Confluent Photonics introduces new outside-plant solutions for fiber-starved cable networks

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, June 18, 2004

Confluent Photonics introduced a unique new family of products that provides innovative, outside-plant solutions to what is becoming one of the most serious challenge facing MSOs today--the growing shortage of network bandwidth.

As cable MSOs attempt to fight off satellite and telecom providers--who are competing ferociously for market share in a business where services are proliferating rapidly--the availability of adequate, cost-effective bandwidth to the subscriber is key. With adequate bandwidth, cable MSOs can win the battle. Without adequate bandwidth, predicting the winner is not as sure.

In addition to traditional video programming, MSOs are now offering High-Definition Television (HDTV), digital video, Video on Demand (VOD), high speed Internet connectivity, and voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP), with even more services, such as interactive gaming, now being implemented. This is placing extraordinary demands on the bandwidth of existing HFC networks. In many cases, what was believed to be excess fiber capacity at the time of installation is suddenly being recognized as a bottleneck to the delivery of promised services. This fiber bandwidth shortage applies not only to residential subscriber services, but to the potentially very lucrative business customer, now under-served by the cable MSOs.

The most apparent solution is to install more fiber optic cable, but this is both expensive and time consuming. That's where Confluent Photonics' new outside plant solutions come into play, saving MSOs up to $20,000 per mile in new fiber deployment.

Based on Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, Confluent has developed solutions that quickly and economically multiply the capacity of installed fiber and legacy equipment.

At the heart of the Confluent offering is a family of strand-mount multiplexer/demultiplexers. These diffraction grating-based, athermal products offer parallel optical demuxing, which results in the lowest insertion loss, highest channel count, and best channel-to-channel uniformity. The use of diffraction gratings--instead of commonly used thin-film filters--makes the Confluent DWDM products rugged, and insensitive to temperature and pressure variations, and enables passive optics to be installed outside.

Outside plant-hardened optics and rack mount products for the hub can be combined in a variety of ways to suit the needs of various network architectures. Legacy 1310nm systems and 1550nm systems can be upgraded with incremental CapEx so the system can grow based on consumer demand. In some cases, these solutions can even free existing fiber, enabling it to be used for other services or to provide redundancy.

Additional information about these new solutions for fiber-starved networks also can be found on Confluent Photonics' Web site at http://www.confluentphotonics.com/.