Attention owners of Cisco Systems routers and other networking devices: Check those products carefully.

A federal grand jury in New Jersey has returned an indictment against a Florida man accused of trafficking in over $1 billion in counterfeit Cisco networking equipment between 2014 and 2022.

According to the allegation, Onur Aksoy, also known as Ron Aksoy or Dave Durden, ran almost two dozen New Jersey and Florida-based companies as more than a dozen Amazon storefronts and almost a dozen eBay storefronts (collectively Pro Network Entities) hawking fraudulent and counterfeit Cisco devices imported from Hong Kong.

The devices were usually older, lower-model products and castoffs modified to appear genuinely new, enhanced and more expensive devices, some with pirated Cisco software and unauthorized components, including components circumventing license circumvention detection software.

Chinese counterfeiters used fake Cisco labels, stickers, boxes and documentation to make them appear factory-sealed.

The devices would fail, malfunction and cause “significant” damage to users‘ networks, in some cases thousands of dollars worth.

Cisco had yet to return a request for comment about whether it had any way to help people identify whether they had counterfeit equipment. ■

Synamedia has announced the hiring of veteran video software engineer Nick Thexton as chief technology officer.

Thexton is a familiar face to the London-based video technology vendor. Prior to his last stop, serving as group CTO for German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1, Thexton was the top technologist for Cisco’s Service Provider Video Software Solutions division. That unit was sold in 2018 to private equity firm Primera Fund, which ultimately branded the asset as Synamedia.

Related: Synamedia CEO Yves Padrines on Password Sharing, Targeted Linear Advertising and the ‘New Bundle’

With Thexton’s appointment, Alok Gera, who served as CTO of Synamedia for the last 18 months, will move to the position of senior VP and general manager, North America, focusing on solutions for cable, telco and media customers in that region.

Visit Next TV to read more stories like this one. 

“Having spent years in R&D shaping many of the technologies that make up Synamedia’s portfolio, I have a deep affinity for the offerings and organization,” Thexton said in a statement. “My immediate focus will be an injection of ideas to support operators as they transition to IP broadcasting and develop new business opportunities. New initiatives will help video service providers win more eyeballs and build revenues in the IP era.

Added Yves Padrines, Synamedia CEO: “There are few individuals in this industry with Nick’s technical prowess and pedigree. With his passion for innovation, Nick will instill new levels of creativity into our R&D activity to keep our customers one step ahead in a competitive sector. With Nick at the helm, our reputation for impactful industry-defining innovation will continue undimmed.”

In a strategy it has boldly labeled “The Internet for the Future,” Cisco Systems has rolled out a revamp of its end-to-end network infrastructure portfolio.

Boasting support from Comcast, AT&T, CenturyLink, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and The Walt Disney Co., Cisco said its new line of silicon, optics and software will power the 5G, 400G (Gigabits per second) and video streaming ambitions of operators and service providers into the next few decades.

"We are dedicated to transforming the industry to build a new internet for the 5G era," Cisco chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins said, trumpeting the initiative.

Cisco’s broad-ranging announcement is highlighted by Silicon One, a unified, programmable silicon architecture that can work anywhere in the network and be deployed in both fixed and modular form factors. Cisco called Silicon One the “foundation” of its routing portfolio going forward, with an eventual target speed of up to 25 Terabits per second. The first generation of the chip, the Q100, supports a network bandwidth speed of 10.8 Gbps, which is competitive with the 12 Terabytes per second speed of Broadcom’s Tomahawk3 chip.

Developed by Google, the silicon will free Cisco from being dependent on the product cycles of Broadcom and other vendors.

As Cisco noted, multiple types of silicon are used across a network, or even within a single device, driving up the time and cost of developing new features and testing them. A unified programmable approach will improve these economics, the company believes.

"Facebook has been a strong advocate for network disaggregation and open ecosystems, launching key industry initiatives such as the Open Compute Project and the Telecom Infrastructure Project to transform the networking industry," said Najam Ahmad, VP of network engineering at Facebook, supporting Cisco’s press announcement. "Cisco's new Silicon One architecture is aligned with this vision, and we believe this model offers network operators diverse and flexible options through a disaggregated approach.”

Cisco’s new 8000 series router line will be the first platform built on the back of the Silicon One Q100 processor. The 8000 series will support SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud), an open-source software for managing thousands of network devices released by Microsoft three years ago.

Cisco said Comcast is in ongoing trials with the 8000 series, with the first actual commercial deployment being Saudi Telecom Co. (STC).

As the cable industry moseys on down to New Orleans for this year’s Cable-Tec Expo event, darkness has warshed over its access technology business. Darker than a steer’s tookus on a moonless prairie night.

Sales were off 40% in the second quarter, according to research company Dell’Oro Group, as operators mull of range of innovative, transformative—yet highly disruptive—new network infrastructure tech—everything from Distributed Access Architecture to virtualization to a number of next-generation DOCSIS flavors. And this is not to mention all the capacity expansion they still haven’t grown into following the migration to DOCSIS 3.1.

Before getting on our plane, we caught up with Sean Welch, VP and GM of Cisco’s cable access business, to get some idea of how vendors are going to loosen the currently tight purse strings of operator CTOs at this year’s show.

MCN: What makes the transition to Distributed Access Archtecture so complex?

Sean Welch: The migration from CAA (centralized) to DAA (distributed) has certainly proven to be more complex when compared to prior upgrade cycles. The most recent shift from second-generation CMTS to CCAP required very minor changes to operational support systems and the back office elements to realize the benefits of the new technology.

With DAA, elements of the complete end-to-end system need to tested, verified and put into operation. Remember, we’re separating the physical RF interface from the physical chassis and relocating this “port” to a remote location in the outside plant – connected over a new layer of IP connectivity. It sounds relatively simple, but in practice many devices in the system need to be upgraded or completely changed out to support this new deployment model. This includes elements supporting legacy out-of-band control and HFC operations.

Finally, this new system needs to be provisioned, monitored and managed with a view to automating deployments, streamlining, troubleshooting and maximizing reliability of the service.

Beyond DAA, there is so much innovation happening in cable right now —virtualization, FDX, Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, etc.? Can you briefly explain how all these so called "10G" technologies fit together? What's the priority?

All of the technologies cited are relevant for the cable access market and support the broader initiative of modernizing infrastructure and delivering higher levels of capacity and performance to align with the industry’s “north star” of 10G. Cisco believes that all of these technologies will play a role in achieving that vision, but timing and sequencing is critical. Each of these technologies requires a substantial investment in order to translate innovation to product. The cable access market has historically benefited from broad economies of scale based on an aligned view around architectural and technology evolution. We remain confident that the industry view will consolidate as operators and vendors (system and silicon) work together to define requirements and timing of deployments.

What do you see as being the business outlook for the cable access biz for the next 18 months?

We remain bullish about the market opportunity over the next 18 months and beyond. Over 180 million broadband subscribers around the world depend on DOCSIS/HFC based infrastructure to deliver connectivity and experience based services that impact their daily lives. The demand for bandwidth remains strong and we’re starting to see the demand for high performance, low latency bandwidth emerge.

How will Cisco craft its marketing message at Cable-Tec Expo? What are the central themes?

Our central theme is that Cisco is uniquely positioned to help operators transform their cable access infrastructure with technology that is available now—“don’t wait.” Our broad portfolio of solutions touch every aspect required to modernize an end-to-end cable access system. The core of our value proposition starts with our Remote PHY technology (core, edge and provisioning). R-PHY is supported by the industry’s very best physical CCAP and routing technology, complemented by our network automation and management solutions. As customers move to cloud native, Cisco’s virtualized CCAP software running on our world-class data center servers is a powerful combination. Couple that with our expertise in data center networking and add app dynamics into the mix, and all the pieces for real transformation fall into place. A critical part of the story is security. As the industry moves from a central to distributed architecture, the threat surface of the network grows and must be protected—who better than Cisco, the leading security vendor for enterprise, to provide security and trust to your critical infrastructure? Finally, when it comes to tying this all together, Cisco’s customer experience services organization offers “reduce risk and speed time to revenue.”

And finally, how do you define "DOCSIS 4.0" and "10G"?

DOCSIS 4.0 is a set of technical specifications defining the evolution of the infrastructure. This includes Full-Duplex DOCSIS and Extended Spectrum DOCSIS and other elements of the system. 10G is the industry’s vision for the evolution of wireline broadband access, including HFC/DOCSIS, to deliver 10 Gigabit symmetrical services. That’s how we see it. 

Cisco has announced that Altice USA has deployed its Managed Services Accelerator (MSX) platform, a product aimed a helping enterprise customers install and manage SD-WAN services.

Cisco made this brief Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) customer announcement today while entering the Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans.

“We share Altice USA's focus on driving innovation and challenging the traditional way of doing things," said Kip Compton, senior VP of Cisco’s cloud platform and solutions group. "We also share its obsession with understanding and pleasing the customer. With Cisco MSX, Altice USA can enable faster innovation and increase customer satisfaction by speeding time-to-market for SD-WAN, and other managed and on-demand services.”

Cisco has confirmed major changes to its cable access supply business.

One is personnel related. John Holobinko, Cisco’s director of cable access strategy, quietly exited the company over the spring. According to the North Carolina native’s LinkedIn profile, he departed his Charlotte-based position at Cisco in April and is now working nearby as president and CEO of the Pineville Chamber of Commerce.

Separately, Cisco has confirmed that it has stopped investment of time and money into Full Duplex DOCSIS. (This news was first reported by Light Reading.)

“Cisco has internally communicated that we are suspending further investment in Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX) until the market timing, ecosystem development and size of the opportunity can be quantified,” Cisco said in a statement provided to MCN. “We remain confident that FDX will play a critical role in realizing 10G symmetrical cable services in the future and are committed to continuing the pioneering work with our customers to transition from centralized to distributed architectures. Cisco continues to lead innovation in the cable industry, exploring many ways to help cable operators modernize their access networks with our unparalleled end-to-end portfolio."

A Cisco rep said Holobinko left to "pursue other interests" and that his departure was unrelated to the company's shift in cable access strategy.

Holobinko was the top strategy executive for Cisco’s cable access division. When MCN last spoke to him during October's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta, he was in the process of leading his division’s transformation from a supplier of proprietary hardware, such as the CBR8 Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS), to becoming a vendor of software that virtualize cable access technologies. Cisco was also moving into Distributed Access Architecture and Full Duplex DOCSIS under Holobinko’s watch.

As for the suspension of FDX activities, the tech was first introduced in 2016 by cable industry research consortium CableLabs. Full Duplex DOCSIS promises to deliver symmetrical 10 Gbps speeds over hybrid fiber coaxial wiring.

Comcast has publicly stated that FDX is part of its future network development planning. However, the technology requires an “N+0” configuration, meaning fiber has to be pushed out much closer to the customer. Amid a broader “10G” marketing push that’s designed to match the wireless industry’s 5G hype, CableLabs is now hoisting myriad next-generation broadband technologies on the cable industry, including Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, which many believe is competing technology to FDX.

Adding DAA and virtualized Cable Converged Access Platform (CCAP) to an increasingly complex decision making mix, operators are pausing their orders and contemplating a lot of complexity in terms of designing their network of the future.

Research company Dell’Oro Group said cable access vendor revenue was down 38% in the first quarter to $275 million. According to Dell’Oro analyst Jeff Heynen, the slowdown came as “cable operators push off new capacity purchases while they determine how to move forward with distributed access architectures.”

Cisco is one of the three incumbent companies, along with CommScope’s recently acquired Arris, and Casa Systems, which have controlled the cable access technology business. However, boosted by recent deals with Comcast and Liberty Global for its CableOS virtual CCAP product, Harmonic is having a disruptive presence in the market.

Last week, CommScope announced the departure of Bruce McClelland, the former Arris CEO, who had been propped up as COO of the combined company, overseeing the integrated Arris brand. This came amid slowing overall business for Arris, punctuated by slow cable access sales.

For its part, Cisco reports its own earnings, for its fiscal fourth quarter, on Wednesday. 

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance said Cisco has now joined its ranks, along with Swarm Technologies and UTStarcom.

“The DSA is looking forward to working with Cisco Systems, Swarm Technologies and UTStarcom as we continue to work with governments and regulators around the world to enable more efficient spectrum utilization that will bring better connectivity and promote social and economic inclusion," said DSA chairman Paul Garnett.

Related: C-Band Alliance Gives FCC More Info on Band-Clearing Plan

As the name advertises, the group, whose members already include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Comcast, has been pushing for more "dynamic" access to "unused" spectrum over traditional market mechanisms like band clearing and auctions, but has been pushing back on the C-Band alliance proposal for clearing and private-market deals over auctions, deals that would lock up spectrum for licensed use rather than more flexible, unlicensed, uses.

"The private sale option raises significant concerns about fairness and efficiency, which the DSA does not believe can be cured by Commission oversight of a private sale," the DSA told the commission in comments on the C-Band proposal. "First, the DSA does not believe that a private sale can provide any assurance or confidence to C-band users, or the public that relies upon their services’ future availability, reliability, or costs. Second, a private sale will not protect the interests of all parties who are interested in acquiring C-band spectrum for flexible use, or the interests of the public in ensuring the sale is conducted in a manner that ensures a competitive market going forward. Third, a private sale would guarantee that U.S. taxpayers would not see any money from the auction of this public asset."

Cable operators and broadcasters are among those incumbents who would be hurt by interference in the band because they use that satellite spectrum for delivery of network programming (broadcast) and programming networks (cable) to stations and cable systems.

For all the hype surrounding 5G, the new mobile technology standard’s proliferation across the globe won’t unfurl lightening quick.

Cisco’s Mobile Visual Network Index (VNI) predicts that in three years, only about 3% of total mobile connections will occur over 5G networks. And connections, both to 5G device users and machine-to-machine systems, will account for only about 12% of global mobile data traffic.

Certainly, the amount of mobile traffic has steeply increased. Cisco predicts that by 2022, mobile usage will account for nearly 20% of global IP traffic, reaching 930 exabytes annually. That’s up nearly 113 times over mobile traffic generated in 2012.

Other predictions include increased usage of low-power, wide-area networks (LPWA), which supported only around 1.5% of mobile devices and M2M connections in 2017, but will grow to 14% by 2022.

By 2022, Cisco said that 4G networks will support about 54% of mobile connections worldwide.

Cisco, meanwhile, forecasts modest increases of mobile traffic to Wi-Fi: In 2017, 54% of mobile data traffic was offloaded; but by 2022, 59% of global mobile data traffic will be offloaded to Wi-Fi. 

LAS VEGAS--UK satellite TV company Sky has invested an undisclosed sum in Synamedia, the video software company repurchased by private equity firm Permira Funds last year and rebranded as Synamedia.

Both Sky, and its new corporate parent, Comcast, are longtime Synamedia customers, said the Syndamedia announcement, which was made at CES in Las Vegas.

Related: Cisco's Just Sold Video Services Unit Rebranded as ‘Synamedia’

“We’ve long collaborated with the team at Synamedia to help bring great content, products and entertainment to millions of customers across Europe and this investment will help deepen our innovative partnership,” said Andrew Griffith, Sky’s group chief operating officer, in a statement.

“At a time of accelerated evolution in the pay-TV industry, this investment is a fantastic endorsement of our product vision, R&D roadmap and service portfolio from Sky, Europe’s leading media and entertainment company,” added Yves Padrines, Synamedia CEO.

Synamedia also touts AT&T, Charter, Cox, Disney, Liberty Global, Rogers, Sky, Verizon and Vodafone as clients. 

Perhaps hoping to speak a robust global market for 5G technology into existence, Ericsson released a report this week predicting that 55% of all North American mobile subscriptions by 2024 will be for 5G network services.

A copy of Ericsson’s report can be found here.

That, of course, is a bold prediction, given that 5G services were only recently introduced in the U.S. and currently command a nil market share.

Ericsson also forecasts that 5G will be available to 40% of the global population by 2024, and that the technology will have 1.5 billion subscribers worldwide at that time.

Related: Cisco Study: 4K Video to Drive 153% Jump in Internet Traffic by 2022

Like Cisco, Ericsson is predicting that consumption of video—enhanced by the increased data requirements of 4K resolution—will drive global demand for 5G services.

Ericsson said that by 2024, video will account for 74% of mobile data traffic worldwide.

Both Ericsson and Cisco arrived at their conclusions based on sales of their own technology products. 

As Cisco’s annual global internet traffic reports have shown in recent years, video is the No. 1 driver of explosive usage growth.

And with the emergence of 4K-UltraHD, the trend is only accelerating.

According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, the amount of traffic crossing the global internet will increase by 153% to around 356 exabytes a month by 2022, with video accounting for 82% of traffic.

By 2022, Cisco estimates that nearly two-thirds (62%) of connected flat panel TVs will support 4K. By that time, the far denser data requirements of 4K-UltraHD resolution will account for 2% of global internet traffic.

Related: Video Continues to Eat the Internet: Cisco Study

Of course, traffic growth will also be driven by the proliferation of internet of things. Also by 2022, Cisco predicts that machine-to-machine modules will be located on 51% of global devices, with their connections accounting for 6% of global IP traffic.

Now matter what’s driving the growth, the spike in internet usage is startling. More traffic will cross the internet in 2022, Cisco predicts, than in the entire span of 1984-2016 combined. And in five years, 60% of the world’s population will be using the internet.

“The size and complexity of the internet continues to grow in ways that many could not have imagined. Since we first started the VNI Forecast in 2005, traffic has increased 56-fold, amassing a 36 percent CAGR with more people, devices and applications accessing IP networks,” said Jonathan Davidson, senior VP and general manager, Service Provider Business, Cisco. “Global service providers are focused on transforming their networks to better manage and route traffic, while delivering premium experiences. Our ongoing research helps us gain and share valuable insights into technology and architectural transitions our customers must make to succeed.”

Private equity firm Permira has closed its $1 billion re-purchase of Cisco’s Service Provider Video Software Solutions unit and has declared the rebranded “Synamedia” open for business.

Related: Cisco's Just Sold Video Services Unit Rebranded as ‘Synamedia’

Cisco announced the name change in September, then laid out its management team and vision a week later at the IBC Show in Amsterdam.

Besides declaring itself operational in today’s announcement, Synamedia also said that it has hired former Rovi and TiVo chief revenue officer, Dave Longaker, as senior VP and general manager, Americas.

The company boasts more than 590 patents, covering technologies including cloud digital video recording, video processing, security and client software. Synamedia’s team is spread across the U.S, UK, Israel, India, Belgium, China and Canada. Workers provide end-to-end video services to customers spanning advisory, delivery, implementation, training, system integration and customer support.

Synamedia also boasts a client roster of more than 200 pay-TV and media customers including AT&T, Astro, beIN, Bharti Airtel, Charter, China DTH, Comcast, Cox, Disney, Foxtel, Get, Liberty Global, Oi, OSN, Rogers, Sky, Shaw, Tata Sky, Verizon, Viasat and Vodafone.

“While we are in a golden age of TV, our customers face challenges including the rising cost of content, soaring piracy levels, and the impact of large OTT challengers on the market. As an independent entity focused on this sector, we will help our customers optimize their current infrastructure and capitalize on OTT and IP distribution to expand consumer choice and convenience, secure their income and generate new revenue streams,” said Yves Padrines, CEO of Synamedia.

Padrines formerly served as VP of global service provider EMEA for Cisco. The company is also led by Chairman Abe Peled, who was chief executive of NDS back in 2012, when Cisco acquired it for $5 billion and used it as the foundation to force it s Service Provider Software Solutions business.

ATLANTA -- Cisco used the opening of the SCTE’s Cable-Tec Expo show in Atlanta to announce two key operator initiatives, as well as a new network node upgradeable to Full Duplex DOCSIS.

First, the tech vendor announced, Sioux Falls, S.D. cable operator Midco has put Cisco’s Cloud Native Broadband (cnBR) CCAP solution into trials, delivering 1-gigabit services to Mobridge, S.D.

Secondly, Cisco said that Canada’s Cogeco has become the first operator to deploy its Infinite Broadband Unlocked licensing plan, which restructures DOCSIS software licensing across the operator’s entire footprint and not service groups.

Lastly, Cisco announced the GS7000 FDXi, a smart Remote PHY node billed as “FDX-ready.” The smart device is remotely programmable.

Moving CCAP to the cloud

John Holobinko, director of access networks strategy at Cisco, said the tech company’s programmers spent 24 months moving the “monolithic” DOCSIS 3.1 program found on traditional Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAP), reprogramming it as a series of many “micro-services” that can run in cloud-based services.

Traditionally, implementing new iterations of DOCSIS to, say, enable new features required an arduous process—it was very difficult to alter one line of a “giant piece of code” without “unintended consequences” somewhere else, Holobinko explained.

That limited the ability of operators to create flexible, evolving network technology environments.

However, using the compartmental abilities of the cnBR solution lets operators make changes to only one micro-services portion at a time, without impacting the rest of the network if something goes wrong.

“The velocity of [network upgrades] goes from once a year to once every two weeks,” Holobinko said.

Like competitors Arris and Casa Systems, Cisco’s introduction of virtualized services is essentially disrupting its own product line. In this case, Cisco is replacing its cBR-8 CCAP business with a cloud-based solution.

Of course, as Holobinko noted, Cisco is also in the server business.

“If you need additional capacity, instead of deploying more of these giant cBR-8s, everything is elastic and scales across the network,” he added.

Disrupting software licensing

As operators rethink their networks and move to Distributed Access Architectures delivering 1 gig services, the traditional means of accounting for software licensing fees has become untenable for some, Holobinko contended.

Traditionally, he explained, technology vendors like Cisco “lowered the price of the hardware, sold it close to cost, then gained our revenue from the software.”

Further, he said, traditional schemes such as basing fees based on the number of users served by a line card don’t work in a virtualized system … with no line cards.

Thus the introduction of Infinite Broadband Unlocked (IBU), which bases fees on users across the entire footprint, letting operators pay DOCSIS software licensing fees only for subscribers they have.

According to Michel Blais, VP of engineering and operations for Cogeco Connexion, the system allows Cogeco to “upgrade our current broadband network to enable the majority of Cogeco Connexion’s footprint to be 1 Gig ready.”

Make it FDX ready while you’re at it

Earlier this year, Comcast's VP of network architecture, Rob Howald, made news, indicating a desire to see a DAA node hit the market that had the ability to be easily upgraded to Full Duplex DOCSIS at a later time. Howald said he’d like to see such a product hit trials in the second half of 2018.

The logic seems simple enough—why upgrade nodes twice amid the transition to DAA?

For its part, Cisco seems on schedule, with the vendor declaring that its GS7000 FDXi will be available in 2019.

Holobinko said the nodes can be made FDX-capable with a simple modular addition—a “two-minute procedure,” he explained.

Further, with some operators complaining that up to 90% of their nodes are operating “sub-optimally,” the smart devices allow network operators to make adjustments at the head end and limit the amount of time they spend “sending a guy out with a screwdriver.”

After repurchasing Cisco’s Service Provider Video Software Solutions business for $1 billion in May, private equity firm Permira today announced a new name for the company, Synamedia, and said it has plans to introduce its executive team and roll out its strategy at the upcoming IBC show in Amsterdam.

Permira said its deal will close in the first half of Cisco’s 2019 fiscal year (we’re currently in the first quarter). According to the private equity firm, "Syna" means "together" in Greek, “reflecting Synamedia's ambition to bring together broadcast and OTT media services and enable clients to deliver exceptional customer experiences.”

The company will be led by Chairman Abe Peled, who was chief executive of NDS back in 2012, when Cisco acquired it for $5 billion and used it as the foundation to force it s Service Provider Software Solutions business. Yves Padrines, current VP of global service provider EMEA for Cisco, will serve as CEO.

Last month, Yvette Kanouff, the head of Cisco's Service Provider business, announced that she is leaving to start her "third career chapter.”

According to Permira, Synamedia will focus on empowering “telcos, media and pay-TV providers to optimize their current infrastructure and capitalize on OTT distribution to expand consumer choice and convenience, secure their revenue streams, and develop new offerings.”

At IBC, the company will be demoing enhancements to its VideoGuard anti-piracy service, a renewed investment into Evo middleware product, and a cloud DVR solution. Other demos will focus on Multicast Adaptive Big Rate streaming and broadcast-equivalent streaming latency.

"Synamedia enters the market at a time when the TV landscape is being redrawn,” Peled said in a statement. “Building on a 30-year heritage in the pay-TV industry, a market leadership position, and an unrivaled reputation for innovation, we will hit the ground running as a private, independent entity committed to help customers boost engagement and revenues by capitalizing on the myriad opportunities that IP distribution and cloud-based services bring.”

5G may be the hottest thing in wireless and mobile technology, but the new standard needs one thing more than any other: wires, and lots of them.

For the cable industry, 5G offers a huge opportunity for new fixed and mobile wireless services, using cable’s core asset: endless miles of wires in the form of hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) architecture and a growing mix of fiber-only pipes. Optical fiber cable are thin strands of glass that carry massive volumes of data with light signals and minimum loss, and coaxial cable is the traditional lines cable operators use to deliver video, voice and data services to most customers.

Need to Know:5G — Riding Wireless’s Next Wave

HFC “is an excellent vehicle for that because it provides power, right of way and backhaul for all of that small-cell radio equipment,” Craig Cowden, vice president of wireless technology at Charter Communications, said during a recent webinar on the topic hosted by CableLabs. “Whether we’re talking inside the home or outside the home, we believe cable is going to be the first truly scalable fixed mobile convergence platform.”

In other words, it may be a wireless network, but it’s going to need a lot of cells, and those cells need to be connected a wired network, including the kind that cable can provide.

Low Latency Needed

But in order to make that work across cable’s mix of fiber-only and HFC networks, operators need a low-latency solution. The cable industry is taking aim at that with a proposed technique called the “Bandwidth Report” (BWR), which aims to deliver super-low latencies by extending a technical bridge between cable’s high-speed DOCSIS network (used today for cable modem service) and 4G/LTE and “pipelining” the upstream packet schedulers of both sides.

Recent trials of BWR conducted by CableLabs and Cisco Systems showed that “DOCSIS is well positioned as a viable backhaul technology for LTE,” John Chapman, a fellow at Cisco and chief technology officer of the company’s Cable Access unit, proclaimed.

Cable operators are particularly interested in a 150 Megahertz-wide batch of spectrum known as Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), which resides in the historically underutilized range of 3.55 Gigahertz to 3.7 GHz.

“The 3.5-GHz band remains an important component of Charter’s wireless strategy,” the MSO told the FCC in a recent filing. Charter noted that it has been able to produce speeds of at least 25 Megabits per second downstream and 3 Mbps upstream in the so-called CBRS band tests being conducted in rural areas.

“Charter is certainly looking at that [CBRS] as a potential small cell technology that we would deploy both in the home and outdoors,” Cowden said on the CableLabs webinar.

Charter Communications is testing 5G-based technology in at least six markets with technology partners such as Samsung Electronics: Orlando, Fla.; Reno, Nev.; Clarksville, Tenn.; Columbus, Ohio; Bakersfield, Calif.; and Grand Rapids, Mich.

Comcast, meanwhile, has also asked the FCC for permission to conduct tests using the CBRS band in the Philadelphia area.

Other rival 5G tests underway:

• AT&T has been testing pre-standard 5G fixed wireless in Austin and Waco, Texas; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and South Bend, Ind., and intends to introduce mobile 5G-based service in 12 markets by late 2018.

• Verizon Communications plans to launch 5G-based residential broadband service in four markets in 2018, including Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif. Verizon estimates that the markets included in that initial launch will span some 30 million homes.

• T-Mobile is accelerating its 600 MHz rollout this year, setting the stage for initial launches in 2019 and a nationwide 5G network by 2020.

• Sprint plans to launch a mobile 5G network in the first half of 2019 leaning on its portfolio of 2.5 GHz spectrum.

• Starry is using millimeter wave spectrum to deliver an uncapped, symmetrical 200 Mbps service in parts of Boston, with beta offerings available in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Other markets on Starry’s launch list include New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami and Minneapolis.

Need to Know:5G — Riding Wireless’s Next Wave

Need to Know More?

Have a burning question about 5G — or maybe request for a different topic you’d like to see us tackle? Email us at needtoknow@nbmedia.com and we’ll put our top minds on it!

More from NewBay on 5G:

• 5G and Television [TV Technology]
• 5G and Retail [TWICE]
• 5G and Video Production [Creative Planet Network]
• 5G and Radio [Radio World]
• 5G and ProAV [AVNetwork.com]
• 5G as a Platform [Sound & Video Contractor]
• 5G and Residential Integration [Residential Systems]
• 5G and Pro Audio [Pro Sound News]
• 5G and Education [Tech & Learning]

Robert Weller, VP for spectrum policy at the National Association of Broadcasters, was one of 30 people tapped to advise the Obama Administration's top telecom advisory arm, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, on wireless spectrum management policy.

Broadcasters and the government are in the midst of a major spectrum management project as they prepare for a post-incentive auction repack of TV stations into smaller spectrum quarters, though how much smaller remains to be seen, and repurposing spectrum for wireless.

The goal of the committee is to get input on "strengthening the U.S. global leadership role in wireless technology services and innovation while supporting the country’s homeland security, national defense and other critical government missions."

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker made the appointments, which comprise representatives from wireless companies, computer companies, edge providers and others, including Google, Dish, AT&T, Cisco, Verizon, Facebook, T-Mobile and CTIA.

NTIA said Pritzker made the committee selections based on "their technical background and expertise, as well as a diversity and balance in points of view."

Taking aim at cable’s symmetrical, multi-gigabit future, Cisco Systems has introduced a silicon reference design for “Full Duplex” DOCSIS, a project underway at CableLabs that could continue to forestall the need for MSOs to squeeze more life out of their HFC networks and forestall the need to pull fiber all the way to the home. 

Cisco said it’s contributing the design on a royalty-free basis to the cable industry in order to accelerate the technology’s development and eventual deployment.

CableLabs introduced the concept of Full Duplex in February, declaring then that the project was in the feasibly/innovation phase and that the hope was that it would eventually become an enhancement/addition to the DOCSIS specs. DOCSIS 3.1 is currently designed to support downstream capacities of 10 Gbps down and at least 1 Gbps upstream. Full Duplex aims to get rid of those upstream/downstream spectrum splits and pave a path to symmetrical 10 Gbps capabilities.  

Full Duplex DOCSIS is being optimized for “passive” HFC networks as MSOs push fiber deeper and continue to eliminate the amplifiers present between the node and the home. Up for debate, is whether it makes more sense to take that route or just take fiber the rest of the way. DOCSIS gear vendors like the notion of Full Duplex in part because it helps to preserve their technologies and provide a path to future product upgrades.

Though Full Duplex is considered a longer-term project for the cable industry, which is just now starting to deploy D3.1, Nokia demoed a prototype of the concept, something it called “XG-CABLE,” in May at the INTX show in Boston.

CableLabs has said that Full Duplex will require some key tech around self-interference cancellation.

Cisco said more than 20 of its engineers developed a “validated” reference design for a “digital echo canceler” that can maximize HFC capacity,  and have defined a “multi-slice scalable echo canceler (EC)” for the emerging Full Duplex DOCSIS specs that can work with cable modem termination system (CMTS) architecture.

The technology is  also scalable for a return path from 200 MHz (1.7 Gbps) to 1.2 GHz (10 Gbps), said Cisco, which is demonstrating it at this week’s CableLabs Summer Conference in Keystone, Colo.

“By making this royalty-free design available to the industry, we can help our cable customers evolve to more rapidly deploy virtualized, fiber-deep, and all-IP infrastructures,” John Chapman, fellow and CTO of Cisco’s Cable Access Business, said in a statement.“We hope to accelerate the transformation of the cable industry to deliver multi-gigabit speeds and new high bandwidth services and products, and in the near future, customers can begin to enjoy the benefits of Full Duplex DOCSIS technology.”

Cisco’s contribution also earned some praise from the MSO community.

“DOCSIS 3.1 Full Duplex with up to 50 times more upstream capacity than today and echo cancellation technology, is further evidence that DOCSIS and the cable network itself has a long, useful life ahead,” said Jeff Finkelstein, executive director, Network Strategy, Cox Communications. “The work being done on Full Duplex by the MSO, vendor and CableLabs team shows that the cable network will continue to evolve and deliver high bandwidth services for many years, enabling our customers to enjoy the services most important to them to meet their future needs.”

“As we continue adding new DOCSIS 3.1-powered gigabit markets and customers across our footprint, we’re excited to see that the pace of innovation is still accelerating ahead,” added Dr. Robert Howald, vice president, Network Architectures, Comcast. “Full Duplex represents an important evolutionary step for DOCSIS 3.1, and we are actively participating with CableLabs and industry partners on this key initiative.”

Few companies in the cable and telecommunications industries have escaped the cyber attacks that continue to wreak havoc on just about every layer of the supply chain.

Varying degrees of security breaches at Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable and other cable providers have raised the red flag in the cybersecurity space and prompted a new mantra: Now is the time to raise the level of security.

“A fundamental evolution is taking place and the security implications are numerous,” Michela Menting, research director at consulting firm ABI Research, said. “Above all are the issues raised by the transition to all-[Internet protocol] networks, which are already highly exploited by threat actors and will be a boon for malicious cyber-agents — and all sectors are vulnerable.

“Investment in security services and corresponding hardware and software is not something they can ignore or put off , except at great cost to their services, reputation and client base,” she said.

Cybersecurity concerns have become so paramount that in its Charter Communications-Time Warner Cable merger order, the Federal Communications Commission required Charter to submit a plan to manage its increasing security risks during the transition.

And according to the Hewlett Packard Enterprise/Ponemon Institue “2015 Cost of Cyber Crime” study, hacking attacks cost U.S. firms, on average, some $15.4 million a year. Globally, U.K. insurance firm Lloyds estimates that cyber-attacks are costing businesses a staggering $400 billion a year.

There’s also the shaken confidence of clients and subscribers about the safety of their data. And not everyone is convinced the cable industry is prepared for any attacks.

“Cable networks are archaic in many respects, as they extend the life of existing systems, and frankly, the security posture of networks and the less time spent on security leads to a lot of holes,” Chris Simkins, CEO and co-founder of supply chain analysis and risk management firm Chain Security, said.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consultancy moving deeper into the cybersecurity space, believes cable companies are getting the message that shoring up their networks should be of the highest priority.

“There’s a lot going on with MSOs and we’re seeing the awareness lev el rising,” Mark Lobel, a principal in PwC’s U.S. advisory practice and Cybersecurity Technology, Information, Communications & Entertainment leader, said. “But cybersecurity is like a chess game with no kings, and trying to stay ahead of who’s across the board.”

And just who is across the board?

“There are many threat vectors,” Irfan Saif, a principal in Deloitte’s Cyber Risk Services practice, said. “There are service-disruption actors, those looking at the backbone to propagate malware and those who want to compromise customers. It’s a broad range of threat actors and companies must be cognizant of them all.”

That will require a holistic approach, Saif noted. “You must understand what behavior is considered normal and what indicates a threat of attack and what are the crown jewels that require higher-grade protection.”

Cisco Systems, another player in the cybersecurity space, concurred with Saif’s assessment.

“The best approach is a holistic look at security and where each layer builds on top of each other — firewalls, advanced malware protection, email and core technologies like conditional access, DRM and anti-piracy technology — a breadth of security,” Cisco senior product and solutions marketing manager Sam Rastogi said.

Another less glamorous threat, but just as dangerous, comes from the inside.

“Employees or vendors with access to information is a growing concern,” Rastogi sad. “Who’s accessing information and how, and is there abnormal activity? A risk-based program with alerts, authentication measures and more will give companies more insight.”

CableLabs, the cable industry’s research and development consortium, is accelerating its cybersecurity activity with two initiatives: It’s working with the Wi-Fi Alliance to ensure links to hotspot access points are secure, and it’s reaching more deeply into home managed access points.

“The level of engagement is very high and there are real questions being asked,” The mindset is changing,” CableLabs principal security architect Steve Goeringer said.

That’s a good thing, said Rick Michaels, CEO of CEA, a cable industry-focused investment bank. “It’s one thing that cable is carrying 60% of the Internet traffic, but now there are data centers and multiple services with different touch points in cable. Cybersecurity should be of paramount interest to the cable industry.”

Most cable companies are understandably reluctant to discuss their cyber security strategies. Comcast, which in March hired Noopur Davis as senior vice president of product security and privacy, offered a statement from Myrna Soto, senior vice president and global chief information security officer: “We’ve committed extensive resources with a focus on risk management and built resilient and smarter networks with many security layers that are monitored continuously. Using automation, tooling and analytics is key.”

Arris, another key equipment supplier to cable networks, said in a statement (in part): “Security remains a top priority at Arris, as it does for all manufacturers of Internet and network-connected devices” and that it “employs a variety of protective measures to help ensure the safe and reliable operation of our devices including, but not limited to, DOCSIS compliance, vulnerability scanning, and monitoring programs.” It works “actively with security organizations and our service provider customers to identify and quickly resolve any potential vulnerabilities to protect the subscribers who use our CPE devices.”

Breaches cut across both residential and business markets, added Sander Smith, president of Sericon Technology.

“It’s clear that very soon we’ll see consumers filling their home networks with IoT devices, and these devices will be rushed to market with very little thought given to security.”

Yet even with the increase in cyber attacks (PwC reported a 38% increase in 2015 vs. 2014), there is cautious optimism that with emerging cybersecurity innovations, an expanding community of cybersecurity companies and a heightened awareness among service providers, security is being strengthened.

“We’re seeing various levels of maturity in cable and telecom and a raising of awareness in those organizations,” PwC’s Lobel said. “But they can’t lose focus.”

The National Cable & Telecommuications Association is focusing its cybersecurity attention on two areas, senior vice president, science and technology and chief technology officer Bill Check said.

“We are leading the industry’s Cybersecurity Working Group and working with the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC), along with various cybersecurity-related working groups,” he said. “The challenge is to anticipate current and future threats and design systems of early detection and resistance, because cyber-criminals will always look for new exploits.”

Here’s another batch of news briefs from this week’s Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. Go here to check out our first roun of briefs. 

-Verizon said it has opened the door to thousands of developers to ThingSpace, its Internet of Things platform. Verizon said more than 4,000 developers are using ThingSpace since its launch in October 2015. Noting its global ambitions, Verizon said its IoT footprint now spans more than 120 countries, and expects to raise that total to nearly 200 by year-end. Verizon also said cloud APIs for ThingSpace will soon be available in beta form

-On the heels of a business and tech partnership forged last year, Ericsson and Cisco said they’ve been selected to transform Vodafone’s Portugal IP mobile backhaul platform. The system will feature Cisco Aggregation Services Router 9000 and Ericsson systems integration and global services.

-Expway, a wireless multicast company, introduced FastLane, a content delivery network solution optimized for mobile networks.FastLane, it said, optimizes the link from the network cell to devices using LTE Broadcast, Multicast Dynamic Switching and pre-emptive caching. At the show, Expway is running demos with Akamai and Huawei. Expway also announced that MediaTek will integrate the Expway middlware on its “helio” smartphone SoC family.

-Ovum issued a forecast that the number of m-commerce users worldwide will grow from 452.78 million in 2014, to 2.07 billion in 2019 amid the surge in adoption of person-to-person mobile transfer and mobile proximity payment technologies and the use of powerful smartphones with larger screens. The firm also expects the global transaction value of m-commerce to grow from $50.92 billion in 2014, to $693.36 billion in 2019.

-Chipmaker Marvell is showing a suite of silicon and software for the Internet of Things, wireless and smart home ecosystems, including demos running on Google Weave and Brillo and advancements in its Kinoma suite of products, modular virtual system on chips, and its Andromeda Box platform, which is made for Brillo.

A far-reaching technology and business relationship forged by Ericsson and Cisco Systems will focus on next-gen networks and wired/wireless convergence and virtualization, but it also spells trouble for several of their networking rivals.

“[W]e think this news bodes negatively for competitors and partners, including Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia, Juniper and Ciena,” Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold said in a research note issued Monday in the wake of the Ericsson-Cisco agreement.

Investors seem to agree, at least with respect to Juniper, whose shares were down 7.88% in mid-day trading Monday. Feeling less of the brunt was Ciena (down 1.85%), Alcatel-Lucent (down 0.86%), and Nokia (down 1.46%). Ericsson shares were up 1.35%, and Cisco’s were down 1.09%.

Leopold said the new relationship makes business sense for Ericsson-Cisco, in some of the same ways it does for the pending merger between Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia.

“Both companies (Cisco and Ericsson) bring intellectual property and R&D to the table,” Leopold said. “ Cisco's greatest strengths lie in software, switching and routing, along with its powerful enterprise channel, and Ericsson brings strength in wireless, services, and telco network management."

While he is optimistic about the partnership, which ties together similar challenges and objectives, Leopold warned that many such arrangements have not panned out. Juniper and Ericsson have been partnered up for several years, but have “suffered after Ericsson acquired Redback,” he pointed out.

On a call Monday to discuss the deal in more detail, top execs with Cisco and Ericsson highlighted the incremental growth opportunities it presents, and focused less on how the agreement will impact existing partnerships with other vendors.

Ericsson and Cisco have been in discussions about the deal for about 13 months, with a “significant acceleration” in those talks in the last six months, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said, noting that Ericsson’s service reach (65,000 people in that group) complements Cisco’s much smaller 11,000.  “It’s very much about looking out ahead of what’s in the markets and dramatic transformation of networks and IT.”

“This is a big bet for both of us,” added Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg.

Both Vestberg and Robbins will have management oversight of the partnership, which aims to create an additional $1 billion in incremental for each company by 2018.

Why not just merge the companies? Robbins said partnership was the best way to accelerate the goals that the companies can bring to the table with their respective products and technologies.

“We think that this brings the innovation from both sides and allows us to move now. It allows us to absolutely deliver solutions to our customer immediately”

Vestberg agreed that Ericsson had options to build, buy or partner to fulfill its longer-term missions, “and partner was the only way forward in order to make it efficient.”

“We believe this is the right move for us, right now,” Robbins added.

Vestberg said Ericsson’s existing vendor partnerships will remain intact, and views the Cisco deal as a growth opportunity that will also enable the company to broaden its portfolio.

Cisco Systems shed more light on the drivers behind its decision to acquire 1 Mainstream, believing that the deal the deal will enable it help service providers and new OTT partners more rapidly tie in support for a growing array of TV-connected devices.

Cisco’s multiscreen strategy initially focused around “companion devices” such as PCs, tablets and smartphones, but is hearing from both service provider customers and OTT and media players that they also want to launch, and launch rapidly, on devices that are connected to the primary screen, Conrad Clemson, the SVP and GM of Cisco’s Service Provider Video Software and Solutions Cloud Engineering Group, said.

“From our perspective, 1 Mainstream is far and away a market and a technology leader in this,”  he said, noting that the vendor will bring into the mix that are not currently supported by Cisco’s cloud-driven platform (by the way, Cisco confirmed that it has backed away from the “Videoscape” brand introduced in January 2011 at CES, going instead with an “Infinite” suite that includes support for managed networks and devices, and its cloud DVR and virtual video processing platforms). 

In addition to iOS and Android mobile devices, 1 Mainstream’s site lists out several TV-connected platforms it supports, including the Apple TV, Amazon  Fire TV, Android TV, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Roku, Chromecast  and Samsung smart TVs. Those on its roadmap include the Sony PlayStation 3 and PS4 and LG smart TVs.

Colin Dixon, analyst and co-founder of nScreenMedia, also believes that the deal makes sense for Cisco. While Cisco’s got the backend infrastructure to help partners nail up new services in the cloud and to manage them, they didn’t have “a simple way for anyone to launch a video service across multiple devices really quickly.”

And that’s where 1 Mainstream is coming in with a portal/template system that allows for customers to configure and roll out apps quickly on these platforms. The question moving forward, Dixon said, is how well this approach works with large-scale providers that want a more custom look, but acknowledged that 1 Mainstream’s work with Sky’s Now TV offering is in that tier 1 category.

Clemson said 1 Mainstream will also add to the mix expertise in OTT monetization, search, recommendations and data analytics, complementing  Cisco's work around content management and catalog display. The acquisition, he added, will also  help Cisco across the board with traditional service providers and enable it to “rapidly expand” to the white-hot OTT market.

He said all 22 employees of 1 Mainstream will join Cisco, including CEO Rajeev Raman, who will become director of cloud engineering on Clemson’s team and help to “drive our Infinite video roadmap forward.”

Raman, the former head of product at Roku, said 1 Mainstream has about 70 customers today and is on its way to breaking the 100 mark.

He said it made strategic sense to team up with  Cisco as the company looked to scale up faster and fulfill its needs to expand in areas such as marketing, channel partners and customer support.

He said OTT, like the name of his company, is rapidly becoming a mainstream initiative for broadcasters and operators. It’s now “part of their short-term, and medium-term and long-term business plans at the CEO levels of these companies,” he said.

Cisco Systems pulled down a strong fiscal fourth quarter that saw a return to growth in its service provider segment, though the company continued to be nagged by the video side of the house.

Cisco, which is selling its set-top and CPE business to Technicolor for $600 million, said service provider video revenues were $994 million, down 7% from the year-ago period, and represented about 8% of overall revenues in the period. However, SP Video revenues were up 9% on a sequential basis, beating Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold’s estimate of $868 million.

Leopold reiterated that Cisco’s exit from the set-top box business did not come as a total surprise as the sector becomes more commoditized. “Overall, we see the [Technicolor] transaction impacting the top line but providing some upside to the bottom line as the company exits this competitive, low-margin business,” he wrote.

Cisco’s overall service provider segment rose 2%.

Switching, Cisco’s biggest bread winner, brought in $3.71 billion (representing 29% of overall revenues), up 2% year-on-year, while wireless revenues rose 7%, to $715 million.

Overall Q4 revenues reached a record $12.84 billion, up 4%, alongside earnings of 59 cents per share. Analysts were expecting 56 cents on revenues of $12.65 billion.

“While this is only my third week officially in the CEO role, we've really hit the ground running since my appointment was announced on May 4,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said on the earnings call. “I believe that I'm stepping into this role at an incredible time for the company.”

Cisco shares were up $1.09 (3.89%) to $28.99 each in afternoon trading Thursday. 

In his first day as CEO of Cisco Systems, Chuck Robbins announced the appointments of two top execs -- Zorawar Biri Singh as senior vice president and chief technology officer, platforms and solutions; and Kevin Bandy as SVP and chief digital officer.

Robbins, named the successor of long-time  Cisco CEO John Chambers in May, made the announcement Monday in a blog post that touched on the company’s “next chapter” and how he expects the company to accelerate its “leadership in the digital age.”

“In the digital world, data – and the insights from that data – will be the most strategic asset,” Robbins wrote. “It will be distributed across every part of our customers’ organizations and ecosystems. The ability to secure, aggregate, automate, and draw insights from the data – with speed – will ultimately define success.”

Singh, who succeeds former CTO and chief strategy officer Padmasree Warrior, previously was a venture partner at Khosla Ventures and is late of Hewlett Packard, IBM and Nortel Networks.  He has also served as CEO of a number of startups, including Pivia, an app delivery company later acquired by F5 Networks, and Idapta, a B2B player, and RelevantKnowledgeMedia Matrix, an ad tech company that’s now part of comScore.

Bandy most recently was SVP, enterprise transformation at Salesforce.com, and, prior to that, was the principle of Rhea Springs LLC, a strategy consultancy firm, and was with Accenture and IBM. Bandy lives in Atlanta, and is relocating to San Jose.

Positioning itself for gigabit speeds, Midcontinent Communications is deploying the cBR-8, a new Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) from Cisco Systems that’s being made to support DOCSIS 3.1.

DOCSIS 3.1, a platform specified by CableLabs, is designed to support multi-gigabit speeds – up to 10 Gbps downstream and at least 1 Gbps in the upstream.

Cisco introduced the cBR-8 (pictured) in May at the INTX show in Chicago. As a multi-service CCAP, it will house the functions of the cable modem termination system and the edge QAM. Altice Group, which is acquiring Suddenlink Communications, has been testing the cBR-8, which had carried the “Battlestar” code-name.

Midcontinent has more than 300,000 customers and serves parts of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Last June, it doubled speeds for customers, and launched a new 200 Mbps (downstream) tier. The operator has set a goal to make gigabit speeds available to about 600,000 homes and 55,000 businesses by the end of 2017.

Midcontinent will use the CBR-8 for DOCSIS 3.0 initially, but is expected to use it for D3.1-based services as well. The initial wave of D3.1 modems will be hybrids that can utilize both DOCSIS  3.0 and 3.1-based spectrum.

“Cisco’s cBR-8 aligns with our strategy and vision to deliver Gigabit-speed Internet experiences that will change the quality of life and spur business innovation in the communities we serve,” Midcontinent VP of technology Jon Pederson said, in a statement. “With our customers’ bandwidth consumption doubling every 15 months, we need the right technology in place to support our network demands now and in the future. The unique DOCSIS and Remote PHY capabilities of the cBR-8 will help us meet our commitments for the Midcontinent Gigabit Initiative.”

“Advancing its cable access architecture with cBR-8’s advanced multi-Gigabit DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 technologies and converged video capabilities is a key step in their well-planned network evolution strategy,” added Brett Wingo, VP and GM of Cisco’s Service Provider Infrastructure Group. 

As Charter Communications’ proposed acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks move forward (see Cover Story), expect the angst among suppliers to build as they position themselves for the outcome.

Some could find themselves on the outside looking in, while others are firmly in the catbird’s seat. For still others, notably Arris, it presents a mixed bag.

The future is not set, of course, but here’s a snapshot of some potential winners and losers from the deal.

CABLE MODEMS/ROUTERS/GATEWAYS

Winners: SMC Networks, Cisco Systems, Netgear

On the residential end, SMC Networks and Cisco Systems are Charter’s primary suppliers of cable modems, sources have said. Netgear, meanwhile, has locked in a slot to supply Charter subs with WiFi routers, including a new high-octane model that uses 802.11ac outfitted with Charter-specific middleware.

A dark horse winner in this category is French supplier Sagemcom, said to have Charter’s gateway business for smaller business customers and to be gearing up for an aggressive residential play.

Losers: Arris, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive

These three vendors are the approved gateway suppliers for TWC’s residential broadband service, so their hold could loosen should Charter apply a modem-plus-router strategy while continuing to eschew the use of integrated wireless cable modem gateways.

SET-TOP BOXES

Winners: Cisco, Humax

They are the initial suppliers of the Worldbox, Charter’s new set-top box platform that will support cloud-based apps, including the MSO’s new Spectrum Guide, and a new downloadable security system that will enable the device to run on any Charter system.

Possible Losers: Humax, Samsung and Arris

Humax finds itself in both camps, because it has also been tapped to supply TWC with its first set-top client based on the Reference Design Kit, the software stack for Internet prototcol-capable devices being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and TWC. Charter has not divulged any specific plans for the RDK, at least not yet (expect something on this in next week’s issue).

Samsung is a known supplier to TWC and Bright House, but has not announced anything involving Charter’s Worldbox program. However, it does supply boxes to Cablevision Systems that utilize the same “open” architecture that Charter is using in its Worldbox platform.

Arris has been supplying TWC with a souped-up six-tuner “enhanced” DVR for the MSO’s “TWC Maxx” upgrade initiative. It’s not yet known how those rollouts will continue once Charter expands its Worldbox strategy.

MISCELLANEOUS VIDEO TECH

Winners: Cisco, Arris, ActiveVideo and Zodiac Interactive

They’re all involved in the video end of Charter’s Spectrum initiative, Cisco (downloadable security), Zodiac (set-top software stack), and ActiveVideo (user interface cloud TV platform), which is now co-owned by Arris and Charter.

Also sitting pretty is Michael Willner-led Penthera, which last week announced deals to supply its secure video-downloading platform to Charter and TWC, while reupping its agreement with Comcast.

Time Will Tell: Envivio

Envivio has bet a lot of chips on TWC. On last week’s first-quarter earnings call, the multiscreen video specialist said it received significant orders from Comcast and TWC, and that those two customers represented 57% of revenue in the period.

BILLING AND CUSTOMER CARE

Winner: CSG Systems

It’s coming off a new deal with Charter that’s good through the end of 2019, and includes a framework that, presciently, allows for the consolidation of additional customers that Charter might obtain through M&A activity. CSG also has existing deals with TWC and BHN.

In a decision that bears on the "patent troll" issue, the Supreme Court has ruled that a defendant’s good-faith belief that a patent is not valid is not a defense against induced infringement if that belief turns out to be wrong.

The case involved Cisco WiFi networks and Commil USA, which asserted that Cisco had infringed Commil's patent and induced others -- the folks who bought and used the equipment -- to infringe as well.

Cisco was found liable in lower courts for both direct infringement and induced infringement. Cisco defended the inducement charge by saying it had had a "good faith" belief that Commil's patent was invalid, but a district court found that inadmissible. A federal appeals court ruled that the trial court had erred in excluding that argument, but the Supreme Court decided that a defendant's belief is not sufficient.

The court made it clear that lower courts have "the authority and responsibility to ensure that frivolous cases — brought by companies using patents as a sword to go after defendants for money — are dissuaded." Those are the so-called patent trolls Congress is currently trying to crack down on through legislation, though the court said there had been no suggestion Commil's claim in this case was frivolous.

But the court said there were sanctions for attorneys and ways for those accused of inducing to establish the validity of patents and that a belief defense would undermine the statutory presumption of a patent's validity. The majority said that belief might be a defense against liability, but not against infringement.

The decision was 6 to 2, with Justice Stephen Breyer not participating -- the justices do not have to say why they recuse themselves -- and Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia dissenting from the finding that good faith belief is not a defense.

Scalia, who penned the dissent, said: "[I]t is impossible for anyone who believes that a patent cannot be infringed to induce actions that he knows will infringe it. A good-faith belief that a patent is invalid is therefore a defense to induced infringement of that patent."

Cablevision Systems’s recently launched voice-over-WiFi service, Freewheel, is unlikely to be the last such offering, as cable operators continue to add hotspots in their service territories and develop new ways to monetize WiFi technology.

To do that, they need to up their game in terms of the reliability, strength and availability of WiFi access.

Many operators are moving in that direction, but it’s going to take a couple of years for carrier-grade WiFi to be ubiquitously deployed across the country, according to several experts in the field.

A recent survey from Real Wireless for St. Louis-based billings and operations software vendor Amdocs found that carrier-grade WiFi will grow from 14% in 2014 to 85% by the end of 2016. Some 85% of operator respondents said they plan to invest in carrier-grade WiFi by that time.

MARKING MORE HOTSPOTS

The survey found 77% of cable operators will have WiFi hotspots in their service territories by 2016 and 72% of those hotspots will be carrier- grade by 2018, Amdocs chief technology officer, broadband, cable and satellite division Ken Roulier said.

Today’s cable-industry WiFi offerings are predominantly a “best-effort” product, rather than a carrier-grade service. Consumer expectations are currently tamped down because service can be spotty and intermittent.

Customer satisfaction is one of many reasons to upgrade an MSO’s WiFi network to carrier-grade, Caroline Gabriel, co-founder of Hampshire, England-based consultancy Rethink Technology Research, said.

“We believe that one to two years from now, we’ll see full quad plays and most operators will be offering some type of voice service,” she said. “Operators are adding a lot of hotspots very quickly. But the big challenge will be the quality of those hotspots.”

New lines of business and revenue streams that could result include mobile voice; data-offload services for spectrum- constrained mobile operators; and a viable and robust TV-everywhere product, Gabriel said.

Cablevision estimates about 60% of the traffic on its Optimum WiFi network is streaming video. So while having a voiceover- WiFi (VoWiFi) service is attractive glue that makes customers happier with their service provider, the carrier-grade WiFi also enables customers to become truly mobile with all their services, including video.

The world is clearly going wireless and it’s doing so at a breakneck speed. A recent study by Cisco Systems found mobile traffic is expected to grow 18-fold between 2011 and 2016. Cellular spectrum is limited and building macrocell sites is expensive, so small-cell solutions — such as WiFi — are becoming more attractive every day.

Cisco’s study predicts that VoWiFi traffic will surpass voice-over-LTE traffic by 2017. And the number of WiFi-capable tablets and PCs, at 1.9 billion, will outnumber cellular- capable tablets and PCs (542 million) by 2019.

Real Wireless, surveying for Amdocs, found that 66% of respondents are attracted to carrier-grade WiFi networks because of the opportunity to offer mobile voice and real TV-everywhere capabilities.

Mobile network operators (MNOs) see WiFi primarily as an offload product to current mobile offerings. The survey found that 72% of cable operators plan to deploy carrier-grade networks by 2018 while 66% of mobile network operators have similar plans. In other words, MNOs could offload their excess data to third-party WiFi networks.

This is already happening to a degree, the experts noted, but will increase as mobile usage continues to expand.

Cablevision spent $300 million in 2007 to build one of the most robust WiFi networks in the country. The company currently has about 1.1 million hotspots inside and outside the home. It’s naive to say upgrading operators’ networks to carrier grade will be inexpensive and easy, Gabriel said.

But there are plenty of companies, including Amdocs, Cisco and others, that have products and services that will trim those costs and speed up the time to market, she said.

It’s not the first or even the second time cable operators have upgraded their networks to provide new, profitable services, and this latest upgrade promises to be just as lucrative as offering data and voice services have proved to be, Roulier said.

WIRELESS WORLD

Those front- and back-end upgrades to carriergrade status will also be necessary to compete effectively in a wireless world, which is where the worldwide communications industry is headed, noted Kelly Davis-Felner, vice president of marketing for the Wi-Fi Alliance, a global non-profit organization formed in 1999 to create ubiquitous standards and specifications for wireless-fidelity networks.

“For MSOs, [WiFi] is a foray into mobility and allows them to offer voice and data connectivity they haven’t been able to offer in the past,” Davis-Felner said. “It’s easy to envision the day when you don’t have to plug your device into anything.”

Satellite TV provider Dish Network was the big, surprise winner of wireless spectrum in an auction that garnered surprisingly large, record-breaking sums for the increasingly vital airwaves of the digital economy. The “AWS-3” auction brought in nearly $45 billion, twice the expected total, and did at least four things.

First, it reinforced what we see all around us — the continuing boom in mobile Internet devices, apps, and services. Cisco estimates that North American mobile data traffic in 2014 was 31 times the traffic of 2009, just five years ago. Just a decade ago, pre-iPhone, there was hardly any mobile at all. Yet global mobile traffic in 2014 was 30 times the entire worldwide Internet of 2000. Over the next five years, Cisco expects mobile traffic to grow at an annual rate of 57%.

Second, the auction demonstrated intense competition in the wireless arena. The large sums showed active bidding by lots of parties. And Dish’s audacious move potentially brings a fifth major player into the U.S. wireless market.

Third, the auction proved the value of higher frequency spectrum. In debates over spectrum policy, many have asserted that only spectrum in the 600-800 megahertz range is truly valuable. It’s the “beachfront property,” they say. But the AWS-3 spectrum, situated at a much higher frequency, between 1,695 and 2,180 MHz, brought the highest prices of all time. 

Fourth, the surprise results of this auction may in a number of ways affect the more heralded “incentive auction” of broadcast TV spectrum. The incentive auction of the little-used 600 MHz TV spectrum was originally slated for 2015. Even before the AWS-3 auction, however, it was delayed because of complications and objections from broadcasters. The auction could be delayed further as high prices of the AWS-3 auction require time for the industry to recapitalize and as parties argue with the Federal Communications Commission over the bidding rules. 

For years, some parties have argued that in order to compete, the FCC should mold the rules to make it more difficult for large players, such as Verizon and AT&T, to acquire more spectrum — and thus make spectrum less expensive and easier to acquire for themselves. You might say this defeats the purpose of an “auction,” yet they successfully placed some of these scale-tilting rules in into the initial incentive auction order. Based on AT&T and Verizon’s winning bids of significant AWS-3 spectrum, they will probably now ask for even more favors in future auctions. 

An analysis of the AWS-3 results and the overall spectrum portfolios of mobile providers, however, suggests we should stick with true, unfettered auctions. 

In the just-concluded auction, 31 different entities won spectrum. AT&T won licenses in several expensive big city markets and thus spent the most — $18 billion. But Dish, which today operates satellites not mobile broadband networks, was the second largest bidder, at $13 billion. Dish won far more licenses, covering more of the U.S. population, than anyone. Verizon spent third most, at $10 billion, and T-Mobile was fourth at nearly $2 billion. Sprint did not participate in the AWS-3 auction but still owns more spectrum than any U.S. carrier.

Research by Cowen and Company shows Sprint is far and away the leader in spectrum portfolios among the five largest holders, followed by AT&T and Verizon, and then T-Mobile and Dish. On a per-subscriber basis, the larger two companies, AT&T and Verizon, actually have less spectrum than the smaller firms.

Some have said that the large firms blocked T-Mobile from success in the most recent auction. But the actual bids show that mostly wasn’t the case. For example, T-Mobile was outbid by smaller Dish 132 times but outbid by AT&T just 26 times, and Verizon 16 times.

Beyond these details, it’s important to understand the big picture. Why should special FCC rules block AT&T or Verizon customers from faster data and more services? Other firms may say, hey, we deserve a shot at the spectrum, too. But that’s the purpose of an auction — to encourage the best match of resources and capital. And even more competition is on the way. In addition to Dish’s possible entry, Google says it will launch its own wireless services, built on capacity leased from Sprint and T-Mobile. 

The U.S. has the most vibrant mobile Internet marketplace in the world. It’s unlikely the FCC would improve outcomes if it begins divvying up spectrum based on favorites.

Bret Swanson is president of the technology research firm Entropy Economics LLC, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a U.S. Chamber Foundation scholar.

Mobile video - now topping 50% of data traffic on wireless networks - will consume nearly three-quarters of wireless capacity before decade's end, according to Cisco's latest Visual Network Index. That represents a 13-fold increase from 2014 to 2019 in wireless video, with much of it moving to WiFi delivery, Cisco predicts.

The appetite for wireless video consumption has significant implications for cable's "TV Everywhere" initiatives as well as for broadcasters' nascent ATSC 3.0 plans, including their strategies in the upcoming incentive spectrum auctions.

Cisco's report was well-timed last week, coinciding with promises from Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam that pay TV will be a major driver for Verizon's 4G LTE networks. He cited Verizon's recent technology acquisitions that will accelerate its wireless pay TV introduction, but did not specify a timetable.

Cisco's VNI also presented a roadmap for greater voice-over-WiFi, which Jeff Baumgartner pinpointed in his assessment of the Cisco forecast, tying the VoWiFi outlook to Cablevision's recently announce plans for that service.

Collectively, Cisco's study plus ventures such as those planned by Cablevision, Verizon and others suggest a world of more competition -- in the marketplace on the airwaves.

Cisco's annual VNI "Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast" comes as a prelude to next month's World Mobile Congress, where new wireless applications dominate the dialogue, with video as a key ingredient. The study notes that mobile video traffic exceeded 50% of all mobile data for the first time in 2012. In 2014, it was 55% of total data use. By 2019, video will account for 72% of wireless traffic, Cisco says.

Most significantly, Cisco expects that, "More traffic will be offloaded from cellular networks [to WiFi] than remains on cellular networks by 2016."

The study finds that WiFi is already dominating cellular network usage in several key app categories (see chart) and that tablets are outpacing smartphones as the platform for mobile data traffic. For example, video streaming on WiFi to tablets accounts for nearly 21% of mobile data and about 20% of the data load to smartphones. In comparison, cellular networks carry barely 8% of data for video streams to smartphones and less than 2% to tablets.

Marking another step forward for a next-gen device for Comcast’s X1 platform, an iteration of the mysterious “XG2” box spec’d out by Comcast has passed through the FCC.

This one,  made by Samsung, comes a few months after a rendering of it from Cisco Systems made an appearance online.

First spotted by The Donohue Report, the Samsung device, referred to as the Xfinity XG2v2-S, looks about the same as the Cisco rendering. But within the same test on the Samsung product, Donohue also found an image of a 4 Gigabyte flash memory card from SanDisk (see image above), though there’s no explanation on how it will be used. You can poke around the report here. 

But considering how the memory card is being labeled ("Xfinity Instant Replay"), there’s a distinct possibility that it could be used as a way to buffer a limited amount of programming (15 to 30 minutes with some headroom, perhaps?), giving viewers a way to rewind and fast-forward through recently viewed TV programming. Or it might also be used as a vessel to transfer digital media to and from the device.

Comcast isn’t commenting on the capabilities of the XG2, but a source familiar with it said that the Cisco model that appeared is a headed gateway that won’t contain a local DVR, making it a logical candidate for Comcast’s new Cloud DVR.  

And the idea of using an SD card in a non-DVR cable box goes back a ways.

In 2010, Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB) showed a tru2way “set-back” box targeted at retail that also lacked a local DVR, but did come equipped with a slot to hold a standard SD High Capacity card for a limited amount of video storage. At the time, ADB referred to it as “DVR-Lite,” noting that it could be used for some limited trick-play functions on live TV.

As for other capabilities, I expect the XG2 to be capable of supporting native 4K video. Comcast offers a limited 4K streaming library to new Samsung Ultra HD sets, and has expressed that it will eventually enable 4K on a new class of boxes for the X1. I am trying to find out if it’s another hybrid QAM/IP device, or if this one will be IP-only. However, the innards of the XG2 show that it does contain a CableCARD. 

And while we’re talking about what’s on the X1 roadmap, a source did tell me that the Xi4, a new IP-only client box that also showed its face at the FCC recently, will indeed be 4K-capable.

So, the XG2 and Xi4 – a match made in next-gen video heaven? We’ll see. 

Taking a step toward deployment-readiness, a new IP-only video client device for Comcast’s X1 platform has passed through the Federal Communications Commission.  

First spotted by GigaOm, the device in question is the Xi4, an IP set-top made by Pegatron for Cisco.

The FCC filings are short on detail, but Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s senior vice president and general manager, video services, told Multichannel News at last year’s Cable Show in Los Angeles that the Xi4 is a smaller version of the Xi3, Comcast’s first IP-only video client product.

Comcast hasn’t made any further announcements about the Xi4, but confirmed last fall that it had begun to deploy the Xi3, initially supplied by Pace, with plans to make it “widely available across our footprint in Q1 or Q2 of next year [2015].”

Comcast is also working on a next-generation of the XG1, the HD-DVR/gateway that currently anchors the MSO’s X1 platform. A rendering of that product, labeled as the XG2, appeared online late last year. A person familiar with the project, which also includes Cisco’s involvement (though other vendors are also expected to be working on it), said the version that appeared online is a headed gateway that won’t come equipped with an internal DVR, making it an obvious candidate for Comcast’s new Cloud DVR.  It’s also possible that the XG2 will be made to work in tandem with the new Xi4 client over the home network.

Comcast has also acknowledged that it is working on new boxes for X1 that support HEVC and 4K streaming, but it’s not clear yet if HEVC will factor into the XG2 or Xi4. Comcast’s first 4K product, Xfinity in UHD, is a streaming app that is initially being offered on 2014 Samsung UHD TVs

Comcast and has been pursuing strategies that will put it in position to tap into smaller IP video devices that also eat up less power. Notably, Comcast and Cisco are among the founding members of the Linaro Digital Home Group, whose aim is to accelerate the use of ARM-based silicon in digital home applications. The low-power ARM architecture is already being used in tablets and smartphones, and now appears poised to show up in set-tops and other types of video devices.

Humax has been selected as a second source for the “Worldbox,” a next-gen class of hybrid QAM/IP video devices from Charter Communications that will support the MSO’s new downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) and its cloud-based interface and applications.

A Charter spokesperson confirmed the selection of Humax, but wouldn’t talk about the financial terms of the agreement or what percentage of Charter’s Worldbox business would be going to the South Korea-based supplier.

But the selection is a clear indicator that Charter intends to source boxes from a variety of suppliers using an “open” downloadable security architecture that is also in use at Cablevision Systems. Samsung Electronics and Humax are among the known vendors Cablevision has picked to supply “Future Services Portal” boxes that utilize its DCAS.

At the International CES earlier this month, Cisco Systems was revealed as the first supplier of the Worldbox, which will initially feature two models -- an HD-DVR and an non-DVR HD client device (the Cisco-made non-DVR model is pictured above). Cisco has been tapped as a “key” supplier of Worldboxes through 2015, providing a “substantial share” of them to Charter, while also supplying the platform’s downloadable conditional access system and digital rights management platform.

Charter hasn’t announced any other Worldbox suppliers. However, Arris hopes to be in the mix, as it will have “equal opportunity to bid on the Worldbox [business], as any other competitor,” Bob Stanzione, Arris’s chairman and CEO, said last week at an investor conference.

 Humax officials have yet to comment for this story, but the selection by Charter obviously gives its U.S. cable ambitions a boost.

Last April, Time Warner Cable announced that it had picked Humax to build the MSO's first device based on the Reference Design Kit (RDK), a preintegrated software stack for video and broadband devices that is being managed by Comcast, TWC, and Liberty Global.  What is not known is how that deal, which centers on an IP-based HD client that can support TWC’s next-gen UI, will carry forward if and when Comcast and TWC complete their proposed merger.

Humax has also been linked to the Xi3, an IP-only, RDK-based client device that Comcast is developing for its X1 platform (a Humax-made model passed through the FCC in 2012). Comcast, however, has been using Xi3s made by U.K.-based Pace for its initial rollout.

While Cisco Systems was identified at last week's CES gadgetfest as a “key” supplier of Charter Communications’ new "Worldbox” through 2015, the market “overreacted” to the news, according to Bob Stanzione, Arris’s chairman and CEO.

“The conclusion was jumped to that Cisco was going to take a big share of this Worldbox business,” Stanzione said Tuesday during an investor conference in New York put on by Needham & Company. Such an interpretation is "absolutely incorrect," he said. 

To be fair, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge stressed at last week’s Cisco presser in Las Vegas that the beauty of the Worldbox approach, which will use an “open” downloadable security platform from Cisco, is that it will allow the MSO to buy boxes from multiple suppliers that can be used in all systems that have implemented the new security system. He also brought up Arris by name as one of its STB suppliers, and mentioned that the new platform will also give Charter an opportunity to support devices sold at retail.

But concerns about Arris’s role with Worldbox came up during Stanzione’s talk, so he wanted to clear up that he expects Arris to have more than a fighting chance to be in the mix. Worldbox, he said, “levels that playing field” for set-tops. “Quite honestly, I don’t see this as changing the competitive dynamic in terms of our ability to sell CPE to Charter,” Stanzione said, noting that the company will have “equal opportunity to bid on the Worldbox, as any other competitor.”

And he said the technical specs around Worldbox aren’t “completely specified” yet, so there.

But it’s also understandable that last week’s announcement got the attention of Arris investors.

After all, it’s got some significant turf to protect. Arris, which became a fixture in the STB market after buying Motorola Home in April 2013 for $2.35 billion, held a leading 32% of the cable set-top market from a revenue standpoint in the third quarter of 2014, according to Infonetics Research.

Stanzione also addressed the role of ActiveVideo Networks, which will allow Charter to bring its new UI to all boxes – the new IP-capable Worldbox and millions of already-deployed set-tops that don’t speak IP.

Stanzione acknowledged that the approach will decrease the number of boxes Charter will need to buy, “but it doesn’t eliminate the need for new set-tops,” as older ones won't last forever and will still need to be replaced eventually.  Comcast, Arris’s biggest customer, has been conducting a small test with ActiveVideo in Chattanooga, Tenn., (for a VOD interface) but has not announced any plans to expand on it.

But Worldbox wasn’t the only topic. With earnings on the horizon, Arris is in a quiet period, but Stanzione reiterated that Arris is pushing ahead while four of its top five customers (AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Charter Communications) are all involved in mergers and acquisitions that will further consolidate the industry.

“I can only say business is good,” he said, but was hopeful that there will be an acceleration in spending in areas where Arris is involved when those deals get wrapped up.

He’s also bullish on the prospects of DOCSIS 3.1, noting that it will spark a “big replacement cycle” for CPE, as it did during cable’s move from DOCSIS 2.0 to DOCSIS 3.0, and will cause MSOs to update their network gear.

Stanzione also weighed in on the specter of broadband being reclassified under Title II, but said it was tough to predict its impact until it's known how heavy or light a hand will be applied. 

In the meantime, it does introduce a “subtle effect,” burdening Arris's customers to lawyer up and spend resources negotiating with regulators. Despite the rhetoric around Title II, Stanzione was confident that cable, telcos and satellite operators will still need to invest in their networks. 

Las Vegas – International CES – Charter Communications and Cisco Systems used this week’s gadget-fest to unveil the “Worldbox,” a hybrid IP/QAM video device that will use downloadable security and a cloud-based interface that will serve as central components of the MSO’s next-gen video platform.

The companies also announced that Cisco will serve as  a “key” supplier of the Worldbox through 2015 as well as the device’s downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) and digital rights management platform (Charter will use Cisco’s VideoGuard Server for the DCAS and its VideoGuard DRM for security on client devices).

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Cisco will supply a “substantial share” of Worldboxes while also continue to provide CableCARD boxes to Charter until it migrates current and acquired systems to the new DCAS solution. Execs here said the DCAS in use by Charter shares the same “open” architecture for the downloadable system now deployed by Cablevision Systems.

Here during an event for press and analysts, Charter and Cisco showed off the Worldbox and the cloud-based guide that will grace it. Charter has already developed two versions of the Worldbox – and HD client (pictured) above and an HD-DVR model that will come equipped with 1 terabyte of storage. Both models contain 16x4 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems, 1 Gigabyte of RAM and USB connections “to enable future applications.”

Charter expects to start deployments of the Worldbox and the new downloadable security system in select markets in “early 2015,” an MSO official said. Charter is currently testing the Spectrum Guide with tens of thousands of customers in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Looking ahead, Charter expects to deploy downloadable security to its current systems this year, and then will continue deployment to acquired systems that will come way of a deal that hinges on the pending Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger.

Charter will also look to deploy the new guide to all set-top boxes across its footprint, including older boxes that don’t speak IP, by leaning on a system from ActiveVideo Networks that processes the guide on the network and send the video content and the interface in an MPEG stream. Update: Zodiac Interactive is supplying the software stack powering the device. 

That network-based approach  “makes every box and every TV in the Charter footprint state-of-the-art,” Tom Rutledge, Charter’s president and CEO, said. It also means Charter won’t have to swap boxes to get its new UI deployed broadly. "Smart networks make dumb screens smart," he added. "We can take any kind of device and make it a sophisticated device." 

Rutledge also talked up the economics of the new platform, calling it a “breakthrough in terms of cost and capability.”

While Cisco is Charter’s initial source for the device, Charter is expected to add others into the mix. Charter said it is working with vendors toward manufacturing compatible boxes for the retail market as well.

The network-based processing system will also pave the way for Charter to render its UI on retail boxes. Here at the show, Charter showed a proof-of-concept of the Spectrum Guide running on a Roku box.

“We are proud to join Charter today to showcase the leading edge IP and cloud-based video solutions they are developing, and the Cisco products at their core, Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers said in a statement. “We are proud to join Charter today to showcase the leading edge IP Charter’s new video solution, featuring cloud-driven video experiences offered across many devices will be a huge win for Charter subscribers.”

Kabel Deutschland, the largest cable operator in Germany, has lined up a partnership with Cisco Systems whereby the Vodafone-owned MSO will tap the vendor to develop a next-gen, cloud-based video service.

The multiscreen platform will be market-ready during KD’s 2016/2017 fiscal year, with more details to be unveiled at the IFA conference in September.

Though the debut of KD’s service is a ways off, it will aim to offer converged access to broadcast TV, on-demand content, as well as catch-up and other time-shifted TV that will be fed by a new video hub and other Cisco-made video devices that will be tied together by a unified interface.

KD and Cisco did not provide more technical detail, but a source said it’s likely that that the new platform will utilize the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the preintegrated software stack for hybrid and IP-based devices that’s being managed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global. An emerging form of the RDK, commonly called RDK-B, will also work with cable broadband devices such as modems and voice/data gateways.

KD has already shown a strong interest in the RDK. Last February, the MSO announced that it had licensed the platform, noting that the time that the RDK is “one of the most positive and promising developments in terms of standardization across device platforms. The addition of other licensees, such as Active Video Networks, have helped to bring more cloud-facing components to the RDK.

Alticast said its engineering team developed “much of the critical software” for the X8, a Cisco Systems-made multi-room DVR for Canada’s Videotron that is capable of recording eight programs at the same time.

The X8 is a next-gen box for Videotron’s “illico” digital interactive TV offering serving more than 1.7 million Videotron subs.

According to data about the device, the X8’s 2 terabyte drive can record up to 230 hours of HD video and, from a multi-room standpoint, is compatible with two Cisco models (the 4642HD and 8642 HD PVR), and two Samsung models (6340 HD and Samsung 8340 HD PVR).

“Keeping our illico service at the cutting-edge of entertainment delivery is a strategic imperative, so we turned to Alticast to leverage their expertise in the industry to help us bring our new X8 set-top box to market quickly,” said Marie-Ginette Lepage, VP, marketing-content and broadcasting, for Videotron, in a statement. “Offering our subscribers the very best multi-screen TV experience with continued innovation is our goal, and our new X8 set-top is one of the keys to ensuring that we meet this goal.”

“This project not only demonstrates Videotron’s commitment to its subscribers, it demonstrates the capabilities of our engineers and their ability to solve operators’ most demanding software development needs,” added Alticast CTO John Carlucci.

Cisco Systems confirmed Wednesday that it has begun a reorganization that stems from the company’s announcement in mid-August that it would cut 6,000 more jobs, or about 8% of its global workforce.

Cisco labeled it as a “limited restructuring across several segments of our business,” but Business Insider reported that it’s large scale, affecting up to 25,000 employees, and enabling as shift from relatively small teams focused on specific products to two big teams – one focused on software, and the other on hardware. Top managers with the “general manager” title will go away, though execs under them, including those with vice president and senior vice president, “are not being particularly targeted,” BI added.

Cisco has yet to announce anything so specific.

“Technology disruption has never moved more quickly, requiring all companies to adapt and accelerate through change,” a Cisco spokesman said in a statement. “We are taking action now to build for the future of cloud, security, virtualization, analytics, data center, IoE [Internet of Everything] and collaboration. We will continue to invest in growth, innovation, and talent, while managing costs and improving efficiencies across our business. We are continuing to hire, especially in the areas that help our customers solve their biggest business problems.”

As for Cisco’s base of about 25,000 employees in its development organization, “many – but not all-- have new reporting lines as part of our overall effort to align our business to priority areas,” the official added.

Cisco also told BI that the company is also bringing sales and engineering teams closer together by implementing a DevOps and an Agile development model, which aims to speed product development and is also becoming a big focus for the cable industry.

It was not immediately clear how the reorg will affect Cisco’s service provider division. Earlier this year, former Cablevision Systems and SeaChange International exec Yvette Kanouff joined Cisco to head up its Service Provider Video Software and Solutions (SPVSS) organization.

According to his current bio, Joe Cozzolino now serves as senior vice president, general manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Video Infrastructure Group, tasked with heading up the strategy and development of Cisco’s video hardware portfolio, including cable modems, video gateways, set-tops and video infrastructure hardware such as encoders/decoders.

Update: Cisco provided more details on engineering leadership changes that were announced internally in May:

-Kelly Ahuja is senior VP and GM of Cisco's Service Provider segment;

-Yvette Kanouff heads up service provider software and services;

-Joe Cozzolino heads up service provider infrastructure and service provider mobility; and

-Venod Peris leads Cisco's routing and optical software group.

There was no talk of OFDM, or DOCSIS 3.1, or WiFi, or any of the hard-core tech fare that typically characterizes an SCTE Cable-Tec Expo general session, when Time Warner Cable chief technology officer Mike LaJoie sat down Wednesday with his friend and former colleague Yvette Kanouff, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Service Provider group.

Instead, it was a look into the life and driving philosophies of the outgoing CTO, who will retire from the MSO at the end of this year.

The camaraderie between the two, who first worked together at the Full Service Network effort in the ’90s, contributed to an alternately witty and wise discussion.

Highlights and key quips:

• LaJoie partipates on a 5:30 a.m. phone call with a few male friends, every day. The intent: To coach each other on how to be better people. “It’s something we’ve been doing for a long time. That clarity has been working on me.”

• His area of desired improvement: Kindness. “As hokey as that sounds, having a higher purpose is so important to me. I’m not as kind as I should be,” he said, to much audience chortling. “Some of you out there know that I can be a little gruff.”

• LaJoie doesn’t view his working life through the lens of “career progression,” but rather as a quest to “work on the bleeding edge of technology with leading-edge people.”

• Tip: Business alignment matters to a successful career. LaJoie, who once worked as a stockbroker, urged attendees to understand how finances work. “You have to take time to know how to read an income statement, what a balance sheet is, and establish how to contribute” to a company’s business goals.

• Also: Communicate well. “I can’t tell you how important it is to speak in language that other people understand.”

• And: Have fun. “If it isn’t fun, make it fun. If you can’t make it fun, go somewhere else.”

Cisco Systems has rolled out a new line card upgrade for its flagship UBR10012 cable modem termination system that shoots for downstream speeds of more than 1 Gigabit per second by enabling the bonding of up to 32 DOCSIS 3.0 channels.

At its full potential, a D3 modem that can bond 32 6MHz-wide channels can pump out bursts of about 1.2 Gbps in North American DOCSIS environments, and up to 1.6 Gbps  EuroDOCSIS networks that use 8MHz-wide channels.

Cisco is enabling the new bonding feat on its new 6 Gigabit Shared Port Adapter (6G SPA), billed as software upgrade of its 3G SPA card for the uBR10K. The enhancement boosts the number of downstream channels available for the CMTS from 1,152 to 1,728 in the same amount of rack space, Cisco said, noting that up to eight SPA line cards can be used per uBR10K CMTS. Each 6G SPA card can also support up to 144 downstream licensed per card, for a total of 1,152 6G SPA downstream channels per chassis.

Cisco, which announced the upgrade at this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo  in Denver, said it will kick off trials of the 6G SPA capabilities with several MSOs around the globe “over the next few months.”

Cisco announced the upgrade amid new chips from Broadcom and Intel that can bond 32 DOCSIS 3.0 downstream channels. They, along with STMicroelectronics, are also developing silicon for DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging CableLabs platform that is targeting multi-Gigabit capabilities.

Looking to match up speeds entering the home with the capacities supported by customers’ home networks, Comcast has introduced a souped up wireless gateway from Cisco Systems that bakes in 802.11ac WiFi and the 2.0 version of Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA), which utilizes the home’s coax network.

The product, which carries the consumer-facing brand of the “Xfinity Wireless Gateway,” is the Cisco-made DPC3941T. According to this blog post from Jill Formichella, Comcast Cable’s director, home network product development, the WiFi piece is outfitted with a 3x3 MIMO design that delivers three spatial streams and 1.3 Gbps of raw throughput via an 80MHz-wide wireless channel. She said third-party lab tests by Allion Engineering Services showed the gateway delivering 700 Mbps of actual throughput.

The 700 Mbps mark is more than two times faster than Comcast’s current router and seven times faster and provided better overall in-home coverage than similar devices from competitors, including Verizon Communications and AT&T, claimed Eric Schaefer, Comcast Cable’s SVP and GM, communications, data and mobility, in this separate post.

The new gateway integrates a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, though the channel bonding configuration was not immediately available. Top-of-the-line D3 modems can bond 24 downstream channels and 8 upstream channels, putting the downstream within shouting distance of 1 Gbps bursts. Broadcom is working on a D3 chipset that can bond 32 downstream channels.

Comcast also did not announce pricing and packaging options for the new product, but Schaefer wrote that will become available “later this fall in select markets,” and will eventually be introduced to Comcast’s entire footprint.

A spokesman said that new customers who qualify for a device will automatically receive one when they sign up for service, subject to availability. Customers who want to receive info on the new gateway and when it becomes available in their market are directed to send an email to: AC_WirelessGateway@cable.comcast.com.  

Comcast, which ended the second quarter with 21.27 million broadband subs, is introducing the gateway as it bumps its Blast Tier to 105 Mbps down (from 50 Mbps) and its Extreme Tier to 150 Mbps (from 105 Mbps) at no additional cost in markets in its Northeast and West regions. Comcast offers a fiber-based residential service in select markets that delivers 505 Mbps down and 100 Mbps upstream.

Last April, Comcast launched a Cisco-made 802.11n DOCSIS 3.0 gateway with a 16x4 channel-bonding configuration that also supports MoCA 2.0, a technology that delivers in-home wireline throughputs of 400 Mbps in basic mode and up to 800 Mbps in the enhanced, turbo mode.

Comcast is also using its new gateways to deliver a separate "Xfinity WiFi" SSIDs and community hotspots that are accessible to credentialed broadband subs. Comcast is on pace to deploy 8 million hotspots by the end of the year, a number that includes its residential hotspots and those deployed in outdoor and business locations.

Buoyed by IP capacity expansions, the number of upstream and downstream DOCSIS channel shipments reached 1.2 million in the second quarter of 2014, a new quarterly record that stomped the one set in the first quarter of the year, Infonetics Research said in its latest roundup of the cable access sector.

Infonetics noted that this was also the first time those channel shipments eclipsed the 1 million market for the first time. That figure factors in sales of  DOCSIS-powered cable modem termination systems (CMTSs), Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) products, which aim to combine the CMTS and edge QAM functions, and Coax Media Converters (CMCs) -- stripped down CMTSs that don’t support the core routing functions typically found in a CMTS that are gaining steam in markets such as China and represent a product class that has been integrated with the primary CableLabs DOCSIS specifications.

Combined revenue for CCAP, CMTS, edge QAM and CMC equipment reached $411 million worldwide, up 24% from the previous quarter, the company noted.

Infonetics also found that global CCAP revenue climbed another 42% sequentially in the second quarter as MSOs continue to migrate to the higher density platform and take advantage of their lower per-channel prices. The push to CCAP is most acute in North America, which  saw revenue in the category rise 39% in the second quarter versus the previous quarter.

“The velocity of the shift from CMTS to CCAP remains phenomenal," Jeff Heynen, Infonetics’ principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV, said in a statement.

Infonetics did not initially announce how the market share leaders ranked in the second quarter, but did note that Arris, Casa Systems and Cisco Systems once again comprised the top three. Multichannel News will provide an update on the vendor leaderboard once those specifics are known.

According to Infonetics' report for the first quarter of 2014,  Arris was tops in terms of revenue share with 37%, followed by Cisco Systems (32%) , Casa Systems (21%), and Harmonic (7%).

Cisco Systems will cut 6,000 more jobs, or about 8% of its global workforce, as the tech giant struggles for growth and continues to see specific parts of its business, including its service provider video unit, slump.

The coming cuts, announced Wednesday as the company announced fiscal fourth quarter results, arrive about a year after Cisco said it would lay off 4,000 workers. They also factor in roughly three years after Cisco announced plans to reduce its headcount by 6,500 jobs tied to a reorg aimed at slashing $1 billion in annual operating costs.

According to an 8-K filing, Cisco’s current wave of layoffs will start in the company’s first quarter, estimating that it will result in pre-tax charges of less than $700 million, consisting of severance and other one-time termination benefits. Between $250 million to $350 million of those charges will be recognized in the first quarter, the company said. Cisco ended the fourth quarter with 74,042 employees, down from 75,049 from a year ago.

Cisco’s service provider market was a sore spot in the company’s fourth quarter, as revenues in the category declined 11%. Taking a significant hit was service provider video, which brought in $1.06 billion, down 10% versus a year ago. That part of the business is coming under new leadership. In May, Cisco announced that former Cablevision Systems exec Yvette Kanouff was joining to head up its Service Provider Video Software and Solutions (SPVSS) organization.

“Our service provider customers are dealing with transitions in their own business and have been aggressively consolidating with the transaction volumes of these consolidations over the last 12 months about as much as we have seen in the past four years combined,” Cisco president and CEO John Chambers said Wednesday on the company’s earnings call.

Two major customers in that SP group -- Comcast and Time Warner Cable – are in the process of merging.

Echoing concerns voiced recently by Arris chairman and CEO Bob Stanzione, Chambers said such deals “tend to have temporary slowing effects…until they get their decisions together on how the networks come together where they make investments.”

Cisco is also encountering tougher sledding in emerging markets such as China, Brazil, Russia and Mexico.

On an overall basis, Cisco posted fourth quarter net income of $2.25 billion (43 cents per share), on revenues of $12.36 billion, down slightly from $12.4 billion in the year-ago period.

Growth will remain elusive for Cisco in the short term, as Chambers said he expects first quarter revenues to be flat to up 1%.

In a forecast that bodes well for the cable industry’s ambitious WiFi initiatives in and out of the home, WiFi traffic will exceed wired traffic for the first time by 2018, according to a new report from Cisco Systems.

By 2018, Cisco also expects high-definition video traffic to generate more traffic than standard-def for the first time.

Those predictions are just two of a report full of them, alongside many other broadband-focused insights that Cisco pulled into its latest Visual Networking Index report, which looks at recent adoption trends and what’s on the horizon between 2013 and 2018.

More on mobile broadband – WiFi and mobile-connected devices will generate 61% of IP traffic by 2018, Cisco predicted, noting that WiFi will represent 49% of traffic, cellular 12%, and fixed traffic 39% by then. In comparison, WiFi represented 41%, cellular 3%, and fixed 56% in 2013.

IP video, Cisco said, will eat up 79% of all IP traffic by 2018, up from 66% in 2013. Ultra HD, meanwhile, will account for roughly 11% of IP video traffic in four years, up from a mere 0.1% in 2013. HD video, meanwhile, will account for 52% of all IP video traffic by 2018, up from 36% in 2013.

On a broader basis, Cisco predicted that global IP traffic will grow nearly three-fold over the next four years – reaching an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes, or half a trillion gigabytes by 2018 -- as Internet usage and IP-capable devices proliferate and use broadband to distribute video.

Also by 2018, Cisco expects the majority of traffic to originate from devices other than a PC.

Looking ahead to this week's kickoff of the FIFA World Cup, Cisco expects the soccer-fest to generate 4.3 exabytes of Internet traffic, about three times the amount of broadband traffic generated in Brazil, the event’s host country, in a month. To put it in further context, global IP traffic is expected to reach 132 exabytes per month by 2018, which is equivalent to 5.5 billion people binge-viewing Game of Thrones season 4 via VOD in HD or 1.5 billion people watching video in UltraHD/4K, Cisco said.

On the speed front, global broadband speeds will reach 42 Mbps 2018, up from 16% at the end of 2013, and the majority of broadband connections, or 55%, will be faster than 10 Mbps by 2018, Cisco said, noting that average broadband speeds in Japan and South Korea will approach 100 Mbps by the end of 2018.

NOS of Portugal has “validated” a Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP)-facing product mix from Cisco Systems that features the vendor’s flagship uBR10K cable modem termination system and its high-density RF Gateway 10 edge QAM.

As part of this build toward CCAP, NOS is complementing the combo with Cisco’s 3GSPA, a card that can effectivel double the downstream density of one uBR10K chassis (from 576 to 1,152 downstreams), and the DS384, an eight-port line card with support for up to 128 QAMs per port.

The aim is for NOS, which also uses Videoscape, Cisco’s multiscreen video platform for service providers, to more efficiently deliver a mix of video and DOCSIS services via a uniform platform.

"We have seen consistent growth in our IP delivered video services since the launch of our Iris platform, which has in turn increased pressure on our broadband access network. By converging the two, we are ensuring that we can invest the right capacity in the right places at the right time,” said NOS CTO Miguel Veiga Martins, in a statement.

Cisco is also working on the cBR-8, a fully integrated CCAP that will succeed the uBR10K as the vendor’s flagship cable access product. That device, code-named “Battlestar,” will be in ten customer trials this summer ahead of its anticpated launch in the first quarter of 2015.

And, for Cisco, the sooner the better. Infonetics Research said CCAP-related sales surged 177% in the first quarter, allowing Arris to jump ahead of Cisco in combined CCAP and CMTS  revenue share during the period.