Huawei D-Cmts

Huawei Communicate
Unlocking
the potential of DOCSIS
through D-CMTS
Cable industry deregulation is unfolding in the developing
markets, giving providers there a unique opportunity to make
some noise in the fixed broadband business. Distributed-CMTS
is the technology that will make this happen.
By Jeff Heynen, Principal Analyst,
Broadband Access and Pay TV, Infonetics Research
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Emerging & developing
ro u n d t h e w o r l d , t e l c o a n d c a b l e
operators are in a heated battle to expand
their broadband subscriber bases. The
race to grow their footprints is especially
acute in emerging markets, such as China, Latin
America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia,
where fixed broadband services, particularly
DOCSIS services, havent been widely available or
have offered the bare minimum speeds sufficient
for e-mail and simple web browsing but not for
video streaming, video conferencing, gaming, and
other latency-sensitive applications.
For telco and cable operators, fixed broadband
services have to offer premium speeds, enough to
differentiate themselves from mobile broadband offerings
and consistently deliver the bandwidth-intensive video

applications of today and tomorrow. To deliver these
premium speeds, operators must push fiber all the
way to the home or business, or as close to end users as
economically possible.
For telcos, distributed solutions that push fiber deeper
into their networks without having to run fiber to the
home or business have been around for years. In many
emerging markets, telcos are delivering fiber to basements
and using VDSL2 or Ethernet as the final connection
into subscribers homes.
But for cable providers (MSOs), pushing fiber
deeper introduces complexity, as the traditional CMTS
(cable modem termination system) is deployed in cable
headends, along with edge QAMs and RF combiners
designed to convert and multiplex RF video and data
signals delivered to & from end users. This architecture
has been in place for years and has clearly worked well,
NOV 2013 . ISSUE 71
22
Thinking Big
Unlocking the potential of DOCSIS through D-CMTS
especially for cable operators in the mature markets of
North America and Western Europe.
There are inefficiencies in this traditional architecture,
including the conversion of RF signals to & from end
users to digital and optical signals at the optical node
and their reconversion back to RF at the headend.
Ideally, operators would prefer to convert once, either at
the optical node or via a remote CMTS located either
in a node or building, similar to the fiber architectures
currently in telco networks.
In addition, the expected growth of Wi-Fi hotspots
and small cells will put added bandwidth constraints
on cable networks, especially if that traffic must be
backhauled to a headend-based CMTS for MAC and
PHY layer processing and routing, with distribution
of a cluster of CMTS platforms closer to small cell and
hotspot locations reducing backhaul costs.
For business services, MSOs want to offer a fiberbased solution and a DOCSIS solution, depending on
the size of the target business and its bandwidth/SLA
requirements. By pushing the CMTS closer to end users,
as part of an overall deep fiber rollout, MSOs can offer
enterprises a wider tier of voice, data, and video services.
For cable operators in emerging markets, who
historically have been limited to delivering analog
video over one-way cable plant, regulatory restrictions
are increasingly being eliminated, creating an
opportunity to deliver broadband data and digital
video over bi-directional networks.
In China, the countrys provincial cable operators are
being consolidated in a USD30 billion plan to create a
nationwide next-generation broadband network. This
project would enable CATV provision of broadband,
voice, and cloud-based services, in addition to enhanced
video services such as VOD. Chinas plan requires
CATV providers to deliver a minimum of 20Mbps
of bandwidth to each subscriber, though 30Mbps is
preferable. These speeds are generally well above what
telcos can currently offer the vast majority of their
subscribers.
For most of Chinas CATV providers, however, the
costs of deploying a traditional DOCSIS architecture
using a headend-based CMTS are simply too high.
Whats more, traditional CMTS architecture doesnt
leverage the abundant fiber in most large cities which
would make it relatively inexpensive to deliver fiber to
MTU/MDU basements or nodes and address hundreds
of customers via a distributed architecture.
This same architecture is prevalent in regions as
diverse as Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Eastern
Europe, where fiber is available in metropolitan areas,
ready to drop to MTUs to deliver broadband data
services as well as existing video services.
23
NOV 2013 . ISSUE 71
Distributed CMTS platforms

Rather than deploying traditional, headend-based
CMTSs, designed to support tens of thousands of
subscribers, operators in these emerging markets are
opting for a distributed CMTS architecture, taking
advantage of fiber runs to nodes or basements and
then delivering traditional DOCSIS 2.0 or DOCSIS
3.0 services to end users. These distributed CMTS
platforms typically deliver either 8 or 16 bonded
downstream channels, 4 upstream channels, and
support for up to 384 subscribers per platform. The
maximum downstream speed is 800Mbps, with the
maximum upstream at 160Mbps.
Distributed CMTS (D-CMTS) is ideal for operators
in emerging markets for a number of reasons. First,
headend space is very limited and typically reserved
for video processing and playout platforms. In many
cases, there is no rack space for a traditional CMTS.
Operators can deploy D-CMTS platforms throughout
their network and scale their data services for hundreds
of subscribers at a time, rather than committing to
headend-based CMTS, which typically supports 10K
subscribers or more.
Operators can target neighborhoods and regions where
broadband speeds are limited, boosting take-up rates
and quickly building a loyal subscriber base. They
can also deploy voice and data services without
disrupting existing RF-based analog or digital video
services.
Because the D-CMTS platforms adhere to the
global DOCSIS standard, there is an established and
knowledgeable vendor community, ensuring a long life
for these platforms. The same is true for the GPON
technologies used to backhaul traffic from individual
D-CMTS platforms. D-CMTS platforms also have
very low power consumption; combined with passive
optical technologies for network uplinks, the D-CMTS
architecture is one of the most energy-efficient for
delivering voice and data services today.
D-CMTS provides a new level of architectural
flexibility for cable operators, which is critical in emerging
markets where operators are either overbuilding or
expanding in greenfield scenarios. Operators can either
replace existing optical nodes with D-CMTS or build
new networks without having to invest in costly optical
nodes, so the pricy endeavor of having to split nodes
based on increased subscriber or service growth can be
avoided. Whats more, operators can install the D-CMTS
in multiple locations, including outdoor cabinets, pole
mountings, and optical cable mountings. This flexibility
helps to reduce construction and engineering costs by
Huawei Communicate
giving providers multiple site options depending on

network status and the location of potential service areas.
Trial and deployment soon

The benefits of D-CMTS architecture seem
apparent to emerging market operators. Lab and
field trials are already being conducted, with
revenue-generating deployments expected early
next year. Operators, including Thailands TRUE,
Chinas Wasu Digital and Shenzhen Topway,
and Argentinas Televisa are trialing D-CMTS
platforms, and some operators already have existing
DOCSIS services. Whether D-CMTS is in place
or on the way, quick, efficient, and cost-effective
network expansion are critical.
Many of these operators are interested in the
D-CMTS architecture because they are true MSOs.
In other words, they have both cable and telco
plant, so the same architectural principles they
have followed in expanding their telco networks
(deep fiber plus Ethernet or xDSL to subscribers)
is exactly what they want to pursue for their cable
plant. In this case, the only option to do so costeffectively is D-CMTS.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in
Thailand, where TRUE has expanded its presence
through organic growth and acquisitions of both
smaller telco and cable TV providers. As of Q2
2013, TRUE had approximately 1.4 million DSL
subscribers and 200,000 cable subscribers.
Since 2009, TRUE has been expanding its
remote DSLAM footprint to deliver VDSL2
services to subscribers ahead of competition
from 3G providers. TRUE has also been quietly
rolling out a GPON network aimed at delivering
100Mbps of bandwidth to subscribers in and
around Bangkok.
Earlier this year, TRUE announced a plan to install
DOCSIS 3.0 equipment to cover 4 million homes in 61
provinces. Between the upgrades from ADSL to VDSL2
and DOCSIS 2.0 to 3.0, TRUE intends to migrate 50%
of its broadband subscriber base to premium broadband
services by the end of 2013.
For its cable plant, part of the upgrade will be
completed using D-CMTS platforms. As the operator
has spent extensively to push fiber closer to both
consumer and enterprise customers, D-CMTS makes
sense as a complement to headend and hub-based
CMTS upgrades. In areas where subscriber densities
are expected to be lower, D-CMTS platforms can be
deployed to replace existing optical nodes.
The future for D-CMTS

Currently, emerging markets are the focus for
D-CMTS deployments, but North American and
Western European cable operators are facing the longterm threat of exhausting spectrum on their hybrid fibercoax (HFC) networks. There are many architectural
debates going on regarding the future of the cable access
network; many revolve around the concept of the remote
PHY. Basically, cable operators are considering pushing
the PHY layer of the CMTS out to existing optical nodes,
which should enable the same benefits outlined afore. In
addition, these operators are already successfully delivering
enterprise and Wi-Fi services beyond the more traditional
consumer voice, data, and video. Thus, the need to
transform their existing optical nodes into more intelligent,
distributed CMTS platforms is even more pressing.
The coming rollouts of CCAP (converged cable
access platforms) and DOCSIS 3.1 will provide shortterm solutions to the pending bandwidth crunch, but
with operators looking to reduce their service group sizes
down from 500 subscribers to 100, and in some cases 50,
delivering downstream QAM and DOCSIS channels
from a headend-based CMTS makes little sense. At that
point, any space savings gained by upgrading to CCAP
will be practically eliminated as even more rack space will
be devoted to additional CCAP platforms.
A potential and attractive answer is to distribute the
media conversion capabilities of the CCAP to the optical
node, creating a far more distributed CCAP (D-CCAP)
architecture.
Editor: Jason jason.patterson@huawei.com
NOV 2013 . ISSUE 71
24

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Huawei Communicate

Scan for mobile reading

Emerging & developing

and consistently deliver the bandwidth-intensive video

NOV 2013 . ISSUE 71

Distributed CMTS platforms

giving providers multiple site options depending on

Trial and deployment soon

The future for D-CMTS

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