SFA's Connolly says: 'The key to the whole thing is digitizing the upstream. Any new operator using our
equipment is going to use digital reverse rather than analog because we can now engineer both the performance and the capacity of the upstream.'
cableworld.com
Vendors Riding Growth Bubble
By Jim Barthold
The cable industry's traditional cadre of vendors knows what to do when presented with an opportunity: build new products and find ways to make them indispensable. That's the case these days as rebuilds and overbuilds fill the plates of the industry's top networking equipment vendors. And the fat times don't appear to be ending any time soon. 'There's going to be some longevity here,' said Terry Wright, C-Cor.net's CTO, pointing to an eventual slowdown in the 2003-2004 time frame. 'The overbuilders and the utilities are going to have some duration to them.'
Wright's estimates are too conservative, said Paul Connolly, VP-marketing and network architectures at Scientific-Atlanta. 'We're at the very early stages of building the kind of broadband networks the public is going to require over the next 10 or 20 years,' he said. 'We haven't even started to load up these networks. Then you start to think how powerful these devices are that people are going to want to put on these networks.' Future-proofing the networks without bottling in innovation or drying up business, all agreed, is the trick.
'There are some types of architectures that are scalable. That will probably keep them for a few years,' said Chris Bonang, Harmonic's director-market development. 'Who knows today what the bandwidth demand is going to be' There are estimates all over the board.'
Great expectations
Expectations are tough to pin down. 'You know it's going to be big, but is it going to be huge, or is it just going to be kind of large'' he asked. 'And what's the time frame' That's tough to say.' It also comes down to the type of network being built ' or rebuilt. 'In terms of being able to future-proof the network as much as possible, we're working with a different set of constraints than we would in a new build situation,' said Joseph Nucara, VP-worldwide marketing for Royal Philips Electronics NV's broadband networks division.
'In a rebuild situation there is a re-use of housings that the customer desires. That's a constraint that we have to get around,' he added. 'In a rebuild, you can take advantage of most of or some of the state-of-the-art equipment, but you can't always take advantage of all the state-of-the-art architectures because, by definition, you're trying to re-use as much as possible.'
'In a new build you don't have the legacy to try to contend with. You can take today's state-of-the-art and run with it without having to make any kind of compromises,' added Bill Dawson, Philips' director-advanced systems. So, starting from scratch is better than recycling what's there' 'I guess that depends on the customer's constraint at any particular point in time and what they can afford versus their foresight into the future,' said Dawson. 'Yes, new build has a clean slate, but not everybody has the flexibility to pursue new build.'
Those who do ' the so-called overbuilders ' come in with an edge over the incumbents, said Bonang. 'They've (incumbents) just finished an upgrade, and now all of a sudden they're finding out that upgrade was not nearly enough. Honestly, I think they have a problem. While they certainly improved their network and it's much better than cable networks four or five years ago, it's not going to be to the level these overbuilders are going to have, both in performance and reliability and ability to deliver services.' That's a bit harsh, according to David Grubb, VP-broadband communications sector's network technology at
Motorola. 'The new builder might have more flexibility in the architecture because they have a clean slate, but they also have a heckuva lot more work that they have to do because they don't have anything in the ground or hanging on the poles,' he pointed out. 'There are advantages and disadvantages on both sides.'
In some instances, the disadvantage rests with the incumbent.
'It's always easier to do it if you have no existing network in place. That's just common sense,' said Connolly. 'The question is how far the existing operator wants to go in terms of increasing capacity, reliability, performance.' This leads to some fingernail biting and brings the beancounters into the picture.
'A lot of times the existing operator is more likely to say, 'Gee, I can make use of more of the coax and not put in quite as much bandwidth or capacity for interactive services, but save a fair bit of money,'' Connolly added. One thing stands out: The target market is different. For years, no one challenged the cable system's right to provide video service. Today, those same broadband pipes carry voice and data as well as lucrative advanced interactive services. Now there's a reason to overbuild. Keep adding 'For years it's been add more channels, add more channels, add more channels,' Grubb said. 'You still have that, but on top of it you have the need to roll out all these two-way individualized services.' Connolly agreed.
'The real issue comes down to the interactive capability, which means voice services, data services, video-on-demand services, video conference services, anything that's unique to individual users. The fundamental difference is the ability to target smaller and smaller pockets of users with the interactive capability and deliver more bits per user,' he said. At that point, the vendors differentiate themselves with variations on the hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) architecture. In many cases, it comes down to how they handle the return path.
'The key to the whole thing is digitizing the upstream,' Connolly said. 'Any new operator using our
equipment is going to use digital reverse rather than analog because we can now engineer both the
performance and the capacity of the upstream.'
Harmonic, Bonang said, is 'looking at a variety of
solutions. One is doing demodulation out in the node, pulling out part of the CMTS (cable modem
termination system), sticking it out in the node, getting it into baseband digital format efficiently.'
As part of this solution, Harmonic uses digital sampling, doing an analog/digital change-out on the return
path and transmitting the information back in baseband digital.
'But it's so bandwidth inefficient,' he noted. 'You don't really need it until you get to the point where
the bandwidth demand is so high you need a CMTS per node, and we're not there yet.' Bongang said.
That could be the inevitable solution to the bandwidth contention problems, said Wright.
'When you put the CMTS out there and you take each coaxial feeder wire that comes out of there and make it its
own DOCSIS network ... you're saying this is about as good as we can do, performance-wise, capacity-wise,
reduced contention scope-wise, until we do fiber to the home,' he said. The big word there is 'until.' While
network operators would like to think they've bought some security by building the latest, greatest transit networks
available, their vendors don't want to see the gravy train come to an end.
Some, like Grubb, don't see it happening anyway. 'Certainly within the planning horizon, there will be a couple
potential drivers that will cause operators to want to make changes in their networks,' he said. 'Either they'll be so
successful with advanced services they'll be downsizing nodes and adding equipment that way (or) there's some
chance that HDTV will drive the need for additional bandwidth.'
Whatever the case, the vendors will keep coming up with solutions to push the bandwidth higher and shove
contention lower.
'We're going to keep seeing fiber pushed close and closer to the home,' said Bonang. 'Eventually it
will probably go to the home, but that's certainly five years off and maybe longer.' |
