By Ron Shani, David Large
HDTV, VOD, ITV and other applications are placing ever-greater pressure on operators to transport more information – that which is widely distributed as well as communications with individual customers. Choosing how to create adequate capacity is difficult; driven by financial and regulatory constraints, capital costs and ongoing operating considerations.
This paper will evaluate some of the technical options against those factors. Evaluated technologies will include bandwidth expansion to 1 GHz, more efficient modulation, more efficient video encoding, elimination of analog video carriage, splitting of existing nodes, switched digital video and a proposed use of frequencies above 1 GHz that offers the greatest bi-directional bandwidth expansion and the greatest benefit/cost ratio.