Casa Systems’s assault on the European cable market continued Wednesday with word that DNA Ltd, Finland's largest cable operator, has placed an order for the vendor’s C10G cable modem termination system (CMTS).
DNA, an MSO that delivers broadband to more than 600,000 residential customers, said it selected Casa’s C10G following a string of lab and field trails. DNA intends to use the chassis to migrate to the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) “in the near future.”
CCAP is a dense architecture that combines the CMTS and edge QAM functions and puts cable operators on an all-IP path. The C10G can reach CCAP-like densities with the DS8x96, a module that delivers 96 channels per port, including 32 channels of narrowcast and 64 channels of broadcast. Earlier this month, Casa announced the C100G, a larger chassis that, the vendor claims, will meet the specs to become a fully integrated CCAP device.
Casa, which trails Cisco and Arris in terms of overall CMTS market share, continues to gain traction in Europe. Earlier this week, Casa announced that Numericable, France’s largest MSO, will also use the vendor’s C10G as it eyes a future migration to CCAP. Casa said it has more than 300 customers worldwide, including Mediacom Communications; Liberty Global (UPC); Shenzhen Topway Video Communication (China); Citycable (Switzerland); Gigared (Argentina); Cablevision (Mexico); SCTV (Vietnam); Kbro/TFN (Taiwan), and Net America Movil (Brazil).
Infonetics has not yet released its CMTS market share report for the first quarter, but Casa did appear to get a big bump in Europe during the period, either from its long-standing contract with UPC or the new deal with Numericable, said Infonetics analyst Jeff Heynen.
Casa’s market share “improved, but not significantly, in the first quarter,” Heynen said. Casa accounted for 9% of CMTS port shipments in the fourth quarter of 2012, versus Arris’s 59%, a figure that includes share coming way of its recent acquisition of Motorola Home, and Cisco’s 32%.
“But they [Casa] have a lot of momentum right now,” Heynen said, noting that the vendor is hitting the market with a dense platform as MSOs start to make CCAP upgrade decisions.
He said Casa might also be benefiting from some of the uncertainty caused by the Arris-Motorola Home transaction. Arris’s new E6000 is starting off as a high-density CMTS, but will eventually become a fully integrated CCAP product. Arris has not revealed the fate of a next-gen CCAP chassis that Motorola Home had been developing prior to the acquisition, but more clarity on that could emerge next week at The Cable Show in Washington, D.C.
Heynen believes market will be big enough to support up to five vendors, which could would be welcome news for two other CCAP entrants, Harmonic and CommScope.
