By Serge Kasongo, Comcast, Field Operations; Dr. Robert Howald, Comcast, CONNECT; John Chrostowski, Comcast; Robert Thompson, Comcast
Cable operators are actively addressing upstream capacity with their most powerful tool – new spectrum. Mid-Split and High Split architectures satisfy long-term capacity and speed requirements, and are further empowered by DOCSIS 3.1 OFDMA. While capacity gains and speeds are straightforward to predict, the “how” of upstream spectrum migration requires careful planning. At the 2021 SCTE Expo, in a paper entitled Executing the Upstream Makeover without Leaving Scars, a newly developed, remotely automated, in-Home Assessment Tool (iHAT) was unveiled. This tool was designed to manage large-scale activation of new Mid-Split spectrum while ensuring minimal customer disruption. That was then! One year later, iHAT is fully integrated into production and technical operations workflows. The new spectrum is delivering up to 5 times more capacity. Technical training has been developed and deployed, and new care processes have been created and implemented. The iHAT tool itself has evolved – the production code is now ‘iHATv3’ – to make activation more efficient, automated, and less disruptive. It is now timely to share the learnings along the path from tool development to production in scale. In this paper we will describe that journey. Technology, tools and processes for execution of large scale Mid-Split activation have been developed, launched, and scaled. Attendees will understand the spectrum activation journey from start-to-finish – system engineering, technical solutioning, operationalizing, and best practices – from the experts that made it happen.