Carrier Ethernet Will Be Top-of-Mind at Cable-Tec Expo

CEN Feature (Oct 25 2011) Access , Middle Mile , Cable / MSO

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   Carrier Ethernet will be a key focus area at the Cable-Tec Expo scheduled for November 14-17 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. Sponsored by the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, the Cable-Tec Expo aims to keep cable television operators up to date on the latest technology, products and services.

   The topic of Carrier Ethernet will be “pervasive” at the event, said Daniel Howard, senior vice president and chief technology officer for the SCTE, in an interview.

   Of particular interest will be a workshop track focused on business services, Howard said. Within that track will be workshops on backhaul, fiber solutions, wireless, advanced advertising and SIP services, all of which may include a Carrier Ethernet component, Howard noted.

   In addition, Howard said, “At the expo itself, there will be a plenitude of vendors offering fiber-based solutions for cable operators to get reliably and rapidly into the business services arena.”

   Cable operators see business services as the next major revenue opportunity for them, Howard noted. And while small- and medium-sized companies are likely to look at cable modem-based solutions, larger companies will be looking at Carrier Ethernet, he said.

   Specific workshops and sub-topics within those workshops that are likely to include Carrier Ethernet include:

   • Advanced Service- The Business of Business Services: Aligning Business Processes and Operational Resources for SLA Committed, Ethernet-Delivered Services.   As Howard noted, “Businesses are paying more for connectivity and expecting higher bars on quality and reliability. Service level agreements often specify the particulars of services—packet drop rates, even latency.”

   • Carrier Backhaul- Cell Tower Backhaul Best Practices. Wireless carriers increasingly are demanding high-speed connectivity to cell towers, and cable networks based on Carrier Ethernet are well suited to meeting this need.

   • Access Network- This session is expected to touch on how next-generation access technologies including Ethernet can help address unprecedented pressures on network functionality and scale. Howard notes that the cable industry is seeing substantial changes in the neighborhood fiber-fed nodes where signals are shifted onto coax. “We are now seeing the fiber nodes morphing into IP-based devices,” said Howard. “The notion is that we will send data to the fiber node using baseband modulation. Once in the fiber node, [signals] can be passed along to a Carrier Ethernet link to a business or converted to analog and sent over coax to the home.” By using the same aggregation network for business and residential services, cable operators can minimize costs and “kill two birds with one stone,” Howard said.

   More information about Cable-Tec Expo 2011 is available on the SCTE website here.
   

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