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Xtera Communications AON - Meriton's Agile Optical Networking

Cable MSO

It's an exciting time for cable MSOs worldwide.

Video-on-demand/pay-per-view services (VoD) have established a competitive position in the market, and have become a profitable, growing service. As VoD becomes a nearly real-time service, delivering content from all corners of the Earth to anyone's living room, there are increasing demands on cable MSO transport networks with Voice over IP (VoIP) services are also on the threshold of tremendous growth. However the new discerning broadband consumer will continue to demand access to increasing multi-megabits of bandwidth as well as increasing personal control over the multimedia content.

Cable MSOs already face challenges with these relatively new services. They already operate transport networks optimized for cable distribution and cable high-speed Internet service delivery (i.e. Cable Modem Termination Service or CMTS). In some cases, cable MSOs are operating separate transport networks for cable distribution, CMTS, and now VoD and VoIP, too. The costs of multiple networks are prohibitive and make profitability a challenge, so operators need to rethink their network architectures.

Xtera Communications Agile Optical Networking (AON) solution offers cable MSOs a flexible portfolio of transport products and technologies to build multi-mission agile business networks, with a future-proof migration to full OTN requirements, on which to base these existing and future service offerings:

  • Transparent WDM future-proofs the network – Ideal for carrying the variety of transport types of cable MSOs: SONET/SDH, 10/100 Ethernet & GigE, native digital video, etc., as well as protocols, data rates and interfaces that are yet to emerge
  • Intermix CWDM and DWDM – Xtera Communications is the only vendor with a platform that supports CWDM and DWDM simultaneously in a single network element. Service providers can realize cost savings with CWDM on lower density segments, and are assured a scalable path in the future with DWDM
  • High bandwidth connectivity – Support for data speeds from 1.5 Mb/s to 10 Gb/s that is ideal for rich multimedia transmissions and business services
  • Resilient WDM networks – Xtera's wavelength networking technology enables the deployment of mesh networks with 99.999% availability and reliability, greater flexibility, and lower cost than stacked rings. Ring and point-to-point deployments are also supported.
  • Fully managed – World-class network management system provides a truly customer-centric view of controlling the network
  • Quality of service – The Xtera solution replicates SONET/SDH standards yet is delivered via lower cost alternatives such as Optical Ethernet and wavelengths
  • Transparent But Not Blind – By having visibility into regularly-reported performance monitoring statistics (e.g. bit error rates, severely errored seconds, etc.), cable MSOs can offer and meet stringent SLAs
  • Ease of Engineering – The Xtera 9500 Network Planning Tool allows engineers to quickly design the most efficient networks based on network demand and span information.