Next Level Communications takes gear to next level

Hard pressed to find more cost efficiencies in its VDSL-capable set-top boxes, Next Level Communications (NLC) has taken the other logical cost-reduction step by enhancing the performance of its central office components.

“We have a centralized approach to the set-top equipment, consequently we leverage the packaging and the decodes and the networking interfaces that are there,” said Jeff Barnell, senior vice president of marketing. “Through some technical advances we’ve had, primarily in line speed capabilities, we’re able to reduce the cost-per-subscriber by about 30% and actually quadruple the number of subscribers that can be attached to the broadband digital terminal (BDT).”

Barnell said the product upgrades – now available and being shipped to Bell Canada and Qwest – help lower network and element costs by mitigating “one of the pinch points within the architecture.”

He added, “Instead of requiring two fibers running at OC-3 speeds, we can now quadruple the number of customers running across a single OC-12.”

Consequently, Next Level customers can deliver the same performance levels to four times as many subscribers, or “essentially, 4,000 set-top boxes simultaneously at the same interactive speed,” he said.

Barnell said it was unnecessary to enhance performance for individual subscribers.

“We already have more speed than people know what to do with,” he said. “We can deliver, without any hesitation, 28 megabits (per second) to the home over standard copper twisted pair. A full motion DVD-quality video stream takes somewhere around 4.5 megabits.”

Thus, with the performance enhancement, “the idea is to drive the cost-per-subscriber down.”

The new equipment, which costs no more than previous versions, consists of plug-in cards that swap out with existing technology.

“There’s an optical link and the cards that drive the optical link have to be swapped out,” said Jeff Weber, vice president of systems engineering. “The main control board in the broadband digital terminal shelf – the network element in the central office – also needs to be replaced. It’s board replacement other than the wholesale forklift replacement.”

Optical receivers in the outside plant also must be adapted to carry the faster speeds, he said.

“The rest of the infrastructure can stay the same if you’re upgrading an existing deployment. If you’re starting new, then you do it this way from the beginning,” Weber added.