Cable operators aren’t tossing out good HFC networks, but they are deploying fiber-only networks at in increasing rates in greenfields and other certain situations.

To get a fix on this trend, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), have expanded their boot camp training program with one targeted to fiber networks deployment.

That new program, called the Fiber To The x (FTTx) Boot Camp, adds fiber passive optical network (PON) training, including installation, architecture, deployment and troubleshooting for GPON, EPON as well as RF over Glass (RFoG), a standard that enables MSOs to deliver their traditional services via RF on fiber while preserving their traditional backoffice and provisioning systems.

SCTE/ISBE, which recently launched a Boot Camp focused on DOCSIS 3.1, said the new FTTx-focused program will focus on PON architectures and offer comparisons to HFC, the disadvantages and advantages of various designs, and best practices for deploying and supporting FTTx.

“Time Warner Cable approached SCTE/ISBE to develop a program that could provide the industry with efficient training on FTTx technology, the advanced tools used to install and troubleshoot FTTx, and the creative approaches to problem-solving that the industry needs to realize the benefits of fiber deployments,” said Steve Harris, senior director, advanced technologies and instruction, learning and development, SCTE/ISBE. “We worked with Kevin Noll and the Time Warner Cable team to create an FTTx Boot Camp that combines industry technical expertise and SCTE/ISBE’s learning systems.  Our goal is to foster seamless fiber deployments for cable system operators as well as new opportunities for career advancement for the industry’s technical workforce.”

“Bringing fiber all the way to the customer premises increasingly is gaining traction as an option to expedite advanced services and to increase reliability of the network,” added Chris Bastian, senior vice president and CTO of SCTE/ISBE.  “SCTE/ISBE is working closely with our partners to make sure that current and next-generation workforces have the tools and talents that will allow operators to capture the ROI benefits that can accompany FTTx.”

SCTE/ISBE said cable organizations can contact Steve Harris at sharris@scte.org to schedule the two-day FTTx Boot Camp at a location of their choice. SCTE/ISBE also will host the FTTx Boot Camp Sunday through Monday, Sept. 25–26 in Philadelphia, immediately prior to the start of Cable-Tec Expo 2016. 

Arris will use this week’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver to show off features and new wares aimed at helping MSOs get more pop out of their existing hybrid fiber coax networks and extend services to homes using fiber-only architectures.

On the HFC side, Arris said it will demonstrate a DOCSIS 3.1-facing downstream that runs on its flagship E6000 cable modem termination system (CMTS) and utilizes orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), a modulation scheme that is part of the new CableLabs specs. The E6000 is starting out as a high-density CMTS, but will evolve to become a fully-integrated Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) that also builds in the edge QAM function.

According to Todd Kessler, vice president of CMTS/CCAP product management at Arris, the OFDM downstream demo on the E6000 will be run in tandem with new cable modem test boards from two DOCSIS chipmakers – Intel and STMicroelectronics -- and a signal analyzer from Keysight.

Part of the demo, Kessler said, is to show how existing blades on the E6000 can be upgraded to support D3.1-based technology via a firmware upgrade. This is possible, he said, because the E6000 is equipped with customizable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) silicon. 

While that demo is about DOCSIS 3.1, a multi-gigabit platform that’s designed to run on HFC, a new Arris product, called AgileMax, takes aim at RF over Glass (RFoG), a standard that lets cable operators deliver RF-based services , such as video, to the home over fiber but uses the MSO’s legacy backoffice and provisioning systems.

Operators have historically used RFoG in greenfields and for plant extensions in rural areas, with some eyeing it as a migration point toward PON-based FTTP networks. However, scaled rollouts of RFoG have been hindered by the presence of Optical Beat Interference (OBI), which impairs performance when multiple modems try to communicate over the same fiber at the same time. Arris holds that the advent of DOCSIS 3.1 will only exacerbate the issue.

Arris said AgileMax, a product that sits where a fiber splitter would reside on the network (the hub, the basement of a multiple dwelling unit, fiber cabinet or node, etc.), mitigates OBI by supporting split ratios and data rates that have previously been unachievable.

Arris, which views current OBI-inhibitors as temporary and operationally complex, expects trials of AgileMax to start in the fourth quarter of 2014, with full rollouts anticipated next year, according to Ray Bontempi, Arris’s vice president of product management.