BigBand Advances Converged Edge Architecture with New Ultra Dense QAM

BigBand Networks, Inc., a leader in digital video networking, has the announced the introduction its ultra dense 40:1 QAM for the company’s Media Services Platform (MSP). The breakthrough solution is designed to enable service providers to cost effectively scale and optimize the edge with dynamic bandwidth agility on the entire 50MHz to 1GHz RF spectrum using a platform that supports highly reliable multi-application video services delivery.

“With the advent of more narrowcast services, CMAP-class platforms will be needed to increase QAM-per-port density without using additional powering or rack space,” said Jorge Salinger, Vice President of Access Architecture at Comcast.  “BigBand is addressing the demanding access requirements facing MSOs to enable an easier migration towards next-generation converged service delivery at the edge.”

An Ultra Dense QAM Platform Enables More Efficient Architecture

Today’s standalone QAM products do not deliver the required operational performance, including redundancy and management capabilities to support thousands of QAMs, and dozens of service groups per hub in a single platform.  BigBand’s new ultra dense QAM platform is designed to deliver attractive economics with power and space savings, high availability service delivery, and efficient operating tools to provision and monitor multiple services.  

“The industry needs a more platform-based QAM approach, with a management system if it is to respond efficiently to how the marketplace is evolving. Put another way, MSOs need a more agile and resilient QAM with full redundancy if they are to support multi-application services and future architectures such as CMAP and IP delivered video,” said Jeff Heynen, Directing Analyst of Broadband and Video, Infonetics Research. “To simply add more and more dense, single purpose QAMs poses challenges within the existing and relatively limited, headend space that operators are working with today. With more QAMs per service group (port), including supporting more unicast services such as VOD and IPTV, this could also result in large service disruptions in the event of a failure or outage.”

BigBand’s platform-based approach ushers in a new paradigm in QAM technology, combining high density with a high availability multi-service platform that offers the ability to quickly add new applications and share bandwidth efficiently across multiple applications.   This includes enabling services such as advanced advertising, and personalized services such as IPTV and timeshift TV.  The chassis is designed to support in excess of 3,800 QAMs or as many as 40 QAMs per port to meet the access needs of even the most demanding hub locations.

“The industry is moving towards a converged platform architecture to prepare for the coming wave of personalized services and the continued explosive growth of video services to both traditional set top boxes and an increasing set of IP-enabled consumer devices. Single purpose QAMs are no longer sufficient, and the new architecture demands a platform that streamlines operations, provides the flexibility to share bandwidth between services, and ensures the ability to quickly add new services,” said Ilan Kaftan, Vice President of QAM Product Line Management, BigBand Networks. “BigBand’s MSP leverages our QAM leadership and advanced media processing capabilities to enable service providers to expand new services in a highly cost effective and reliable manner.”

Multiservice Platform

BigBand’s new ultra dense QAM is a blade or plug-in to the BigBand MSP platform including both the MSP1200 compact chassis platform and the higher capacity MSP2800.  The MSP1200 offers support for an excess of 1,200 QAMs per chassis and the higher capacity MSP2800 will support more than 3,800 QAMs per chassis with a software upgrade.  The range of chassis sizes offers service providers a choice in meeting service demands across different locations, resulting in attractive operating and capital economics.

Advanced Management Solution

With the adoption of ultra dense QAM solutions, cable service providers are faced with the challenge of managing many channels per service group shared across multiple applications.  BigBand’s CVEx™ (Converged Video Exchange) control plane helps to manage multiple services efficiently while BigBand’s VMS (Video Management System) tool offers simple and efficient network operations.  These advanced management systems enable rapid deployment, lower cost operations and higher performance with improved service quality.

The BigBand MSP QAM offers industry leading capabilities, including:

• Platform approach for operational simplicity. High density QAMs in a multiservice platform are designed to yield efficient networking and greater reliability, lowering costs through simplified operations.

• Advanced video processing. Offering cable service providers maximum flexibility in their service growth trajectory and capacity to enable advanced media processing in combination dense QAM deployments for services such as advanced advertising, and personalized services such as IPTV and timeshift TV.

• High performance and reliability. Carrier-class five nines platform will, in the future, offer full redundancy with no single point of failure, including full RF and input level redundancy.  BigBand also delivers industry leading performance, including low power consumption per QAM and the lowest return rates in the industry.

• Agile bandwidth allocation. In conjunction with BigBand’s CVEx, the MSP QAM hardware is designed to support dynamic bandwidth agility across the entire RF spectrum for each of the 40 QAMs.  This will provide the frequency and spectrum agility required to support the expansion of video services with reduced costs and improved operations since QAM channels can be placed anywhere in the spectrum.

• Complete solution for managing high density QAMs. BigBand’s sophisticated VMS platform and network planning tools help operators efficiently manage the volume of QAMs required in the network.  

BigBand is an industry-leading QAM supplier with more than 820,000 QAMs shipped to over 60 customers worldwide to date. The company’s edge QAM platforms are designed to provide combined support for broadcast, SDV, VOD, IP video, modular CMTS, and DOCSIS®  applications, including 3.0-compatible video delivery service.