Offering another indicator that the deployment ramp of DOCSIS 3.1 is in its early stages, MaxLinear said it has shipped more than 100,000 front-end systems-on-chips (SoCs) and programmable gain amplifier chipsets for the emerging multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks.
MaxLinear has teamed with Intel Corp. on DOCSIS 3.1 modems and gateways. Together, they are competing in that market with Broadcom. Among CPE vendors, Hitron Technologies Americas demonstrated a DOCSIS 3.1 gateway powered by Intel and MaxLinear silicon at the recent SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia.
“Within our operator family, the cable DOCSIS data gateway market is an exciting strategic growth platform for us particularly as we start to see initial data service deployments around the new multi gigabit cable DOCSIS 3.1 standards,” Kishore Seendripu, MaxLinear’s CEO, said Monday on the company’s Q3 call.
He said the “bigger part of the ramp” is expected to occur in the second of 2017. “We have not yet seen what I call a stronger part of the ramp for DOCSIS 3.1 yet, and the current expectation is still it's going to be a second half phenomenon.”
Several cable operators, including Comcast, WideOpenWest, Midco, RCN, among others, have been rolling out or trialing 1-Gig residential services using DOCSIS 3.1.
RELATED: Comcast Sets DOCSIS 3.1 Expansion, Launches 1-Gig in Detroit
Though MaxLinear continues to wind-down the video SoC business it has as part of its 2015 acquisition of Entropic, Seendripu noted that silicon for Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) remains an “increasingly strategic part of our business.” MoCA is a speedy, video-focused home networking technology for in-home coax networks, used primarily for whole-home DVRs and WiFi adapters and bridges.
Of recent note, MaxLinear demonstrated a new multi-gigabit MoCA 2.5 platform at a CableLabs-run conference. MoCA introduced the 2.5 spec in April.
While the MoCA 2.5 chips are sampling now, Seendripu expects revenues for the company’s MoCA 2.1 chip to start in mid-2017.
MoCA 2.1 is a firmware feature and extension of MoCA 2.0 that supports throughputs of 500 Mbps and a 1 Gbps “bonded” outputs along other components aimed to set a migration path toward MoCA 2.5.
MaxLinear posted Q3 revenues of $96.3 million, up 1% year-on-year, and net income of $9.7 million (14 cents per share), down from year-ago net income of $22.6 million (33 cents per share). The company expects Q4 revenues of between $85 million and $89 million.
