Taking more direct aim at the cable sector, Adtran announced this week it has acquired a set of “active” fiber access products from CommScope.

Products tied to the deal include CommScope’s active EPON and 10G-EPON platforms that support DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON, a CableLabs spec that enables MSOs to tie their provisioning systems to new EPON networks.

Adtran is also getting CommScope’s line of Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG) products line, including versions equipped to mitigate optical beat interference (OBI)  that can impair performance when multiple modems attempt to communicate over the same fiber at the same time.

RFoG, now an SCTE standard, allows MSOs to deliver traditional RF-based video and data services over FTTP architectures while preserving their legacy backoffice systems. MSOs have been using RFoG in targeted situations such as low-density greenfields and rural deployments.

The deal gives Adtran, a top supplier of FTTP and DSL gear, including new 1-Gig-capable G.fast technology, a clearer path into the cable sector as MSOs continue update their networks and evolve toward more programmable architectures.

CommScope said the deal will also tighten its business focus.

“The transition of these active product lines to ADTRAN sharpens both companies’ focus to benefit our customers and the cable industry as a whole,” said Jim Hughes, CommScope’s vice president of North American MSO sales, said in a statement, noting that the company will continue to provide passive PON products to MSOs and other service operators.

“Our goal is to help our customers build and offer competitive broadband solutions, and this acquisition demonstrates our commitment to the MSO customer base,” added Robert Conger, Adtran’s associate vice president, cloud and portfolio strategy.

The deal also comes ahead of the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, set to kick off September 26  in Philadelphia. 

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 has announced the general availability of AgileMax, the backbone of a “hybrid” passive optical network architecture that uses DOCSIS technologies that are common on HFC networks.

Arris demonstrated AgileMax (see image) at last fall's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, presenting a product that takes aim at RF over Glass (RFoG), a standard that lets MSOs deliver RF-based services, including video, to the home over an FTTP network but ties in an MSO’s legacy backoffice and provisioning systems.

AgileMax's big selling point is how it eliminates Optical Beat Interference (OBI), an impairment that has prevented the scaled rollout of RFoG technology when multiple modems try to communicate over trhe same fiber at the same time. Arris has claimed that the introduction of DOCSIS 3.1 will exacerbate the issue.

Arris announced last year that trials of AgileMax to start in the fourth quarter of 2014, with full rollouts anticipated  in 2015.

As for that hybrid designation, AgileMax and HPON are CMTS, ONU, and cable modem agnostic, according to Arris. 

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.