by Gary Bolton
President & CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association
After decades of “sweating the assets” of the hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) network, fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) is no longer just for “Greenfield” deployments within the cable industry.
That certainly seemed evident at last month’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo show in Philadelphia. In several key sessions throughout the three-day engineering extravaganza, senior cable-tech execs extolled the virtues of fiber-to-the-premises architecture and the PON-based services that run on it.
Take Comcast’s Rob Howald. Speaking at a Light Reading breakfast forum at Expo, Howald, a fellow and VP of network architecture at Comcast Cable, said the nation’s largest MSO plans to start integrating FTTP and PON into its cable networks sometime next year as part of its overall drive to offer multi-gig speeds throughout the country.
“Anything that connects to Ethernet is eligible to be your last mile… and pretty much everything connects to Ethernet,” he said as he explained the company’s related Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) strategy. “A first, natural complement after DOCSIS is fiber-to-the-home.”
Or take Midco’s Pao Lo, whose company recently announced plans to deploy FTTP to more than 65,000 homes and businesses in the Lawrence, KS, area and offer 10 Gig service over those lines using XGS-PON technology. Speaking at the same forum, Lo, VP of network engineering at Midco, noted that the midsized operator is preparing for the future even as it continues to upgrade its existing hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) plant for DOCSIS.
“I think fiber is the end game,” he said, noting that Midco will target its initial FTTP deployments to its most competitive markets. “Ideally, we’d love to get to fiber, but we have a legacy plant that we have to upkeep and also be able to maintain competitiveness.”
Or take Fernando Villaruel, chief architect of the MSO practice at Ciena. Speaking at one of the two fiber-oriented sessions that the equipment vendor hosted at Expo, Villaruel said that it makes great financial sense for cable operators to build FTTP networks in rural and other underserved markets, particularly with tens of billions of dollars in public subsidies now available from the federal and state governments.
“There’s enough money,” he noted. “We could rewire the entire U.S. with fiber.”
Leading industry analysts agree that fiber builds and upgrades have now risen to the top of the cable industry’s agenda. For instance, Jeff Heynen, VP of Broadband Access and Home Networking at Dell’Oro Group, said he’s seeing cable operators of all sizes pursuing FTTP builds and extensions in their markets. “We’re seeing that not only at the Tier I level but also at the Tier II and Tier III levels,” Heynen said, speaking on one of the same sessions as Villaruel. “It’s not only a commitment to fiber but also a commitment to multi-gigabit services.”
And who could blame operators? Although innovative technologies and techniques such as DOCSIS 4.0, DAA, spectrum mid-splits and high-splits, and network virtualization all offer plenty of promise for cable, they simply cannot match the multi-gigabit speeds, high reliability, low latency levels, lower operational expenses and other benefits that only all-fiber networks can deliver.
In other words, cable operators are increasingly recognizing that fiber represents their future.
Liberty Global has certainly seen the light. The large European MSO recently formed a joint venture with Telefónica and InfraVia Capital Partners to deploy FTTP to greenfield areas throughout the United Kingdom. Speaking at the opening session of Expo, Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries said he expects the “vast majority” of the company’s footprint to be covered with fiber over the next five to six years.
Fries said the company’s embrace of fiber reflects cable’s “existential” moment. “It’s life or death [for cable],” he declared.
Gary Bolton leads the Fiber Broadband Association, whose mission is to accelerate deployment of all-fiber access networks.
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