CommScope Seeds New CCAP With MSOsCommScope Seeds New CCAP With MSOs

ATLANTA -- A year after announcing its Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) intentions, CommScope debuted two CCAP chassis at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo this week and said the devices are already in the field with cable customers.

The company is starting down the CCAP road with two flavors of an ultra-dense Edge QAM. The first is a nine-rack model called the CSP 640 with support for up to 9,600 downstream QAMs, and an aggregate throughput of 640 gigabits per second. The larger CSP 1280 model supports up to 19,200 downstream QAMs and has an aggregate throughput of 1.28 terabits per second.

CommScope Inc. says it will add DOCSIS components to its CCAP solution next year and will "strategically partner" to bring in the Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) functionality that would turn its offering into an integrated CCAP device.

CommScope also plans to add a Passive Optical Network (PON) component to the CCAP solution in 2014. That, too, will come by way of a partnership, but CommScope Director of Global Business Development Sunil Frida told Light Reading that "a lot of the thinking" in the PON product comes from inside the company.

Among CommScope's CCAP competitors, Casa Systems Inc. already has an integrated CCAP solution on the market, and Arris Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ARRS) has demonstrated the functionality with its E6000 Converged Edge Router. Both vendors were tapped for Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC)'s initial CCAP deployments. (See TWC Uncaps CCAP With Casa & Arris.)

— Mari Silbey, special to Light Reading Cable