KELOWNA – Serving businesses with voice and data – especially small enterprises – is something all operators are focused on, be they telco or cable.
But for cable, its networks are only beginning to stretch into the various business parks and malls which have generally had the choice of just one provider: the incumbent telco.
Some cable companies, the most widely cited being Mountain Cablevision in Hamilton, Ont., have been able – by investing and taking advantage of their own local, SMB roots – to rapidly sign up business customers within its cable territories. The company has added a lucrative additional line of business – which was profitable from the start. It also doesn’t hurt that Mountain has signed up about 60% of its residential customer base to its VOIP product – and the folks living there with that service want the same (low) price for their business voice and data.
Providing a competitive choice to small businesses is still a substantial opportunity for cable companies – which have a number of architectures to choose from when they decide to deploy, said Jason Lowe, Clearcable’s director, access engineering, in a presentation to the CommTech Trade Show here in Kelowna, B.C.
Serving small businesses is a far different game than the residential market. Where internet speeds are often sold on an “up to X Mbps” basis to consumers who are still primarily interested in TV, businesses demand a minimum floor of data rates, need 100% phone uptime and consider video a “nice-to-have”, but not necessary, feature.
Serving that dedicated residential base, however, which is still using up about 60 channels of analog space can impact what carriers are able to offer their new business customers, which must be considered when deciding to add business customers to existing HFC nodes instead of installing dedicated HFC nodes or going to RFOG (RF over glass).
All three, however, have serious advantages for the cable operator as back office (billing, provisioning, support) items remain the same, as does the customer premises equipment, noted Lowe.
However, because of the room on the system currently set aside for analog TV, taking full advantage of DOCSIS 3.0 is a problem, meaning the operator may not be able to offer 100 Mbps downstream, placing the cable company at a competitive disadvantage relative to the ILECs. Plus, business subscribers are then competing for bandwidth with the various BitTorrent residential users on the network, which can be a serious complicating factor.
A dedicated node for a business park could be an option as well since the TV channels can be delivered digitally, freeing up many channels for more DOCSIS 3.0 room. “We can offer minimum bandwidth (of 100 Mbps) and scale it,” said Lowe.
However, if the carrier has no copper in the business parks or malls it’s targeting, why build copper at all – except for the last few metres to feed the modems or any set tops. RFOG might be the way to go.
Building it will cost about the same as a traditional build and anyway, it’s still HFC “but there’s just not a whole lot of ‘C’ left,” said Lowe. “If you have to build into the business parks, it might as well be fibre.”
RFOG means lower operating costs (far fewer power resources are required, for example), less ingress, and “each RFOG segment can feed up to 64 businesses,: noted Lowe. As well, since it’s still HFC, with just lots more “F”, no staff training overhaul is needed. As for future compatibility, RFOG can be “easily” migrated to G-PON, too, said Lowe. (G-PON = gigabit passive optical network).
“G-PON uses the same fibres on separate wavelengths and runs in parallel to RFOG,” added Lowe.
There are some negative considerations to mull over with RFOG, too, added Lowe. “RFOG uses the DOCSIS protocol to turn lasers off and on… (and) if too many modems are active at once the return system will not function correctly because too many lasers will be active at once.”
Finally, your techs have to talk. Because RFOG relies on the DOCSIS protocol to work, “it’s important that your DOCSIS engineer and HFC engineer have a good understanding” of how what each of them does can impact or influence the other’s domain, added Lowe.
