development System Lounge.

“In our discussions with ACA and NCTC, it was clear that there were ways in which we could enhance the Expo experience to support their members’ goals,” Terry Maloney, vice president, marketing for SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “The program that we’ve put together will help those members zero in on the most appropriate educational content, optimize their time on the show floor, and hear exclusive presentations that are geared toward their issues.” 

Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson and Arris CEO Bruce McClelland are on tap to speak at next month’s in SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

Watson and McClelland will discuss technology and business on Wednesday, Oct. 18, during the show’s annual awards luncheon. Jeff Baumgartner, technology editor at Multichannel News, will moderate the luncheon panel with the execs at the Mile High Ballroom at the Colorado Convention Center.

RELATED: Dave Watson to Become President and CEO of Comcast Cable

The luncheon follows an opening general session that will feature Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global, and Tom Rutledge, chairman and CEO of Charter Communications.

RELATED: Charter, Comcast, Cox Execs Added to Cable-Tec Expo Opener

“Nowhere is SCTE•ISBE’s role as the center of gravity for technology implementation and deployment more evident than at SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “The insights of Dave Watson and Bruce McClelland—together with those of our Opening General Session speakers and others—will provide our attendees with an enriched understanding of the opportunities that are ahead for our industry and the technologies that are the foundation for business strategies success.”

Cable-Tec Expo is set to run Oct. 17-Oct. 20.

Going deep on a key cable engineering topic, SCTE•ISBE has assembled a half-day seminar dedicated to remote PHY at next month’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver that will feature execs from both cable operators and suppliers.

The seminar, set to run Tuesday, Oct. 17 from 7:30 a.m. – Noon M.T. in Rooms 401/402 of the Colorado Convention Center, will focus on an emerging architecture for HFC networks that aims to boost network performance and capacity and reduce costs by pushing electronics closer to the edge.

RELATED: ‘Remote PHY’ Rising

The seminar, free to all with a Full Conference Pass for Cable-Tec Expo, will cover various aspects of Remote PHY, including rationale and use cases, and update on trials and deployments, and its role in Full Duplex DOCSIS, an annex to DOCSIS 3.1 that will deliver symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds.

RELATED: Cisco Demos Full Duplex DOCSIS

SCTE•ISBE said the seminar will be kicked off by a panel of MSOs, including Jorge Salinger, VP, access architecture of Comcast; John Pederson, CTO of Midco, and Phil Oakley, director, access platform engineering for Liberty Global. Leslie Ellis, president of Ellis Edits and Multichannel News contributor, will moderate.

The seminar will also include presentations from Tom Cloonan, CTO-network solutions, Arris; John Chapman, CTO, cable and fellow, Cisco Systems; Asaf Matatyaou, VP of solutions and product management, cable edge business, Harmonic; David Eckard, CTO, fixed networks, Nokia; Jan Arieson, CTO, Technetix; and Brian Kurtz, cable architect, Intel.

“MSOs are gearing up to take Remote PHY from field trials and small-scale rollouts this year to deployment at scale in 2018,” Chris Bastian, senior vice president, engineering, and CTO of SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “Our Fall Technical Forum seminar has been structured to provide the essential information that operator and technology supplier workforce members require to accelerate industry-wide availability of RPHY.”

SCTE•ISBE said execs from Charter Communications, Comcast and Cox Communications will join the opening general session at next month’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, and participate on a panel focused on operations.

Set for the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 18, the panel -- Operation Bottom Line: On a Mission to Drive Customer Satisfaction and ROI – will feature Debi Picciolo, senior vice president of operations, West Region for Charter; Ed Marchetti, senior vice president, technical operations, customer experience for Comcast; and Patricia Martin, vice president, service assurance for Cox. Leslie Ellis, president of Ellis Edits and Multichannel News contributor, will moderate.

That discussion will complement a general session that will also feature keynote discussion with Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global, and closing keynote remarks by Tom Rutledge, chairman and CEO of Charter Communications.

The session will also include show program committee co-chairs, Jim Blackley, executive vice president, engineering and information technology, Charter; and Terry Cordova, vice chairman, business development–network and technology services, Altice USA, and comments from SCTE•ISBE president and CEO Mark Dzuban.

SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo is set for Oct. 17-Oct. 20at the Colorado Convention Center.

“When it comes to fulfilling corporate strategies and driving business results, successful operational implementations are where the rubber meets the road,” Chris Bastian, senior vice president, engineering and CTO for SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “Debi Picciolo, Ed Marchetti and Patricia Martin are among the best-positioned to explain how seamless integration and deployment of technologies by a well-trained workforce can boost subscriber satisfaction and revenue.”

Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries will be the first of two general session keynote speakers when the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts™ (ISBE), host SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2017 on Oct. 18, in Denver.

Fries will discuss a wide range of topics during his keynote conversation, including how the convergence of wireline and wireless is helping to drive new business opportunities for pay-TV providers.

Fries joins another top cable executive – Charter Communications chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge – at the Cable-Tec Expo general session.  Rutledge will offer keynote remarks on the future of cable telecommunications and how network innovation will be a significant contributor to business results.

“With multiple industry organizations holding events during Expo Week, the eyes of the industry will be on SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2017,” said SCTE-ISBE CEO Mark Dzuban in a statement.  “Mike Fries’ insights and vision will underscore the impact of technology innovation, seamless product deployment and SCTE•ISBE in helping all sectors of our industry achieve success in a rapidly changing marketplace.”

Under Fries, Liberty Global as grown to provide broadband, entertainment, voice and mobile services to 25 million customers in more than 30 countries. A founding member of the management team that launched the company’s international expansion over 25 years ago, Fries was named president and CEO of Liberty Global in 2005. Fries also serves as the company ‘s vice chairman, alongside founder and chairman Dr. John Malone.

“Technology and constant innovation are the keys to keeping our customers happy in this ever changing digital world,” Fries said in a statement.  “SCTE•ISBE and its Cable-Tec Expo play vital roles in delivering the education, the standards leadership and the technology advances that will make this happen.”

SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo will be held Oct. 17-20 at the Colorado Convention Center. Expo Week begins Oct. 17 with the start of almost four-dozen technical workshops, as well as the Cable TV Pioneers Annual Banquet and Class of 2017 induction ceremonies. Registration and additional information on registration options are available at http://expo.scte.org.

Charter Communications chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge will be a keynoter at SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2017, set to take place in this fall in Denver.

Rutledge, who led Charter through its recent merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, will join the show’s opening general session on Wednesday, Oct. 18, and share his “views on the future of cable telecommunications and how network innovation will be a significant contributor to business results,” SCTE•ISBE said.

Charter also has a significant and growing presence in the Denver area. 

RELATED: Charter Expanding in Colorado

Rutledge is also chairman of NCTA–The Internet & Television Association and serves on the boards of CableLabs and C-SPAN.

RELATED: SCTE•ISBE Seeks Nomination for Cable-Tec Expo Awards

“Tom Rutledge’s vision and his ability to seize opportunities have changed the face of cable telecommunications within the past several years,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “We’re grateful to him for his commitment to share his expertise and his informed view of the industry at a general session that is shaping up as one of the best in the 34-year history of Cable-Tec Expo.”

“As the industry continues to evolve, success will be measured by our ability to deliver content and new services in ways that attract and retain customers,” added Rutledge. “SCTE•ISBE and the technology community at large will play a significant role in our ability to quickly and efficiently deploy the new products that will help our industry maintain its competitive edge.”

Cable-Tec Expo 2017 is set for Oct. 17-20.

SCTE•ISBE has put out a call for nominations for awards that will be presented at Cable-Tec Expo 2017, set for Oct. 17-20 in Denver.

RELATED: Bill Spies Named SCTE/ISBE ‘Member of the Year’

Awards for this year’s confab include Member of the Year, Excellence in Standards, Excellence in Learning and Development, International Engineering Professional, Innovators, and Rising Leader.

SCTE•ISBE has set a nomination deadline of Friday, July 21. Additional details about the awards program and how to submit nominations are available here.

Details and online forms for the organization’s Hall of Fame program are available here. SCTE•ISBE accepts nominations year-round for the Hall of Fame, but nominations must be also be submitted by July 21 for consideration at this year’s show in Denver.

The Cable TV Pioneers, which last year celebrated its 50th anniversary as a social organization honoring long-serving and accomplished executives and entrepreneurs in the industry, has named the 2017 class to be inducted at a banquet on Tuesday, Oct. 17, at The Brown Palace Hotel in Denver.

The banquet is timed to the opening of the SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo at the Colorado Convention Center (Oct. 17-20). 

The class consists of 20 individuals -- 14 men and six women -- selected from what the group said was a record number of nominees.

Read more: Fifty Years of Cable Camaraderie

They are, in alphabetical order, with their affiliated companies as announced by the Pioneers:  

Tom Adams, Charter Communications      

Matthew Blank, Showtime Networks Inc.           

Steve Brett, General Communication Inc.     

Jack Bryant, ComSonics    

Cynthia Carpenter, Charter Communications        

John Chapman, Cisco         

Anne Cowan, CTAM         

Chris Dunkeson, Comcast Corp.      

Jana Fay, C-SPAN 

Charlotte Field, Charter Communications   

Tony Finger, CommScope  

James George, American Cable Services   

Tim Gropp, Arris    

Larry Hanson, Ambit Project Management           

Dale Hopkins, GSN           

Debra Lee, BET     

Sean McGrail, NESN         

Ron McMillan, Time Warner Cable (retired)        

Jay Vaughan, DSV Services   

Richard White, consultant

In making the announcement, Cable TV Pioneers chair Susan Bitter Smith said in a statement: “Just as our industry grows broader and more robust, so do the number of nominees for the Cable Pioneers. It’s obvious from this year’s class that our membership consists of men and women who make significant contributions to the growth of our industry and our communities.”

Dinner chair Dave Fellows said, “Change growth, and celebrating this year’s induction in Denver, prior to the annual SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, is one of the many ways we are adapting and growing. We believe our 51st Banquet will have a significant attendance and provide sponsors with a wonderful opportunity to participate in one of the top events of the industry this year.”

Read more: Cable Pioneers: 50 Facts for 50 Years

Information on the upcoming banquet is at http://cabletvpioneers.com. (Interested sponsors can directly contact Lisza Gulyas at 303.527.2929 or lisza@vuconcepts.com.) Photos, articles and video of the 50th Anniversary celebrations are available at the site.

The Cable TV Pioneers was founded in 1966 during the NCTA convention in Miami, Fla. The original fledgling group of 21 entrepreneurs has grown to more than 700 men and women over the past 50 years. Photos, articles and video of the 50th Anniversary celebration and banquets as well as member rosters are available at the Pioneers site.

The Cable TV Pioneers will hold its 51st annual banquet in Denver on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017, just prior to the start of the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo.

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The banquet for the 2016 class was held in Boston just ahead of teh INTX, the annual industry tradeshow. The NCTA announced in September that the show was being wound down, meaning the event originally set for next April in Washington, D.C., won’t be happening.

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With no INTX, the cable industry’s annual technology and engineering confab will be stepping into the breach.

Nomination details, banquet location, sponsorship and early ticket details will be available in sometime in the first quarter of 2017 at: www.cabletvpioneers.org

”There were many industry organizations that generously offered their venues as a kick-off for our dinner,” Cable TV Pioneer chairwoman (and member of the 2002 Pioneers class) Susan Bitter Smith said in a statement. “We decided that for the 2017 banquet, SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo offered the stature, attendance and location that would serve the greatest number of our members.”

”As cable’s ‘hometown,’ Denver has been a hub of content, technology and operations for our industry, so it’s a great place to celebrate our roots and induct the new Class of 2017. Plans are already underway to select a memorable banquet venue, and we’re revving up our sponsorship packages,” added Pioneer dinner chair David Fellows, and a member of the 2008 class of Pioneers.

“SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo’s role as the industry’s pre-eminent nexus for learning, innovation and deal-making is a direct result of the vision and foresight of many of the Cable TV Pioneers,” said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE and a member of the 2010 class of Pioneers. “Kicking-off Expo Week with the Pioneers Banquet complements our mission of expanding the relevance of Expo to programmers, marketers, media executives and other industry professionals.”

Cable-Tec Expo is set to run Oct. 17-20 at the Colorado Convention Center. 

SCTE/ISBE has tapped Terry Cordova, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Altice USA, and Jim Blackley, EVP, engineering and information technology at Charter Communications, to co-chair the program committee for next year’s Cable-Tec Expo.

Get complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2016

Cable-Tec Expo 2017, set to run October 17-20 in Denver, will carry the theme, “The Big Deal,” and focus on new technology approaches that can power next-gen services, SCTE/ISBE said.

Cordova and Blackley will helm the creation of next year’s Expo program.

“Terry Cordova and Jim Blackley are at the epicenter of the trends that are shaping the future of our industry,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE, said in a statement. “Their visions of how to implement transformative customer experiences are pivotal both to the product roadmaps of technology partners and to the development of SCTE/ISBE training that has a material effect on operators’ bottom lines.”

“At Altice USA, we are focused on investing in innovation and technology and commend SCTE/ISBE’s commitment to applied science, which is accelerating the deployment of advanced technologies such as fiber to the home, Wi-Fi 3.0, and customer-focused platforms,” added Cordova.  “I look forward to working with Jim and the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2017 Program Committee to develop an agenda that aligns SCTE/ISBE’s educational strengths with operator needs.”

“The technologies being deployed today by Charter and other operators are greatly improving the video and communications experience our consumers enjoy,” said Blackley.  “By co-chairing the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2017 Program Committee, Terry and I will create a forum for the exchange of ideas that can more quickly and more efficiently bring new services to market and continue the rapid evolution of our industry.”