Cablemedia June 2016 | Page 8

cablemedia2006v6_1 20/06/2016 17:04 Page 5 MONITOR Cable Europe: “Fibre not the only way” he European broadband cable industry is best placed to satisfy future bandwidth demands, according to Matthias Kurth, Executive Chairman, Cable Europe. Speaking at the Huawei DOCSIS 3.1 Forum in Cologne, Kurth noted that at a political level, much of the focus is on fibre networks, but he said it was not the only way to bring Gigabit broadband quality to consumers in Europe. “I often hear ‘fibre, fibre, fibre,’ but I don’t hear ‘DOCSIS 3.1’. Perhaps this name is not very appealing,” he said. He declared that there was a need to bring DOCSIS 3.1 more to the attention of the public, politicians and regulators and others as a better way to bring broadband in a quick and easy way to many Europeans than to roll out fibre to the home everywhere. “There are some T countries in Europe that are a little bit ahead with FTTH, but in Germany, the biggest market in Europe, only 1.4 per cent of homes have FTTH. People expect to have high broadband service in 70 to 80 per cent of homes.” Kurth’s main argument is: “Take advantage of the existing infrastructure’ that is already in the ground with a sophisticated technology like DOCSIS 3.1. That’s a quicker time to market. We’re not only talking about the best technology in the world, we’re also talking about how we can do that with CAPEX that is available for members of Cable Europe and the companies who are selling. They don’t have unlimited amounts of money to spend and they need to spend their money very wisely following the customer demand.” “I often hear ‘fibre, fibre, fibre,’ but I don’t hear ‘DOCSIS 3.1’. Perhaps this name is not very appealing.” European cable digitisation continues Following 2013, when the total number of digital cable TV subscribers in Europe exceeded analogue for the first time, Europe’s cable operators have continued to upgrade their networks, according to findings from IHS. Out of 56.5m total TV subscribers at the end of 2015, digital represented 60.8%, up from 56.5% in 2014. Internet subscribers rose from 31.8m to 34.1m, an increase of 7.5%, while telephony subscribers rose from 25.1m to 26.8m, an increase of 6.5%. Total Revenue Generating Units (RGUs) rose from 113.2m to 117.4m, an increase of 3.8%. Similarly, total analogue subscription revenues have fallen from €3.8 billion in 2011 to €2.6 billion in 2015, 2014 (€2.9bn). Digital subscription TV revenues at €8.5 billion were 8 Cable Media up from €7.7 billion in 2014, with total on-demand revenue reaching €407m, up from €339. 9m in 2014. Total triple-play revenue (TV, Internet, Telephony) was €22.9 billion, up from €21.4 billion in 2014, comprising total TV revenues of €11.5 billion; total Internet revenues of €7.1 billion and total telephony revenues of €4.2 billion (2014: €10.9; €6.5 and €3.9 respectively). He said it was important for members of Cable Europe to work with the vendor community, with a “unique opportunity” right now. “It’s a whole new wave of investment coming up,” he declared, “everybody needs to have a replacement strategy for the future.” He admitted that there were challenges in undertaking such upgrades. “Networks in Germany have not been built to be broadband networks. They have been built to distribute TV signals to many people; one to many. It was already a challenge to make them bidirectional; it was a challenge to make them broadband fit and it will be the next challenge to bring them to Gigabit speeds. We have to be honest about that. There needs to be a lot of changes in the network backbone to bring the functionalities closer to the customer.” According to Kurth, this was a good sign. “We have now the choice of how to do it; how to be fit for the next ten years at least in broadband upgrades.” the cable industry has adopted as its next generation solution to address increasing capacity requirements. Gainspeed’s Virtual CCAP solution would strategically diversify Nokia’s product portfolio for cable access customers and expand Nokia’s footprint in this growing market. Upon the closing of the planned transaction, Gainspeed would become part of Nokia’s Fixed Networks business group. Nokia expand cable footprint with Gainspeed buy Nokia is to acquire Gainspeed a US-based start-up specialising in DAA (Distributed Access Architecture) solutions for the cable industry via its Virtual CCAP (Converged Cable Access Platform) product line. Gainspeed is widely regarded as the industry leader in DAA, which Virtual CCAP enables cable operators to meet growing customer demand for highspeed data services and IP video. With Virtual CCAP, cable operators can increase the capacity of their existing HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coax) infrastructure and rapidly deploy new services, while simultaneously reducing space and power requirements in the headend. At the same time, customers can cost-effectively migrate their networks to a software-driven, all-IP architecture. With the acquisition of Gainspeed, Nokia would have an extendible and flexible platform that can host the future innovations of the cable industry. “We are very excited to have Gainspeed, the technology leader in its field, joining us,” commented Federico Guillèn, president of Nokia’s Fixed Networks business group. “Cable is one of the fastest growing areas in our fixed networks business, and we are committed to delivering a complete solution set to cable operators. Gainspeed’s Virtual CCAP perfectly complements our leading fibre access solutions for cable MSOs.” The planned transaction is expected to close in Q3 2016, subject to usual closing conditions. ADVANCED TELEVISION