Targeting an opportunity rising as cable operators pursue new distributed access architectures, ATX Networks this week introduced a new digital optical gateway platform that will support their move to remote PHY and remote MACPHY networks.

The first entry for the company’s platform, marketed under the GigaWave brand, is the Digital Link Extender 40 (DLX40). The 1-rack-unit DLX supports two DLX40 modules, with each capable of aggregating up to 40 wavelengths across optical access links of up to 60 kilometers in length, ATX Networks said.

ATX, which introduced the new line amid this week’s AngaCom show in Germany, believes its approach with digital optical technology will fit in with cable’s pivot to distributed access systems that aim to create more capacity, reduce headend space and power requirements, while also supporting the growing need for those networks to backhaul mobile and wireless small cells for today’s 4G networks and the 5G networks of the future. The move to distributed access also fits in with future Full Duplex DOCSIS networks that will support multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds.

RELATED: Full Duplex DOCSIS Interop Testing on the Horizon

ATX says its new lineup will help MSOs evolve analog networks to digital and help to underpin the move to software-defined, virtualized distributed access architectures, Charlie Vogt, ATX Networks’s recently named president and CEO, explained. He said a portion of the work partially stems from ATX’s acquisition of InnoTrans.

RELATED: Charlie Vogt Named President, CEO of ATX Networks

ATX said a “marquee MSO” in North American has selected GigaWave DLX as a component of its next-gen distributed access architecture (DAA) initiative. The MSO wasn’t named, but deployments are slated to start this fall, the company said.

“We’re seeing a lot of RFPs and RFIs coming out” for DAA projects, Vogt said.

ATX is also developing a next-gen, “universal” node for DAA and Remote PHY and Remote MACPHY environments.

ATX’s new GigaWave products will be designed to work with those nodes as well as remote PHY nodes developed by other suppliers. 

Englewood, Colo. – Full-fledged deployments of Full Duplex (FDX) DOCSIS are likely still a couple of years away, but CableLabs believes that suppliers have made enough progress to be ready for initial interoperability testing later this year.

Interops are expected to underway in earnest in 2019, but the start of that work could get underway by the fourth quarter of 2018, Doug Jones, principal architect at CableLabs, said here Wednesday (June 6) at an operations roundtable that was part of the Rocky Mountain SCTE Chapter’s 23rd annual Engineering Symposium. 

That work will help to establish important groundwork on product interoperability for FDX DOCSIS, an annex to the DOCSIS 3.1 specs that will support symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds on widely deployed hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks.

CableLabs released the physical layer specs for FDX DOCSIS last fall, and followed with the addition of MAC Layer support in January.

RELATED: Full Duplex DOCSIS Takes Another Step Forward

Though the prescribed path to FDX DOCSIS involved a node-plus-zero network (the creation of a passive network whereby there are no amplifiers between the node and the home), CableLabs is also working on other approaches that won’t necessarily require N+0 to get MSOs started on that path, Jones noted.

CableLabs, he explained, is building a plan based on a node-plus-five environment. “We’re going to prove that FDX equipment will work on that, as a path toward FDX DOCSIS and get you that 1-Gig symmetrical tier maybe without having to go node-plus-zero first,” Jones said.

Having some flexibility is important because HFC networks are far from uniform between cable operators and even inside the operators themselves. Some have segments of the network at node-plus-15 and others at node-plus-zero, and everything in between.

And there are major business decisions to consider with moving to N+0.

“There’s a big battle that exists out there on cost that’s going to keep thwarting node-plus-zero for a while,” said Tom Gorman, the founder and president of opXL, and a cable engineering exec late of operators such as Comcast and Charter Communications.

By way of example, he said some plant extensions still require an amplifier to boost the signal.

“There’s got to be a very concerted effort and plan and willingness to spend to get to that node-plus-zero [architecture],” Gorman said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done there.”

And as cable operators take fiber deeper into the network, Gorman warned that they must be careful to ensure that their workforces continue to support technicians who know their way around coax.

“We’re finding that there’s not enough people to splice coax,” Gorman said. “The coax splicing is becoming the dying art, and [cable operators] still have a ton of coax out there. That’s where there’s a hole that’s getting bigger and bigger.”

The panel, moderated by Leslie Ellis, president of EllisEdits and a Multichannel News contributor, also touched cable’s role with 5G, and how MSOs can participate in that evolution amid the move to a standard that will deliver higher speeds and lower latencies and will be enabled in part by small cells that can be backhauled by cable’s widely deployed HFC plant and growing fiber networks.

RELATED: Cable is Wired for 5G

Cable’s move to FDX DOCSIS and distributed access architectures make HFC suitable for dense, 5G microcells, Dan Rice, vice president of HFC architecture at Comcast, said.

“All [telecom companies] are headed to the same spot, with fiber to remote nodes and physical layers out in the node, he said.

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

Gorman added that future 5G applications such as low-latency connectivity for autonomous vehicles, will present new challenges and opportunities for the cable industry.

Cable will need to focus the accuracy, reliably and availability of those 5G networks.

“The applications for [5G] will be lifeline applications, and it just makes our plant reliability all the more important,” Gorman said. “This is critical stuff we’re talking about beyond that 5G can deliver more bandwidth wirelessly.”

More details from this panel, including cable’s work with Full Duplex DOCSIS and the emerging use of machine learning for cable network operations will be featured in the June 11 issue of Broadcasting & Cable. 

Following its recent acquisition of Ruckus Wireless, a move that enhanced Arris's focus on the wireless and enterprise sectors, Arris will continue to seek out deals that can broaden its addressable market.

That means it won’t be going off on any wild tangents but rather stick to its new knitting, which is all about providing connectivity – wired and wireless – to consumers and businesses.

With regard to future M&A, “We’re looking for opportunities that are near-adjacencies to what we’ve in today, things that logically build on top of the businesses that we’re in, so it’s easier to get synergies,” Arris CEO Bruce McClelland said Wednesday on the company’s investor day, held in New York. “One-plus-one equals more than two…We’re looking at things that are accretive to the business going forward.”

“I really believe that M&A is a core part of what we need to do,” Dave Potts, Arris’s EVP and CTO, added later. “I think it is a place that we will want to continue to try to put dollars to work.”

McClelland didn’t identify any specific companies on Arris’s M&A radar, but did spell out some areas that would qualify to be on it, including the enterprise sector, security, as well as opportunities to bolster its traditional infrastructure business, including wireless, transport and optical transmission.

But a primary focus of Arris’s capital strategy will be in R&D, which will grow to $700 million this year, thanks in part to the Ruckus acquisition. R&D is “really the fuel for the business…that’s the best possible use of cash in the business,” McClelland said.

Arris’s investor day spanned the scope of its business. Here’s a snapshot of some specific areas that were covered:

Waxing Wireless  

Starting with what Arris has with the new Ruckus Networks unit on board, the company plans to take advantage of a wireless LAN arena with a total addressable market of $15 to $17 billion and one that is growing at 8% to 10% a year.

Of note, the company is anticipating a transition to 802.11ax that will that will also create push to new edge campus switching technologies, and drive “secular upgrades” into product areas that Ruckus has covered, Dan Rabinovitsj, president of Arris Enterprise Networks, said.

Arris, through Ruckus Networks, is also getting positioned for the needs of the enterprise Internet of Things market, as well as opportunities that will come way of CBRS, a swath of shared spectrum in the 3.5GHz band that will be used by incumbents as well as for unlicensed and lightly licensed use by others, including cable operators.

RELATED: Ruckus Gears Up for the CBRS Band

For enterprise IoT, Ruckus plan centers on consolidating the physical layer access networks into a unified IoT network using access points with IoT modules that can support a fragmented group of standards and technologies, including Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee and LoRA.

“This fragmentation has been a huge problem,” Rabinovitsj said. “We’re PHY-agnostic…we have zero religion about this.”

He said Apple and others are remedying this issue in the consumer sphere by building their own technology silos. But that approach won’t fly with enterprise customers, he said.

Steve Martin, Ruckus’s CTO, expanded on the CBRS initiative at the company, noting that the shared spectrum approach in the 3.5GHz band represents a “breakthrough,” and a significant opportunity.

“Spectrum is like beachfront property…they’re not making any more of it,” he said.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

The CBRS opportunity, which will use spectrum allocation servers to keep users in that band from interfering with each other, has drawn interest from a wide range of segments, including cable operators that view it as a way to augment mobile service that are leaning on MVNO agreements.

RELATED: CBRS Spectrum to Open Windows of Opportunity for Cable Ops

“The trials are getting bigger and more sophisticated,” he added, noting the largest one spans some 90 nodes covering both indoor and outdoor locations across multiple city blocks.

“This stuff is real,” he said. “Frankly our pipeline is limited by our ability to handle the trial requests at this point, so we're being very opportunistic about it.”

The Drive Toward Distributed Access

A portion of Arris’s discussion about what’s going on in the wired part of the network centered on cable’s push toward distributed access architectures (DAA), which push functions and electronics further out on the network and into the node.

RELATED: Cable Industry Preps Push to Next-Gen Access Networks, Virtualization

As a sign of momentum there, Arris announced today that Danish service provider Stofa has launched what’s being billed as Europe’s first Gigabit internet service based on the remote PHY spec. To enable it Stofa is using Arris’s flagship CCAP, the E6000, with a software upgrade that pairs with the vendor’s NC2000 R-PHY optical nodes.

The move to DAA also gets cable operators into the world of digital optics, which opens to door to new competitors that want to jump into the investment cycle to come.

“Who knew that HFC was cool again?” McClelland joked. “It will be competitive. There are lots of people who would like a piece of that, and it’s going to grow over time. I would rather be where we are than where everybody else is." 

On Arris’s consumer premises equipment (CPE) side of the house, share has been gradually shifting more heavily toward broadband devices – the currently mix is still dominated by video (60%) as broadband (40%) continues to close the gap.

Larry Robinson, president of Arris's CPE business, reiterated that, for set-tops, the company will try to grow share selectively with an emphasis on margin and a continued pursuit of cost-reduction programs as rising memory costs remain an issue.

RELATED: Arris to Be ‘More Selective’ With Its Set-Top Box Business

There’s a “maniacal focus on streamlining business operations,” Robinson said.

As for trends, Robinson said integration of 4K and HDR technologies are part of the evolution, as well as voice-based navigation, and whole-home WiFi capabilities. There’s also an opportunity emerging to build far-field microphones into traditional CPE products as ambient voice capabilities become a more important component of smart home solutions.

“There’s even talk of 8K,” driving a number of new use cases for video, Robinson said. However, 8K currently is “off the charts in terms of price.”

On the broadband side, about 10% of Arris’s CPE for cable operators re DOCSIS 3.1, and Arris sees that rising to the 75% to 80% range in 2021.