Arris has opened up a new enterprise-focused business unit following its recently closed deal for the Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch businesses from Brocade, but also sees some potential points of synergy with the residential components of its business.

RELATED: Arris Closes Ruckus Wireless Acquisition 

Arris on Monday offered an update on its business about two weeks after it acquired the Ruckus, and analysts wondered if it the company some revenue and technology synergies with respect to Arris’s CPE business and home WiFi, an area that has become of greater importance to cable operators and other service providers that work with the company.

Arris CEO Bruce McClelland acknowledged that there is a greater desire to build in more capable and extensive networking and wireless capabilities on the residential side of the broadband business.

There are no new residential products to discuss yet that would link in Ruckus, but “it’s definitely something that our teams are looking at.”

One potential area for more collaboration is 802.11ax, a new version of WiFi that will build in OFDMA capabilities from the cellular world along with other features, rather than trying to go back and revamp products that use older versions of WiFi.

He said Arris may look into how it can leverage investment on all sides, and perhaps create a common roadmap that addresses Arris’s enterprise, retail and service provider businesses. “Maybe there’s a tiered technology strategy or a variety of different approaches there,” McClelland said.

Dan Rabinovitsj, the new president of Ruckus Networks, noted that Ruckus did not pursue residential in part because the enterprise sector requires designs that can scale to higher densities and client counts and support a bigger range of features. However, some of Ruckus’s channel partners do dabble in residential by offering premium products for some homes that need technology capabilities that are akin to those of a small business.

“That’s where we start to see the lines blurring,” Rabinovitsj said, adding that there could be some opportunities to drive of that WiFi-related work into products like integrated wireless gateways.

Arris also provided a bigger overview of the company following its latest purchase.

One big change is a new reportable segment, called Enterprise Networks and led by Rabinovitsj, that operates alongside Arris’s CPE and Network and Cloud units. One difference is that Enterprise Networks will have its own product management and sales and marketing team focused on that channel. And it will retain the Ruckus brand.

In addition to carrying the new tagline of “Redefined Connectivity,” the portfolio of the newly combined version of Arris should be thought of differently now, McClelland said.

That portfolio now spans a Core, Growth and Emerging businesses.

Core is focused on large, mature markets where Arris already has a significant share in areas with regular upgrade cycles that fuel investment in new products. That includes areas like integrated CCAPs, set-tops and other CPE, and residential WiFi.

Growth, where investment will increase more rapidly, includes areas like enterprise managed services, smart cities, DOCSIS 3.1, the direct-to-consumer segment and upgrades to multi-gigabit Ethernet.

Emerging markets for Arris include next-gen PON platforms, CBRS technology, network virtualization and distributed access architectures, and Full Duplex DOCSIS.

Rabinovitsj noted that the wireless LAN market enjoys an 11.5% CAGR, but “our plan is to grow faster than the market, fueled by our leadership position in verticals that are growing fast such as managed services.”

“This trend will continue to grow as IT managers shift their attention away from managing networks to delivering applications and services,” he said.

Looking ahead Arris expects its Enterprise segment to bring in between $650 million to $700 million of sales in 2-18, and earnings of 23 cents to 31 cents per share.

“While most of our discussion today has been around products and technology and markets, this acquisition is really about people and knowhow,” McClelland said.

Still, a portion of the discussion focused on the opportunities in the CBRS spectrum band.

RELATED: Federated Wireless Targets ‘Third Model’ for Mobile

For its part, Ruckus is focusing on that with a product area it calls “OpenG.”

Rabinovitsj said chips for the infrastructure end of CBRS have been out for some time, as they typically lead the way before silicon for smartphones and tablets emerge. However, some devices that will work in the 3.5GHz segment have already appeared for the Japanese market.

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

For now, Ruckus is testing CBRS using off-the-shelf smartphones that are being used outside the U.S. McClelland pointed out that Arris sees early CBRS activity around fixed mobile broadband access with a gateway serving as the client device.

BCN Telecom, a company focused on simplifying connectivity for companies with multiple business locations, said last week it has expanded its broadband aggregation offering with the addition of Cable One, Mediacom Communications and Suddenlink (Altice USA).

BCN said it enables its customers to get connectivity from multiple service providers in multiple locations, aggregating that all onto a consolidated invoice that covers all services and locations and manages it all with a sole support team. BCN said it has more than 25,000 business clients and 3,000-plus sales partners.

BCN said its portfolio also includes services from AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox Communications, Optimum (formerly Cablevision Systems, now part of Altice USA), Charter Communications and Verizon, among others.

Related: Cable ONE Targets WiFi Dead Zones

"The addition of Cable One, Mediacom and Suddenlink significantly enhances our ability to provide the nationwide aggregation of broadband services which is critical for multi-location businesses," Julian Jacquez, BCN’s COO, said in a statement.

"Large multi-location solutions in industries including retail, hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, real estate, education and more, are at the center of the BCN sweet spot," added Michael Ginsburg, BCN’s VP of sales. "The availability of a broad range of nationwide broadband services including DSL, Cable, and Internet over Fiber (IoF) along with our full suite of Dedicated and Wireless 4G LTE options, provides a clear advantage for partners who are engaged with these companies."

Comcast also has an initiative underway to serve enterprise customers that require services that are in and out of the MSO’s traditional footprint. Of recent note, Comcast signed a national services deal with Taco Bell that includes the reliance of Comcast's network agreements with other MSOs.

RELATED: Comcast Business Bows New Unit Targeting Fortune 1000

Comcast Business said its Enterprise Solutions unit has notched a deal to provide managed services, including guest WiFi, for Taco Bell and its 6,200 company and franchise locations in the U.S.

RELATED: Comcast Gets Down to Business With WiFi

Financial terms were not announced, but the restaurant chain has retained Comcast Business to support the tech requirements for its national business operations, including a “redundant, highly-available network infrastructure.”

Tied in, Comcast Business will provide in-store managed WiFi networks and managed router systems for each restaurant that is capable of a minimum of 20 Mbps down/3 Mbps up, 4G business “continuity” at each location, and redundant connections at each location.

Comcast Business said it will also provide distributed IPsec VPN network that gives Taco Bell the ability to collect and exchange massive amounts of data at very high speeds across Taco Bell locations.

The deal comes a little over two years after Comcast introduced an enterprise division that targets large enterprises with multiple locations, and aims to build on Comcast Business’s work with small- and mid-sized business customers.

RELATED: Comcast Business Bows New Unit Targeting Fortune 1000

UPDATE: The national focus of the deal means that Comcast Business will be serving Taco Bell locations that fall outside of Comcast's regular cable footprint. Tied to its Fortune 1000 focus, Comcast has secured network agreements with several other cable operators to provide connectivity outside its footprint, and that strategy is in play with the Taco Bell deal, the company confirmed. 

“Comcast Business understands the unique network demands of national restaurant chains and looks forward to supporting Taco Bell, one of the technology leaders of the fast food industry,”  Glenn Katz, VP & GM Enterprise Solutions at Comcast Business, said in a statement. “By understanding the ever-changing demands of this highly competitive industry and having the largest high capacity network infrastructure in the country, Comcast is in a unique position to provide and manage all aspects of a service deployment within the quick serve restaurant (QSR) sector, whether they are a smaller restaurant group or a national chain with several thousand locations.”

Wave Broadband said it has raised an additional $125 million to continue an ambitious fiber buildout geared toward serving a growing number of enterprise customers on the West Coast, and is adding two new companies to the fold to help grow its commercial services business.

Wave, based in Kirkland, Wash., initially raised $130 million to start its fiber buildout last year.

The more recent financing, a $125 million add-on to the existing first-lien term loan, will fund the continued project buildout in Washington, Oregon and California, as well as future acquisitions.

Wave currently has more than 1,000 fiber construction projects underway to serve business and residential customers on the West Coast and its commercial services business is its fastest growing segment, growing at a 25% clip last year. According to Wave, new construction is adding more than 100 route miles of fiber each month to its existing network of about 5,500 route miles, serving markets from the San Francisco Bay area north to the Canadian border.

Separately from the financing, Wave said it has purchased two fiber businesses – Newport, Ore.-based CoastCom, and Vancouver, Wash.-based SawNet -- to expand its business offerings. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.  

CoastCom owns more than 250 miles of fiber in Oregon, while SawNet owns more than 100 fiber miles from Portland/Vancouver through the Columbia River Gorge. Wave will add those assets to its fiber network, along with CoastCom’s more than 150 business customers.  

“This financing enables Wave to accelerate the expansion our fiber network to meet the strong demand we are seeing from commercial customers for access to our network’s fast and reliable connections, backed by exceptional customer service,” Wave CEO Steve Weed said in a statement. “We are also very pleased to add CoastCom and SawNet to Wave, as their local fiber networks and business customers complement what we’re already building in Oregon and southern Washington.”

Wave has been placing a greater emphasis on its commercial broadband business for years – Weed said in an interview that it is on a path for business services to represent about half of total revenue. It recently launched Wave G Business service – a 1 Gigabit per second high-speed data offering – to provide symmetrical Gigabit Internet connectivity to companies often found on the ground floors of Wave G-serviced residential apartment buildings.

Lightpath, a unit of Cablevision Systems focused on Ethernet-based business services, said it has established direct international access to its New York metro area fiber network.

Through a connection to New Jersey Fiber Exchange’s neutral cable landing station meet-me room in Wall, N.J.,  Lightpath’s enterprise customers can now tap into high bandwidth services for connectivity to key international destinations, the company said.

The New Jersey Fiber Exchange 64,800-square-foot facility is set to go live in September 2016, at which time Lightpath’s services will be available via the new connection.

As its customers increasingly seek the fast connectivity to key international hotspots, Lightpath said the new connection meets this need by bypassing carrier hotels and legacy backhaul solutions.

“As our customers’ businesses expand globally, they want to continue to use the Lightpath service that they know and trust,” Dave Pistacchio, president of Lightpath, said in a statement. . “Following our connection to the NJFX facility, we’re able to expand the universe of customers we can serve, helping them develop secure, reliable and high-speed connectivity to key media and financial destinations throughout the world.”

Lightpath’s fiber network in the NY metro covers more than 7,000 lit locations in the region.  Lightpath parent Cablevision is in the process of being acquired by Altice.