Kabel Deutschland achieves 4.7 Gbps downstream with ARRIS gear/Cablenet of Cyprus taps Ekinops for capacity upgrade
ARRIS Group Inc. (NASDAQ: ARRS) says that German cable MSO Kabel Deutschland has used a EuroDOCSIS 3.0-based ARRIS C4 CMTS and 12 ARRIS Touchstone Cable Modem CM820S units to deliver 4.7 Gbps of aggregated downstream data.
Kabel Deutschland conducted the tests at a school in the city of Schwerin, Germany. The cable service provider recently upgraded Schwerin’s cable plant to 862 MHz, and the 4.7-Gbps field test was based on currently available standards, technology, and hardware, ARRIS says.
Each of the cable modems accessed eight bonded Annex A (8 MHz) channels.
“Our field test with ARRIS, with an aggregate download capacity of well over 4 Gbps, was a complete success and underlines the unique selling proposition of our cable network as the only extensive ultra-fast network in the German broadband market,” said Kabel Deutschland CTO Lorenz Glatz. “Using this technology, a feature length movie could theoretically be downloaded in 8 seconds – at speeds faster than a standard laptop or modem can even process – demonstrating that today’s broadband cable network is already a high-performance and sustainable infrastructure offering huge untapped potential.”
“This demonstrates that today’s HFC plant has the capacity to deliver a full IP video load, and that the entire HFC plant can be converted into one or more enormous pipes to meet future consumer bandwidth demands, using current technology and networks,” noted Tom Cloonan, ARRIS CTO, Network Solutions. “We congratulate Kabel Deutschland on pushing through existing barriers to deliver their customers the services of tomorrow, today.”
Cablenet Communication Systems Ltd. of Cyprus has purchased the Ekinops 360 optical transport platform to increase the capacity of its optical network, according to the systems vendor. The 360 platform’s ability to support bidirectional transport over a single optical fiber will improve the efficiency of Cablenet’s network, Ekinops asserts.
Cablenet, which began as a cable-TV provider in 2003, decided several years ago to expand into fixed telephony and Internet access services. In 2007 it launched the first triple-play package in its market. Since then, Cablenet has invested in both international capacity and domestic networks to enhance its offerings to residences and businesses.
The Ekinops 360 transport system was designed to transport large volumes of 10G services over a single fiber. It is also capable of transmitting long distances without in-line amplifiers. The combination of these two capabilities allows Cablenet to signficantly reduce its transport infrastructure costs, Ekinops says.
“We selected Ekinops because of the company’s ability to provide what we needed over a single fiber,” agreed Antonis Vasili, technical director for Cablenet, “and we have been very pleased with its performance. Installation of the equipment went flawlessly and it has turned out to be a very robust and cost-effective solution both from a capex as well as opex standpoint.”
