German technology provider WISI and its partner GiaX jointly support the accelerated upgrade of Vodafone Deutschland’s cable networks for Gigabit speeds with their system technology.
By using the Giga HFC solution to upgrade its cable infrastructures, Vodafone Deutschland will be able to offer its customers 1Gbps more efficiently and quickly, stresses WISI. According to the company, Giga HFC is currently the fastest and most cost-effective technical option for bringing up to 10Gbps downstream and 10Gbps upstream on coaxial cable into cable networks in addition to the existing services.
With this Ethernet overlay solution, Vodafone can carry out the ongoing Gigabit upgrade while largely avoiding underground works. In this way, up to 70% of the costs can be saved compared to conventional fibre optic upgrades. Since the existing structures of the cable networks are used without changes, the time required for planning and upgrading is also reduced. Additionally, the active hardware in use – such as fibre nodes, amplifiers and end-devices – does not have to be changed or replaced.
After successfully completing the field trials, Vodafone commissioned WISI to supply the complete system technology including the remote PHY components and to coordinate and implement the cable network upgrades.
“Thanks to the technical solution from WISI and GiaX, we can upgrade our high-performance cable network for our customers to Gigabit speeds very cost-effectively and quickly by 2021. An important factor in our decision in favour of WISI was that, in addition to the cost savings associated with the upgrade, we can continue using the existing cable network structures as before,” said Dr Thomas Kühne, head of network engineering, fixed access network, at Vodafone Deutschland.
Thomas Scherle, director sales CATV/HFC Europe at WISI, added: “Vodafone’s cable network makes a key contribution to Germany’s transition towards becoming a gigabit society. We look forward to accompanying Vodafone’s Gigabit offensive with our market-leading and groundbreaking technology for seamless network digitisation.”
Jörg Hellwig, managing director and founder of GiaX, said: “GiaX is proud to work with Vodafone Deutschland and WISI Communications on the Giga HFC project. The HelEOS product family enables cable operators such as Vodafone to upgrade existing coaxial cable networks with standards-based 10Gbps Ethernet connections to serve distributed access architecture systems.”
