At least 10 European cable networks are upgrading their capacity to a much-needed 1.2GHz in line with plans for DOCSIS 3.1 services.
But Hanno Narjus, SVP, video and broadband solutions at Teleste, warned that while an upgrade wasn’t essential to bring DOCSIS 3.1 to market, such moves could take four to five years to complete.
“European networks are very different, in Belgium the 300MHz systems have a totally different legacy to Germany or the UK, so the bottlenecks are different. In the UK a long drop cable to the home needs a high output level, while in Belgium the problem is long cascades that need boosting and the best point to do this needs to be found,” he said.
Interest from Altice, which owns the French Numericable came in August 2014, while Belgium’s Telenet and Integen declared in March this year.
It’s likely operators will not offer customers the full 10 Gbps from the start, preferring to wait until further analogue shutdowns and a move away from DVB towards IP delivered services.
An emerging requirement is to upgrade the amplifiers within coax networks,, where as optics can be replaced on more of a case by case basis. “It takes a long time and in the case of Telenet this will be four to five years,” said Narjus. Splitters and taps will also need to be replaced.
At ANGA COM, Teleste will display new intelligent 1.2 products are being launched including AC Series fibre nodes, intelligent amplifiers and headend optics.
