Over the past two years, members of the CableLabs Optical Technologies team had the privilege to speak at the Fiber-To-The Home (FTTH) Council’s yearly FTTH Connect event. FTTH Connect annually attracts many thought leaders from both the vendor and service provider communities.
One observation we made while attending FTTH Connect was the growing appetite of FTTH Connect attendees to learn more about cable industry initiatives and solutions. Not only were the presentations well attended, but in one instance the Q&A session lasted for 30 minutes past the allotted time. Presentations provided FTTH perspective in a cable network, motivation for fiber deployments to complement the HFC network, PON traffic modeling, and supporting cable’s triple play services with fiber home run implementations. This appetite for more cable knowledge was somewhat surprising but welcome.
The impetus for CableLabs’ involvement was not only to show the world that the cable industry is pushing FTTH solutions, but also to introduce the FTTH community to CableLabs as a leader of innovation and R&D solutions. CableLabs has introduced several solutions to provide a means and support strategies of operators for pushing fiber deeper into the HFC network, including FTTH. These solutions include DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON (DPoE), Triple Play over PON and the group of specifications based on the Distributed CCAP Architecture.
Based on the show in 2015, we set out to increase our contributions at the 2016 FTTH Connect event. We proposed an entire cable track to the FTTH Council and were unanimously approved. We then set out to offer cable’s story at this year’s conference. It begins with Guy McCormick, Senior Vice President at Cox Communications, who will be one of the shows keynote speakers. Cox Communications is one of the most forward-thinking cable companies in the world, and they have an aggressive strategy around FTTH deployments. Jon Schnoor will discuss how we achieve fiber parity with cable services to that of the HFC access network. Steve Burroughs will present how to move beyond technology specific provisioning and work toward an access network agnostic infrastructure through virtualization. Curtis Knittle will explore next generation PON solutions that will establish 100 Gbps EPON and include an operator’s perspective on their transition to FTTH including challenges, technology tradeoffs, operational challenges and solutions. Curtis Knittle is also hosting a panel regarding FTTH in cable, that will explore an operator’s perspective.
If you’re planning to attend FTTH Connect 2016, be sure to attend the cable industry sessions to see what is cool and interesting!