After nearly a year of trials, Stofa of Denmark has officially launched its Arris-powered 1-gig network based on Remote PHY architecture, the vendor announced.
“We've been trialing Arris R-PHY technology for many months now," said Stofa CTO Jacob Larsen, in a statement. "We have over a hundred customers currently using this technology, and the initial feedback is very, very positive.”
Atlanta-based Arris announced the partnership using its E6000 Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) and NC2000 R-PHY optical nodes back in May of last year. According to Arris, Stofa plans to purchase additional NC2000 nodes as it expands deployment of 1-gig services.
RELATED: Arris reports 23% video sales drop in Q4, deploys next-gen E6000 in hot network cloud market
Remote PHY involves cable operators pushing the QAM modulation/demodulation portion of their CMTS out from their hub or cabinet and toward the edge of their network.
R-PHY allows operators like Stofa to virtualize and decentralize head-end functions and elements of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) layer. The upgraded network also supports video streaming without impacting broadband speed.
"We're very excited to be pioneering Remote PHY deployments in EMEA and seeing the real-world speeds and video quality first-hand," added Dan Whalen, president of network & cloud, global services at Arris. "Stofa has shared our vision for a next-generation network from the start, and we're proud to be making history with them."
In the U.S., WideOpenWest and Florida operator Blue Stream have announced upcoming Remote PHY deployments using Cisco gear.
At SCTE Cable-Tec Expo last October, Cisco’s Daniel Etman, director of product marketing for cable access for the technology giant, called R-PHY a “stepping stone” toward Cisco’s “cloud CMTS” concept.
As Etman explained, a cloud CMTS would move most of the functions inside a CMTS to a dedicated or distributed cloud, a move that would allow operators to scale up quickly while reducing the opex costs associated with housing and powering traditional CMTS hardware. Etman noted Cisco uses the “cloud” nomenclature for its product but said it could also be described as a virtualized CMTS.