FROM THE INDUSTRY
European market because of the small form factor, but we are gauging interest from other regions now because it is more widely applicable than just the European market.
How do you manage sustainability across all those lines of business? We try to reuse where we can. Our concept is: develop it once, use it many times. That provides us with a common look and feel of our products too. It also allows us to continue to drive this level of breadth because of that software reuse and not needing to greatly increase the number of resources we have to drive our solutions. Has there been any consumer behaviour that’s surprised you, forcing you to change direction? All our products are developed in general to open standards (so there is a common set of products) so you would imagine people would deploy these in a common way. The reality is that every operator has a different starting point, and they have different end goals too. I thought having all these solutions would mean over time that would narrow down to a specific set of solutions, but actually, it’s the opposite. Offering so many variables has meant our customers stitch them together in any way they like. Do you produce bespoke types of solutions? That does happen, yes. We tend to make them so that they have broad appeal, ensuring that it’s something we can leverage with other operators as well. In fact, the RD1710-U2, the Unified DOCSIS 4.0 started off life as a much more operator-specific product. We announced publicly that Liberty Global selected us as their preferred partner for the JDA with Broadcom. The industry has evolved from DOCSIS 4.0, with Full Duplex and Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, to a situation of Unified DOCSIS 4.0, where you can do both in the same chip. Because of that, getting buy-in from the chip manufacturer went away, and the players involved decided to open it up for the market. We developed the product hand-in-glove with Liberty Global to meet their needs initially but pivoted once the ecosystem was opened up so that it could be available to others too. We’re finding the interest in the DC2182 with the RD1710-U2 mostly from the
node-based platforms. There’s a lot of innovation underway; DOCSIS discussions are even moving toward 3GHz capabilities and higher, beyond the 1.8GHz limit of DOCSIS 4.0 ESD. What are your thoughts on the lack of subscriber take up? There have been some recent shifts in the US on that. Fixed wireless access started to chip away at some of the subscribers for the cable operators - and the PON providers for that matter - for a while. But they were providing a lower tier service, maybe 100Mbps, maybe up to 300Mbps or so. The number of users affects the quality of course, and the latency isn’t quite as good as cable or fibre. As a result, subscribers are realising this and there has been a shift back again; cable operators are fighting back, trying to compete in other ways. They’re upping the speed tiers above going up to 400, 500, 600Mbps up to 4Gbps and even higher. They’re also lowering the price points too, which is having a positive effect. All positive stuff. Between technical innovation and commercial vision across cable and fibre, and a clear drive to keep both operators and subscribers happy, CommScope and their partners are doing great things in the US and Europe. We’ll catch up with them again in Washington DC at Tec Expo. Thank you Craig!
What do the next 12-24 months look like for CommScope?
A lot of operators are looking to deploy D3.1Enhanced, which is the ability to upgrade your CMTS infrastructure and without touching the cable plant. You can offer a much higher tier of service and apply licenses at the CMTS side. For any subscribers who buy this higher tier of service, the operator only needs to upgrade the modems at those subscribers, yet the operators get the marketing benefit of advertising that speed tier across the entire market footprint. The D3.1E, D3.1Enhanced, has been live since July 2024 at a significant North American tier one operator, and we’re seeing a lot of interest in that. What are the benefits of such a system? With our platform, operators can deliver speeds of up to 8Gbps down and 1Gbps up using DOCSIS 3.1, which supports up to 1.2GHz downstream and 204MHz upstream. We support DOCSIS 3.1Enhanced (D3.1E) across all four major CMTS access architectures, so any operator using CommScope’s cable headend solutions can take advantage of these capabilities. This helps extend the life of DOCSIS 3.1 and provides a smooth path toward DOCSIS 4.0. At the same time, operators are already upgrading their networks to be 4.0-ready, including deploying 1.8GHz-capable taps and amplifiers. We support those efforts through our Access Technologies business unit within our Access Network Solutions (ANS) segment. Some operators are leading the charge on 4.0, while others are still exploring their options. What about those moving away from DOCSIS? We’re ready with a full range of solutions, including fibre node units and support for all major PON types—10G EPON, GPON, and XGS-PON. We also offer a new shelf- based OLT platform designed for 50G PON and are working on 50G options for
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SEPTEMBER 2025 Volume 47 No.3
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