Facing demands for more bandwidth coupled with competitive threats, the majority of cable operators, or 61%, plan to start virtualizing their Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAPs) or begin the shift to a distributed access architecture (DAA) by the end of 2018, a new survey says.
Citing a survey of 35 cable operators around the world representing 82 million broadband subscribers, Kagan Research also found that 54% of MSOs expect to deliver average downstream speeds of between 101 Mbps and 500 Mbps by the end of 2018, with another 25% expected to deliver averages of 501 Mbps to 1 Gbps-plus by then.
While the move to a virtual CCAP will allow MSOs to use off-the-shelf hardware in tandem with software-powered systems, DAA will boost spectral efficiency by distributing the CCAP electronics closer to subscribers at the edge of the HFC network. About 34% of the MSOs surveyed said they plan to pursue a (DAA) strategy in 2018, with another 26% planning to do so in 2019 or later, the study found.
For the full story go to Multichannel.com.
