Arris has announced a broad-reaching deal with Australia’s NBN Co. to provide Full Duplex-capable, DOCSIS 3.1-powered broadband services to 3 million of the cable operator’s subscribers by 2020.

Under the agreement, Arris will supply its E6000 Gen 2 CCAP platform and its OM4100 OptiMax 4x4 segmentable nodes, as well last its CM8200B DOCSIS 3.1 modems.

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

Arris will also provide its ServAssure NXT network management platform, as well as the resources of its global software and devices services team.

“They’re able to add bandwidth and pay 65% - 75% of what they paid before,” noted Dan Whalen, president of Arris’ Network & Cloud division, in an interview with Multichannel News. “They’re able to do more using less power and less space.”

Whalen noted the preponderance of fiber competition in the Australian region. The ability for NBN to provide the gigabit symmetrical services enabled by Full Duplex DOCSIS will be a significant competitive boost for the operator, Whalen said.

He compared the Down Under market to Latin America and the Caribbean, noting a shortage of technologists in the region familiar with next-generation HFC network. NBC, Whalen said.

“There’s a lot of fiber-to-the-curb and fiber-to-the-home, but but not a lot of people to support DOCSIS," he said.

This has benefited Arris’ growing Global Services unit, Whalen added, which is being called upon by NBN to help manage the network.

“They’re looking for someone to step in and manage the end-to-end operation of their network,” he explained.

Related: Arris Hit Hard By Shortages of Capacitors, DRAM

At least on the CPE side, Arris has been troubled of late, as all companies working in the electronics business, by shortages of components, including memory chips and capacitors.

SNL Kagan analyst Jeff Heynen said he believes the impact of these component shortages should be short-lived. “Though it will have an impact on how quickly DOCSIS 3.1 devices can be deployed,” he added in a direct tweet to Multichannel.

For his part, Whalen downplayed the effect of the shortages in Arris’ Australian DOCSIS 3.1 deployment.

“I feel pretty comfortable that we have workarounds,” he said. 

Verizon is dismissing a net-neutrality group's characterizations of what the telco said were common network management tests.

Public Knowledge had jumped on reports that the wireless ISP was "throttling" video streaming services as part of a video optimization test, and had done so without warning to customers.

"Current net-neutrality rules clearly state that providers may employ reasonable network management practices to ensure that their networks and services run efficiently and work well for their customers," a Verizon spokesman said. "Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer experience for all customers accessing the shared resources of our wireless network."

He said the company has let customers know about its various network practices, which are common in the industry, adding, "It's not in our interest to do anything to jeopardize the products or services that our customers rely each and every day.

Public Knowledge pointed out that the FCC staff, in the waning days of former chair Tom Wheeler's tenure, had set out guidelines for reasonable network management, including evaluating video optimization, but that new FCC chair Ajit Pai had rescinded that report.

"ISPs need to know that tests to improve their system or develop new products won’t be mistaken for by their customers for bad behavior that undermines confidence in the network," Public Knowledge senior vice president Harold Feld said. “The guidelines distinguishing ‘throttling’ from ‘reasonable network management’ developed as part of the FCC’s investigation into T-Mobile’s Binge On service provided precisely this certainty.... Before, Verizon could simply point to the FCC guidelines to reassure their customers. Today, we must look to chairman Pai to tell us whether subscribers have anything more to rely on than Verizon’s promises."

Feld said that was one reason Pai should not try to roll back the Open Internet order or its Title II underpinning.

Is direct-to-consumer online video all it’s cracked up to be? While access to online, live linear video is being widely adopted and accepted, its pitfalls are exposed when there is content that’s in high demand and is of high value, such as the popular TV show Fear the Walking Dead.

Notably, Sling TV dealt with a service outage during the premiere of AMC series Fear the Walking Dead, causing widespread problems for subscribers nationwide. Other virtual multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), including PlayStation Vue, have experienced latency issues, ranging from buffering screens to blurry pixelation.

So why does this happen? After all, lightly viewed online content is a great source of viewing enjoyment. Mobility has profound value in the industry, as customers increasingly want to take their content on the go. Want to tune into the last five minutes of the game? No problem — simply pull up your smart phone and catch the game-winning slam dunk.

But streaming live TV exposes limitations, as well as the complex infrastructure needed to support these services. That infrastructure includes a content delivery network with enough capacity to deliver the content, the MSO fiber backbone capacity to support over-the-top content, the cable operator’s ability to convert Internet traffic from fiber to DOCSIS RF signals, service levels in each subscriber home and, finally, the capacity of a WiFi or MoCA home network. (To view a graphic of the infrastructure, click here.)

What many don’t realize is that a cooperative relationship with online live video providers, such as Sling TV and Vidgo, and Internet service providers, such as Comcast, would be extremely beneficial and help alleviate the multiple choke points for delivery of high-quality video. Both the online content provider and the ISP likely have the same customer, and want to satisfy that viewer.

If the quality of the content is impaired, such as an interruption in the crucial minutes of a live college-basketball game, either the virtual  MVPD has not scaled its distribution network to support high volume, or the ISP is causing the issue. Either way, there’s a problem that cannot be solved singlehandedly. And it’s a big issue, with 49% of viewers citing technological problems when using a streaming service.

There are multiple reasons why this collaborative relationship isn’t quite happening:

• Programmers want direct relationships with their customers.

• MSOs have to manage their bandwidth and want to control the customer experience.

• Virtual MVPD providers are working to supplant the operator’s video service, and replace it with theirs.

• Net-neutrality requirements further complicate the prospects of collaboration between virtual MVPDs and traditional MVPDs, as they restrict any ability to prioritize one data or video service over another.

As high-demand, high-value content is being consumed online at an increasing rate, the Internet very well could “collapse.” What the industry is seeing with Fear the Walking Dead, March Madness and all other big TV events is where online TV could ultimately wind up if streaming content consumption rates continue to rise.

The rules of the game have changed, and it’s time for renewed collaboration between all players involved in the delivery of content to the home.

Brent Smith is president and chief technology officer of Evolution Digital.

The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG), the nonprofit multistakeholder group focused on broadband network management issues, is working on a report on the technical side of security and privacy in the Internet of Things world.

The report will look at smart phones, tablets and computers, as well as the sensors and monitors being woven into the fabric of daily life.

"Some IoT devices are shipped with security flaws that can put end users at risk and negatively affect their Internet experience, for a variety of reasons," BITAG said in announcing the repot. "To address the technical issues underlying these security and privacy related concerns, BITAG’s technical working group will analyze this topic and issue a report that will describe the issue in depth, highlight technical observations, and suggest appropriate best practices.

Lead editors on the report, which is planned for the fall, will be Jason Livingood, VP of Internet services, for Comcast, and Nick Feamster, computer science professor at Princeton University.

The review will be chaired by BITAG executive director Douglas Sicker.

The announcement comes the same day the issue is getting a deep dive on Capitol Hill. "The Internet of Things: Modernizing Transportation and Infrastructure," is the subject of a hearing in the Senate Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security.