CEO Chat With Jerry Guo, Casa Systems

Moving into wireless

SS: Casa has a heritage in the cable market but now you're making this move into wireless. Why?

JG: We believe that the bandwidth provided today is at the infant stage. There is going to be a huge increase in the growth in bandwidth on both the mobile and the fixed product side.

SS: On the fixed side, it's still video driving it?

JG: Yes, it's the content driving it.

SS: And on the mobile side it'll be 5G?

JG: It will be densification and 5G.

SS: So this is history repeating itself, for you?

JG: Yes, we believe there will be a huge increase in bandwidth, going forward. And we believe in the convergence of fixed and mobile. From the technology point of view, I see that as unavoidable. And from a market point of view, we do see some convergence of operators in fixed and mobile. We basically believe that's happening so we started to invest in mobile broadband almost three years ago, now. This year is the time we started to really support it.

SS: Does it sit in the same chassis? Or is it a totally different product?

JG: No, it's in the same chassis. It's more of a software product. It's the same hardware platform. The platform has a lot of unique capabilities which are very extensible. It's very flexible.

SS: So you're not going to run into the same problem that River Delta had?

JG: No. We are getting into an era that we view ourselves as an ultra-broadband company, not just a cable broadband company or even just a fixed-broadband company. So we're going to be an ultra-broadband company in both fixed and mobile. On the fixed side, we have captured significant market share in cable broadband and we're going to expand into optical broadband. And on the mobile side, we're doing both WiFi broadband as well as LTE broadband. So we're diversifying a lot but at the same time we are focusing on one category, which is broadband.

SS: What's the road map for DOCSIS 3.1 for you guys?

JG: If you look at 3.0, we didn't do it halfheartedly. We did the full 3.0. We were the only one with the full 3.0 certification with what they call gold level certification. And then in CCAP, we didn't do this pretend CCAP of modular CMTS. We did the full CCAP with everything in the box out of a single port. That's what we're doing with 3.1. We're going to do a full implementation.

SS: How long does that take?

JG: We are planning to make that available this year.

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