Comcast, which has compared its new virtualized CCAP core technology to its X1 video system, will proceed with plans to license the software-based network tech to third-party cable companies just as it does with X1, according to Dell’Oro Group analyst Jeff Heynen.

“Comcast fully believes that other cable operators can benefit from their virtual CCAP core architecture, and they intend to license it just as they have done with their X1 video platform,” Heynen wrote in a blog post.

In July, Comcast announced that it had entered a multi-year agreement with Harmonic to license the San Jose, California-based access tech vendor’s CableOS product, which virtualizes Converged Cable Access Platform functions. It was reported earlier by Light Reading that Comcast was thinking about licensing out the vCCAP solution it was cooking up with Harmonic. And in October, Comcast told Light Reading that it had moved into deployment mode with not only access network virtualization, but also a shift toward Distributed Access Architecture. The cable operator said more than 100,000 of its customers are being served by vCCAP and DAA architectures.

“There are, of course, questions around just how that licensing model might work and how revenue might be distributed between Comcast and Harmonic, its vCCAP partner,” Heynen wrote. “But it’s clear that Comcast is leaving the door wide open to profiting from its software development work.”

During its third quarter earnings call, Comcast said that monthly data usage by its customers had more than doubled over the last three years.

“To deliver more bandwidth, MSOs traditionally have had to split their optical nodes to reduce service group sizes,” Heynen said. “Each node split, however, requires more passive and active equipment, including splitters, combiners, receivers, and transmitters. More importantly for opex is the need to increase the number of hardware-based CCAP platforms to support the additional bandwidth and service groups. The net result is a significant increase in space and power requirements in both headend and hub sites, as well as additional complexity in fiber cabling requirements.”

Comcast, Heynen noted, is taking a “lead role” in pushing virtualization, which allows it to add capacity without incurring exponential increases in space and power consumption.

“Even if Comcast moves away from its plan of delivering full-duplex (symmetric 10 Gbps) services in a node + zero environment, a virtualized CCAP core gives them the ability to scale at their own pace and at any location,” Heynen wrote. “Servers could still be located in existing headends or primary hub sites, or they could be deployed in centralized data centers. With workload balancing across their CCAP core servers, there are effectively no restrictions on where Comcast can grow its capacity.”

As for X1, Comcast executives have compared the micro-services-based nature of their vCCAP solution with the video operating system. Currently, Comcast licenses X1 technology to Cox Communications, which uses it as the foundation of its Contour video product. Canada’s Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications and Videotron also license X1 tech. 

Comcast, which has compared its new virtualized CCAP core technology to its X1 video system, will proceed with plans to license the software-based network tech to third-party cable companies just as it does with X1, according to Dell’Oro Group analyst Jeff Heynen.

“Comcast fully believes that other cable operators can benefit from their virtual CCAP core architecture, and they intend to license it just as they have done with their X1 video platform,” Heynen wrote in a blog post.

In July, Comcast announced that it had entered a multi-year agreement with Harmonic to license the San Jose, California-based access tech vendor’s CableOS product, which virtualizes Converged Cable Access Platform functions. It was reported earlier by Light Reading that Comcast was thinking about licensing out the vCCAP solution it was cooking up with Harmonic. And in October, Comcast told Light Reading that it had moved into deployment mode with not only access network virtualization, but also a shift toward Distributed Access Architecture. The cable operator said more than 100,000 of its customers are being served by vCCAP and DAA architectures.

“There are, of course, questions around just how that licensing model might work and how revenue might be distributed between Comcast and Harmonic, its vCCAP partner,” Heynen wrote. “But it’s clear that Comcast is leaving the door wide open to profiting from its software development work.”

During its third quarter earnings call, Comcast said that monthly data usage by its customers had more than doubled over the last three years.

“To deliver more bandwidth, MSOs traditionally have had to split their optical nodes to reduce service group sizes,” Heynen said. “Each node split, however, requires more passive and active equipment, including splitters, combiners, receivers, and transmitters. More importantly for opex is the need to increase the number of hardware-based CCAP platforms to support the additional bandwidth and service groups. The net result is a significant increase in space and power requirements in both headend and hub sites, as well as additional complexity in fiber cabling requirements.”

Comcast, Heynen noted, is taking a “lead role” in pushing virtualization, which allows it to add capacity without incurring exponential increases in space and power consumption.

“Even if Comcast moves away from its plan of delivering full-duplex (symmetric 10 Gbps) services in a node + zero environment, a virtualized CCAP core gives them the ability to scale at their own pace and at any location,” Heynen wrote. “Servers could still be located in existing headends or primary hub sites, or they could be deployed in centralized data centers. With workload balancing across their CCAP core servers, there are effectively no restrictions on where Comcast can grow its capacity.”

As for X1, Comcast executives have compared the micro-services-based nature of their vCCAP solution with the video operating system. Currently, Comcast licenses X1 technology to Cox Communications, which uses it as the foundation of its Contour video product. Canada’s Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications and Videotron also license X1 tech. 

CommScope is making its first appearance at ANGA COM in Cologne, Germany since acquiring Arris, and it will be subsequently demoing a range of new DOCSIS-enabled cable network technologies, as well as its own virtual CCAP.

With insurgent makers of software-powered Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) tech such as Harmonic and Nokia nipping at its heels, CommScope is showing off the E6000 vCore, a fully virtualized CCAP that it says is already in trials, with “significant deployments anticipated later this year.”

CommScope’s virtualized CCAP will initially run on the company’s dedicated CCAP hardware, the E6000. But it will soon move to support Intel-powered x86 servers as the vendor’s cable operator clients move into Distributed Access Architecture (DAA).

Meanwhile, with wireless competitors touting the ultra low latency of their developing 5G networks, CommScope is demoing a low latency version of DOCSIS that will reduce typical latency from around 25 milliseconds to around 1 millisecond.

CommScope’s demo will compare gaming applications on regular service flows against games running over prioritized low-latency flow. Among many other applications, low-latency DOCSIS, the company noted, will be crucial to gaming and virtual reality performance, as well as collision-avoidance systems in self-driving cars.

Also being demo’d: Frequency-Division Duplex (aka Soft FDD), which allows operators to remotely conduct frequency splits via software. Soft FDD uses Full Duplex DOCSIS technology and provides a foundation for symmetrical services, CommScope said

“Residential home networks now rival enterprises in both demands from internet-connected devices and for performance of managed services,” said Kevin Keefe, CommScope’s senior VP and segment leader, network & cloud. “We are developing technology and architectures that result in smarter, adaptive networks. With these announcements, we’re accelerating the march toward virtual, automated and orchestrated infrastructure capable of delivering massive amounts of capacity and bandwidth.”

Cable operator spending on two key network-facing initiatives – distributed access architectures (DAA) and new “virtual” converged cable access platform (vCCAP) implementations – is poised to ramp up over the next five years, according to a new forecast from Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.

RELATED: Ramping Up for Remote PHY

Amid MSO plans to move ahead with multi-year transitions to next-gen technologies, Kagan sees spending on remote PHY and remote MACPHY optical nodes – elements that move important electronics and functions of traditionally centralized CCAPs toward the edge of the network – jumping from $60.9 million this year to $544.7 million in 2019 and $969.2 million in 2022.

RELATED: CableLabs Moves Ahead with Remote MACPHY

Kagan is also forecasting that virtual CCAP/CMTS revenue will climb from $20.5 million in 2018 to $536.3 million in 2022, anticipating that operators in North America and Western Europe will lead the way initially in virtualizing a “small percentage of their systems.”

The moves toward DAA and software-driven vCCAPs are entering play as MSOs strive to add capacity to their networks while also reducing the headend/hub space, cooling and powering requirements that come with traditional, centralized, chassis-based CCAP products.

And while the amount of spend that will go toward the access network won’t rise a huge amount even as more of that money goes toward DAA and virtual CCAP deployments (with a good portion of going to market-leading, incumbent CCAP suppliers), those initiatives are likewise expected to open up opportunities for others that are trying to elbow their way in.

“It’s clear that there will be opportunities for those new suppliers,” Jeff Heynen, consulting director at SNL Kagan, said.

Of recent note, Sweden’s ComHem is starting to deploy a centralized virtual CCAP approach in partnership with Harmonic and its “CableOS” platform, and WideOpenWest is pushing ahead on a DAA project with Nokia.

RELATED: Harmonic IDs a Real Deployment for Its Virtual CCAP

Heynen said getting a handle on space constraints will likely be the biggest initial driver for vCCAP deployments, noting that some MSOs are “feeling the pinch” in their headend and hub sites as they continue to need to tack on capacity.

However, he stressed in his study that even MSOs that are early to the game with virtual CCAP deployments will be operating co-existing virtual and non-virtual CCAPs for a number of years.

Harmonic CEO Patrick Harshman said the company now has more than a dozen commercial deployments and “advanced field trials" underway for CableOS, the company’s virtualized Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP).

Harshman, speaking Wednesday (February 28) on Harmonic’s Q4 2017 earnings call, didn’t identify them all, but said the biggest concentration is in North America and Europe. Harmonic has already identified Sweden’s Com Hem as its first deployment partner for Cable OS. Harmonic also has a warrants agreement with Comcast based on sales to the MSO and deployment milestones that include the CableOS product.

RELATED: Harmonic IDs a Real Deployment for its Virtual CCAP

When Harmonic announced Q3 results last October, the company said it had “material” commitments for CableOS with more than ten leading operators.

Virtualized CCAPs such as Harmonic’s are gaining traction as MSOs look to become more agile in their service launches, pump more capacity on their networks, and reduce the space, cooling and powering requirements that come with traditional, purpose-built CCAP chassis.  In the case of CableOS, key functionality is in software that runs on commercial off-the-shelf, Intel-based x86 servers.

RELATED: Harmonic Virtualizes the CCAP

Harshman stressed that there’s a “misperception” that CableOS is targeted exclusively at emerging Distributed Access Architectures. While CableOS is designed to “shine” in those scenarios, it also works on centralized CCAP solutions, with Com Hem being an early case in point, as it’s running CableOS on servers located where the legacy hardware-based platform was based.

RELATED: Gearing Up For Remote PHY 

In addition to direct sales, Harmonic is also eyeing opportunities for CableOS via a partnership with Arista announced late last year. Arista said its EOS and R-series router platforms have been certified with Harmonic’s CableOS.

Considering its progress with CableOS, Harmonic also maintained its target of cable edge-related revenues of $100 million-plus this year.

But some analysts aren’t completely convinced. For instance, Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold issued a note holding that checks around the industry regarding the acceptance of some new platforms, specifically around virtual CCAPs, indicate that Harmonic could fall short of its projections.

“We have no qualms with the strategy, but expect the road to recovery is a long one,” he wrote. “We conservatively model Cable Edge revenue below management’s target of $100 million in 2018, while acknowledging potential upside to our numbers from faster Cable OS ramps and trial progress.”

Moving forward, Harmonic will continue to grapple with CCAP rivals that have developed or are exploring virtualized version of those products, including Cisco Systems, Casa Systems, Arris, Huawei and Vecima Networks.

Harmonic said gains in business tied to “premium” over-the-top services and traction for its new virtual Converged Cable Access Platform (vCCAP) are helping to overcome weakness from its legacy cable edge business.

Q3 revenues of $92 million beat Wall Street’s expectation of $85.5 million, thanks in part to a 15% surge from Harmonic’s video segment that came way of growing demand for the company’s live OTT platform.

Harmonic also saw “material” commitments for CableOS, its virtual CCAP product introduced last year, with commercial deployments and field trials expanding to more than ten “leading” cable operators worldwide, company CEO Patrick Harshman, said Monday on the earnings call.  

Harshman said that included a new Tier 1 customer design win, but declined to name it, but noted later that it’s an “early order” and that Harmonic will “have to prove ourselves out and see that scale.”

RELATED: Harmonic, Comcast Strike Warrant Agreement

Harmonic sees CableOS-related revenues to exceed $100 million in 2018.

On the flip side, legacy cable edge revenues continued to decline. Revenues in that segment, which includes traditional edge QAMs, dropped 27%, to $7.5 million. Dollars in the cable edge businesses aren’t expected to pour in more rapidly until after CableOS shipments begin ramping.

“There was no question that investments in traditional pay TV solutions is declining,” Harshman said.

That, he added, is driving a migration to “OTT 2.0,” or premium quality live services for TVs and mobile devices. In addition to helping to underpin streamed skinny bundles from distributors, Harmonic is also targeting a new class of direct-to-consumer services being launched by media companies around the world.

Harmonic also removed an overhang from its business, announcing it had reached a settlement with Avid that ends patent infringement litigation. Harmonic has agreed to pay $6 million over 3.5 years, starting with $2.5 million to be paid in Q4 2017.

RELATED: Avid: Patent Fight with Harmonic Heading to Trial

Though Harmonic sees a strong growth path ahead, Simon Leopold, analyst with Raymond James, said in a research note that there’s worry that “management has set a high bar” for 2018 that leans heavily on new products.

“Our checks suggest the acceptance of some new platforms may not live up to management’s expectations,” he wrote. “We have no qualms with the strategy but expect the road to recovery is a long one. We believe Harmonic could fall short of its Cable Edge revenue target of $100 million in 2018.”

Leopold maintained his “Underperform” rating on Harmonic’s stock.

There’s been a debate roiling in cable engineering circles about the pros and cons of Remote PHY and Remote MAC/PHY, options being weighed as operators mull new Distributed Access Architectures (DAA) that aim to boost capacity while also reducing their power and space requirements in the headend or hub.

Nokia holds that the debate has been rendered moot following the debut of a new virtualized DAA platform that features a “universal” cable access node that can be configured to run as a Remote PHY (RPD) device or Remote MAC/PHY (RMD) device.

In addition to reducing space and power requirements, cable operators are also looking for DAA to improve the fidelity of the outside plant and to help them drive more capacity for DOCSIS 3.1 and set them up for Full Duplex DOCSIS, an annex for D3.1 that will support multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds and require a node+0/deep fiber network in which there are no amplifiers between the node and the home.

The new node, Nokia claims, can turn the MAC portion on or off, because it’s been reduced to an independent software virtual network function that can be controlled remotely by the cable operator.  

“We believe we’ve ended the debate,” Jeff White, head of cable strategy at Nokia’s fixed networks group, proclaimed, holding that the dividing line between the two options is now “quite small” and that this is the sort of breakthrough that makes this part of the architecture decision a secondary one for MSOs.

He added: “It’s a piece of software” that can run in a server, in a traditional CCAP [converged cable access platform] chassis or in the node itself.

Nokia, whose work in this area stems from its 2016 acquisition of Gainspeed, plans to show off its new platform at next week’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

RELATED: Nokia Nabs Gainspeed

The product set and features for Nokia’s virtual DAA platform include a virtualized CMTS (that includes the DOCSIS MAC), the aforementioned universal node, and an access controller that can support both Remote PHY and Remote MAC/PHY.

Nokia’s move will also put some completive heat in other vendors that have launched or are developing DAA products, a group that includes Arris, Cisco Systems, Casa Systems, Harmonic and Huawei.

The toggling capability represents a new approach for Nokia, as Gainspeed had previously been pushing a technology agenda that centered on Remote MAC/PHY. White said the “light bulb went off” about this more flexible approach as operators started to think more critically about their network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) strategies.

White said Nokia has found that operators are looking at both options, as one or the other might work better under circumstances, scenarios and conditions.

If space in the headend is major issue, he said, a Remote MAC/PHY approach might make more sense, and allow operators to reduce or eliminate hubs. Remote MAC/PHY might also be better suited for a strategy in which an MSO is looking to centralize and virtualize the bulk of the command and control mechanisms from a centralized system or data center.

Remote PHY, he added, might be a better option if power is limited in the cable operator’s outside plant, as a Remote MAC/PHY node is likely to require between 5% to 10% more power than a Remote PHY node, which requires less processing horsepower.

White said operators are looking at a “cap and grow” approach to DAA as well as some specific use cases, such as a “hotspot” on the network or in contested MDU environments. Still others might go at it hub-by-hub as they look to consolidate those.

Nokia hasn’t announced any deployments, but Comcast, Liberty Global and WideOpenWest were among the MSOs that praised Nokia’s acquisition of Gainspeed last year. At the time, WOW said it was “well down the path" with testing and "preparing for deployment" of Gainspeed's vCCAP.

“Nokia is revolutionizing the cable industry with an innovative new cable solution that gives operators the flexibility to implement a distributed access architecture without being handcuffed to a specific approach,” Cash Hagen, WOW’s chief operations officer, said the release issued Monday. “Virtualizing the DAA not only simplifies the network and drives cost savings, it also allows us to accelerate the delivery of new services that ultimately provide a better customer experience.”

Harmonic has begun revenue shipments for CableOS, its software-powered “virtual” Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) that runs on off-the-shelf hardware, the company confirmed Tuesday on its Q4 earnings call.

CableOS, announced last September at the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia, has reached its first general availability product release, Patrick Harshman, Harmonic’s CEO said.

RELATED: Harmonic Virtualizes the CCAP

CableOS has been “deployed into [a] live commercial environment delivering DOCSIS broadband service to paying European cable subscribers,” he said. Harmonic didn’t name that operator, but Harshman said it’s a “major cable operator in Europe.”

Last fall, Harmonic also announced a warrant agreement with Comcast based on sales to the MSO and deployment milestones involving the CableOS product.

RELATED: Harmonic, Comcast Strike Warrant Agreement

Harshman said the current version of CableOS provides the functionality of an “off the shelf” CMTS (cable modem termination system), adding that Harmonic is now set on adding additional features that will lead toward “2.0 functionality in the context of a virtualized system.”

He said Harmonic expects the revenue ramp for CableOS to accelerate later into the year.

Harmonic’s early progress with CableOS is a step toward the company’s “ambitious target” of hitting a $100 million run rate in the vendor’s Cable Edge segment, Simon Leopold, analyst with Raymond James, said in research note issued Wednesday. Leopold said he expects a “more material ramp” for the CableOS product in the back of 2017.

Harmonic’s push with a virtual CCAP follows a broader industry trend in which cable operators are looking to implement software-based access platforms and eventually steer away from today’s commonly deployed centralized, purpose-built CCAP chassis.

In a survey of 35 operators around the globe, Kagan Research analyst Jeff Heynen found that 61% of them plan to start virtualizing their Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAPs) or begin the shift to a distributed access architecture (DAA) by the end of 2018.

RELATED: Cable Ops Poised for Push Into Virtualization, Distributed Architectures

That shift should open doors to new CCAP entrants, such as Nokia and Harmonic, that are trying to trying to elbow their way into a market that is presently been dominated by Arris, Cisco Systems and Casa Systems, Heynen said in an interview about the survey.

While the incumbent suppliers have virtualized platforms on their product roadmaps, Nokia entered the vCCAP game last year when it acquired a startup called Gainspeed.

On the financial front, Harmonic said sales to $113.1 million, helped the stronger-than-expected results from video product sales. The results beat Leopold’s estimate of $108.98 million as well as Wall Street’s expectation of $108.93 million.  

Leopold maintained the firm’s Underperform rating on Harmonic shares.

Harmonic shares were up 9.26% (49 cents), to $5.89 each in late morning trading Wednesday.

Highlighting cable’s coming shift toward more virtualized, distributed access network architectures, Harmonic’s Cable Edge business dropped 12% year-over-year, and 47% on a sequential basis in Q3.

Harmonic shares were down 21.5%, to $4.20 each, in morning trading Thursday, the day after the company posted Q3 results that missed financial targets.

The dip in that part of Harmonic’s business arrived as MSO’s “pivoted faster than we anticipated” to the vendor’s soon-to-be-released virtual Converged Cable Access Platform, company CEO Patrick Harshman said Wednesday on the company’s Q3 earnings call. That platform, called CableOS, virtualizes the functions of the CMTS and edge QAM in software running on off-the-shelf servers.

“Consequently demand for our legacy Cable Edge products softened significantly during the quarter,” Harshman said. “On the Cable Edge side of our business, the year is turning out to be even more transformational. Entering the year we knew that the traditional edge QAM market was in decline. Instead of deciding to go home, we decided to go big.”

Harmonic introduced CableOS in September, and later announced a warrants agreement with Comcast that will factor in future sales of products, including the vendor’s new vCCAP.

RELATED: Cable-Tec Expo: Harmonic Virtualizes the CCAP

Harmonic is starting CableOS shipments in Q4, with accelerated deployments expected throughout 2017.  Harmonic’s competitors in the CCAP sector include Arris, Cisco Systems, Casa Systems, Huawei and Vecima, which have all introduced vCCAP products or have them on their roadmaps.

On the video end of the business, Harshman said the company is on track to achieve synergy targets tied to its acquisition of Thomson Video Networks. He said Harmonic has also locked in a video cloud win with an unnamed tier 1 North American service provider that includes over-the-top streaming, cloud DVR and dynamic ad insertion.

Harshman said Harmonic is also “finally seeing real signs of life” for 4K and high dynamic range channel deployments.

“Despite the late arrival of 4K, Harmonic continue to invest in enabling R&D and ecosystem integration work, and consequently we are well positioned to take advantage of the 4K wave,” he said.

Harmonic posted Q3 sales of $104.4 million, missing consensus of $107.4 million, and guidance for $105 million to $110 million, Raymond James Simon Leopold said in a research note distributed  Thursday.  Harmonic also posted non-GAAP loss of 1 cent per share, missing consensus of 3 cents per share and guidance of 1 to 3 cents.

The company expects Q4 sales of $106 million to $111 million, versus consensus of $115 million, noted Leopold, who maintained his “underperform” rating on the stock.

“Despite expectations for a loaded 4Q16 driven by the expected ramp of its new CableOS platform, the 4Q16 guidance implies that the uptake for the new cable edge platform may be more gradual than initially hoped,” Leopold wrote. 

Keying on a major trend that will impact the future of the cable access network, Harmonic has introduced CableOS, a virtualized, software-based version of the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP).

Harmonic is entering the vCCAP game as cable operators start to consider a shift away from centralized, monolithic CCAPs, which combine the functions of the cable modem termination system and edge QAM, and eye more distributed, scalable architectures that can be controlled and manipulated by software in tandem with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware.

Get complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2016

Harmonic said CableOS runs on COTS Intel servers installed in headends, hubs or data centers, and that MSOs can add servers as they need to tack on additional capacity.

Going with a virtualized approach could also help Harmonic gain more traction in a CCAP sector that is dominated today by Arris, Cisco Systems and Casa Systems, which are also working on vCCAP products. Harmonic will also be looking to fend off others that are aggressively pursuing this market, including Huawei and Nokia, which recently acquired a virtual CCAP-focused startup called Gainspeed.

RELATED: Nokia Puts Gainspeed Buy to Work

“We believe that this a great opportunity to address key challenges that current solutions don’t resolve,” particularly when it comes to space and power requirements as well as future capacity growth, Asaf Matatyaou, vice president of solutions and product management for Harmonic’s cable edge business, said. “We’re seeing unprecedented growth, and pain points that are reaching our customers’ operational and financial limits…We feel like we’ve solved the great equation.”

Harmonic’s new offering is a remote PHY platform that works in tandem with a software-based core that that works with the edge devices. That combination can also support centralized deployments as well, Matatyaou said. .  In centralized CCAP situations, Harmonic’s NSG Pro can serve as the video core/PHY shelf. 

RELATED: Casa Systems Intros Virtual CCAP

Harmonic claims that its approach can help MSOs reduce space and power by up to 75% when used in a centralized CCAP deployment or more than 90% in a distributed remote PHY scenario.

Regarding the remote PHY element, Harmonic plans to come out with modules that can fit into existing nodes from other suppliers as well as its own nodes that are tailored for the virtualized approach.

RELATED: Harmonic Seeks Edge With ‘Distributed’ CCAP

Matatyaou said a barrier has been crossed in terms of having access to the right mix of CPU power and software capabilities to bring a vCCAP to bear, and could lead to a day when operators can avoid having to go through upgrade cycles of purpose-built CCAP hardware – from cards to the chassis themselves.

Harmonic sees CableOS playing a role early on in systems where the centralized CCAPs are starting to be tapped out – from a space and power standpoint – and need a sustainable path forward as they add capacity.  That might not be the case across an MSO’s entire footprint, but could enter play where an operator is feeling the heat from a competitor like Google Fiber.

Harmonic said CableOS is in trials with multiple tier 1 cable operators in North America and Europe. Initial deployments of CableOS expected to begin in Q4 2016, Matatyaou said.

Harmonic (booth 1948) is debuting CableOS at this week’s Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia. 

Arris said Altice will deploy its flagship cable access platform, the E6000, to enable gigabit broadband services in multiple parts of the globe.

Altice will deploy the E6000, a DOCSIS 3.1-facing converged cable access platform (CCAP), via SFR in France, Orange-Tricom in The Dominican Republic, along with an expansion of the E6000 footprint at Suddenlink Communications, the U.S.-based MSO Altice acquired late last year.

Arris announced the deal ahead of an investor meeting being held today in New York. 

In February, Altice, which is in the process of acquiring Cablevision Systems, said it was committed to Operation GigaSpeed, a Suddenlink initiative announced in 2014 aimed at bringing 1-Gig broadband to 90% of the MSO’s footprint by 2017.

“Altice is fast-becoming a major player in the global pay TV market, and it's an exciting time for ARRIS to be collaborating with operators from the Altice Group around the world. Selecting the ARRIS E6000 CER is a strategic technology investment for Altice that benefits its global operations today and into the future,” said Bruce McClelland, president of Network & Cloud, Global Services at Arris, in a statement.

“Working with ARRIS assures us from both a technological and operational perspective as the ARRIS E6000 CER is a proven, global platform with a clear roadmap for the future,” added Max Blumberg, CTO of Altice. “We look forward to deploying the platform across the Altice properties as we strive to deliver the broadband speeds and services our customers demand from us.”

Arris isn’t the only network vendor factoring into Altice’s gigabit plans. Last April, Altice announced it would also tap Cisco Systems’s CCAP products as it poured its foundation for DOCSIS 3.1, a new platform that will bring multi-gigabit speeds to HFC networks. Cisco formally launched its flagship cable access network platform, the cBR-8, at last year’s INTX show.

Shares in Juniper Networks were down more than 5% in pre-market trading Friday, the morning after the company announced that it was reducing third quarter revenue guidance.

Juniper said revenues for the period are now expected to be in the range of $1.11 billion to $1.12 billion, down from previous guidance of $1.15 billion to $1.2 billion. The primary culprit: lower-than-anticipated demand from service providers, particularly in the U.S.

Juniper, citing its ongoing cost-reduction initiatives, said it also expects non-GAAP net  income per diluted share to be in the range of 34 cents to 36 cents, versus original guidance of 35 cents to 40 cents per diluted share. Juniper Networks will release third quarter results on October 23.

Juniper is looking to expand its cable presence in part by partnering with Gainspeed on a “virtual” form of a Converged Cable Access Platform. Juniper has also invested in the cable access startup.

Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold maintained his “market perform” ranking on Juniper. “We think Juniper's cost cutting and efforts to evolve to adapt to software centric networks offer encouragement, but we think it's prudent to stay on the sidelines on the stock,” Leopold wrote in a research note issued Friday.

Juniper shares were down $1.14 (5.44%) to $19.80 each in pre-market trading Friday.

The cable industry will have a front row seat as The Linux Foundation moves forward on the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) project, an initiative involving a large group of carrier and vendors that aims to build a common, interoperable platform that can accelerate the network functions virtualization marketplace.

CableLabs is a founding member of OPNFV and Chris Donley, CableLabs’ director of advanced networks and applications, will serve on the OPNFV board, according to this blog post by CableLabs principal architect Don Clarke.

Virtualization is becoming a big focus for telecom and, by extension, for the cable industry, which is mulling the best way forward on a virtual form of the converged cable access platform (CCAP), a high-density, energy-saving access architecture that packs in the functions of the cable modem termination system and the edge QAM.

Donley told Multichannel News earlier this year that CableLabs had begun to investigate how a virtual CCAP would look like, noting that such work was still in the “relatively early stages,” and stemmed from CableLabs’ study of the advantages promised by software-defined networking and NFV, which creates a path to putting into software and off-the-shelf servers many functions that have historically been packed into purpose-built hardware.

“OPNFV will create a reference platform where performance and interoperability of open source NFV solutions will be validated. As one of those involved in the early discussions that led to the creation of OPNFV, I am extremely pleased that we have been able to help bring into existence this new forum,” Clarke wrote, adding that CableLabs hosted the inception meeting for OPNFV at the organization’s Sunnyvale location  in June. “For the first time network designers will not be limited by the constraints of fixed hardware to design their networks.”

He added that an open source approach will allow for specs and implementation to “occur simultaneously,” speed up the overall process.

Clarke, who joined CableLabs in May, also shed some light on CableLabs' progress on the vCCAP front, noting that the R&D house has developed a CMTS plug-in for OpenDaylight, an open source SDN controller, that was used by several vendors to show off SDN/NFV implementations at last week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver. Clarke said the CMTS plug-in has been incorporated into the OpenDaylight “Helium” release.

The Linux Foundation on Tuesday announced the following members of OPNFV:

Platinum Members: AT&T, Brocade, China Mobile, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, NEC, Nokia Networks, NTT DOCOMO, Red Hat, Telecom Italia and Vodafone.

Sliver-Level Founding Members: 6WIND, Alcatel-Lucent, ARM, Broadcom, CableLabs, Cavium, CenturyLink, Ciena, Citrix, ClearPath Networks, ConteXtream, Coriant, Cyan, Dorado Software, Ixia, Metaswitch Networks, Mirantis, Orange, Sandvine, Sprint and Wind River.

According to The Linux Foundation, OPNFV “will establish a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform that industry peers will build together to advance the evolution of NFV and ensure consistency, performance and interoperability among multiple open source components.”

Noting that multiple open source NFV “building blocks” existing already, OPNFV will seek to coordinate continuous integration and testing while filling development gaps.

The initial scope of OPNFV will be on building NFV infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtualized Infrastructure Management (VIM) leveraging existing open source components where possible. OPNFV will also license new components under the Apache License Version 2.0 and will work within the licensing requirements of upstream projects in order to contribute code back to these projects.

Board officers for OPNFV include Prodip Sen, board chair (HP); Margaret Chiosi, president (AT&T); Wenjing Chu, secretary (Dell); and Hui Deng, treasurer (China Mobile).