By Wayne Hickey & Joseph Shapiro, Ciena Corporation
The Cable MSO industry is at the beginning of the next major chapter in the evolution of their access network story. The deployment of fiber deeper into the access, with N+0 targets, and the introduction of digital optics to support new Remote PHY Nodes, MAC/PHY nodes, PON and/or wireless access points, the Cable MSOs will position themselves to deliver high capacity 10G+ bandwidth services to their customer. To complement these next generation broadband access networks, the Cable MSOs will also need to invest in capacity between aggregation sites (e.g. Secondary hubs), Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) sites (Primary Hubs) and Headends. This paper will explore how fiber deep solutions that integrate photonics, coherent modems and open intelligent software & applications will enable optimal scalability and deliver maximum total capacity.