Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Together

Today, however, I’m more excited to think about what comes next—game-changing, leading-edge technologies from our teams, like 50G PON, expanded DOCSIS® 4.0 downstream speeds and virtualized solutions. One of my earliest and most important lessons learned—focus on the customer—remains a guiding principle today. Our teams are squarely focused on our customers as they conceive, engineer and deploy our next-generation products and solutions. Moreover, we are finding ways to enhance and optimize our legacy products to help our customers meet the challenges they face in this evolving and highly competitive marketplace.

These strategies show how we put our customers first—and will continue to do so as we shape tomorrow’s networks together.

Maximizing access network investments

Working closely with our customers has taught me more than one valuable lesson. Just as important as focusing on the customer is truly understanding them; each customer has unique business goals, competitive pressures, infrastructure needs and challenges that must be addressed to help them succeed.

At CommScope, we’re extremely sensitive to the fact that not all access networks are identical due to factors such as geography, age and homes passed. We categorically reject a “one size fits all” approach to access network upgrades and enhancements. Instead, we’ve focused on developing a balanced portfolio of products and solutions that supports any common access network upgrade scenario a customer may choose to implement. This flexibility allows us to meet customers where they are—and help them get where they want to be.

This approach is designed to maximize our customers’ access network investments while addressing their specific business goals. For example, customers without immediate plans to upgrade to DOCSIS 4.0 can choose from several paths to expanded network performance to leverage their existing network assets.

One such path might be to increase return path bandwidth by transitioning from a mid-split to a high-split frequency allocation. To support this, CommScope’s Flex Max® and Starline® amplifiers are engineered with pluggable modules, which enable straightforward unit reconfiguration to support upstream expansion, eliminating the need for amplifier replacement. Another possible path, D3.1Enhanced (D3.1E), expands the maximum OFDM downstream capacity from two channels to up to five channels in a high-split, DOCSIS 3.1 network. This increases a possible maximum downstream subscriber service tier from 1 – 2 Gbps to 4 – 6 Gbps.

For those customers who do plan to upgrade to DOCSIS 4.0, our solutions extend the maximum downstream speeds in their networks beyond what was previously thought possible. This achievement was demonstrated by our recent downstream speed record of 16.25 Gbps, recorded at CableLabs® DOCSIS 4.0 and DAA Technology Interop event in Louisville, Colorado by using 8 ODFM blocks instead of the standard’s specification for only 5.

CommScope’s focus on enhancing and expanding the performance of legacy and next-generation access network technology provides customers with exceptional value, beyond what could be expected with standard infrastructure deployments and upgrades.

Simplified network growth and management

In today’s ultra-competitive market, as service providers scramble to introduce gigabit services, grow their networks and retain subscribers, they’re pivoting away from traditional ways of facilitating growth and capturing new business—and toward newer, more nimble solutions for subscriber acquisition.

Scalability and density, particularly for service providers planning for DOCSIS 4.0, are major concerns in this new environment. Thus, we’ve invested considerable resources toward developing cloud-based, virtualized headend and network management solutions to help our customers with these new challenges. These investments will enable our customers to facilitate growth more easily and economically in their networks and address competitive pressures quickly and efficiently.

Innovative solutions such as the vCCAP Evo™ virtual CCAP platform and the vBNG Evo™ virtualized Broadband Network Gateway empower our customers to rapidly scale their networks and enable automated, seamless deployment of HFC, DAA, and PON architectures. These platforms accelerate the rollout of premium gigabit services and support high-density expansion in parallel with aggressive service innovation.

As our customers deploy these new technologies and services, their focus will shift to customer acquisition and retention—a scenario in which superior QoS becomes a differentiator. CommScope’s software development teams continue to refine our ServAssure® NXT network management platform, which supports numerous automated network monitoring and management tasks in each of the three major network architectures I mentioned to enable this superior QoS.

Recently, we partnered with DvSum to incorporate AI-driven analytics into the ServAssure NXT platform, enhancing its ability to proactively detect and solve network issues before they impact services. Our continuing improvements to ServAssure NXT will help subscribers enjoy the full benefits of our customers’ upgrades and new service rollouts as they grow their networks.

Mutually beneficial relationships

Engagement and dialogue with our customers are the cornerstones of our business philosophy, resulting in several mutual benefits: trust, close collaboration and alignment between customers’ needs and our product portfolio.

This philosophy is nothing new—it’s one I’ve cultivated throughout my career. Today, as our customers consider which of the many enhanced or leading-edge access network technologies best suit their business plans, having a trusted partner like CommScope is more important than ever.

While I could cite many examples from our years of proven innovation, our most recent product introductions are particularly insightful. Our Engineering teams, for example, have worked closely with key customers to develop DOCSIS 4.0 products and solutions that exceed the standard specifications. Why do this? Simply because those customers had very specific network requirements for integrating DOCSIS 4.0 into their access networks, and they trusted CommScope to design and manufacture products that could get the job done. Rather than force the customer into an “out-of-the-box” solution, our teams closely collaborated with our customers’ teams to achieve a mutually beneficial goal. As a result, our customers accelerated their DOCSIS 4.0 deployments, reduced the complexities and growing pains associated with new technologies, and minimized service disruptions while maintaining QoS in areas of the network that they’d targeted for upgrades.

What comes next? Continuity, collaboration, and creativity

While changes are in store for CommScope in the months ahead, one thing is certain: we will continue to put our customers first. From close collaborations to creative solutions for enhancing existing technologies and maximizing the value of our customers’ investments in access network technology, our teams will continue to embody the values that have made CommScope a trusted partner for service providers around the globe.

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