Move will free up bandwidth for DOCSIS expansion
REGINA and TORONTO – Access Communications, the Regina-based cable co-op with over 125,000 homes passed in 230 communities throughout Saskatchewan, is making the switch to switched IP video in order to free up bandwidth and enable the expansion of its DOCSIS Internet services quickly and cost effectively, the company announced today along with its vendor, Adara Technologies of Toronto.
“We currently operate both DAC and HITS-QT platforms with Motorola set-tops for video, and like most other operators, our RF spectrum is full, leaving limited room to expand our DOCSIS Internet services,” said Craig Van Ham, vice-president of technology at Access, in a press release. “We’re looking forward to providing our customers with faster broadband speeds by taking advantage of the newly freed-up bandwidth.”
Adara’s SIPV solution delivers video more efficiently by “switching” the programs into network service groups only when they are requested, rather than consuming bandwidth by the typical practice of broadcasting all channels, to all set-top boxes, all the time. The benefit is that SIPV can free up to 80% or more of an operator’s video bandwidth in as little as 90 days so that it can be immediately used for DOCSIS 3.0, 3.1 or full duplex expansion to multi-gigabit, according to the release.
“The important core building blocks of SIPV are widely-deployed, proven and extremely reliable which also means that SIPV works with legacy QAM set-tops and gateways,” said Stan Koukarine, Adara’s CTO and co-founder, in the release. “In fact, with switched, the overall customer experience is not only better and more reliable than broadcasting, but the super-efficient delivery mechanism enables an unlimited channel line-up offering and a low-cost, success-based introduction of Ultra-HD/4K, as well,” he continued.
SIPV’s video delivery not only frees up bandwidth in the HFC access network, but also saves bandwidth in the IP core or leased IP lines that typically interconnect an operator’s distant communities, of which Access has many. This new solution will allow the company to eliminate dozens of headends, said Van Ham.
