Cisco Debuts Infinite Broadband Unlocked

LAS VEGAS -- Cisco today announced a new, highly flexible DOCSIS licensing plan for its cable operator customers using the Cisco® Converged Broadband Router (cBR-8) platform to deliver high-speed broadband, video, and voice services.

Infinite Broadband Unlocked (IBU) is the first licensing program of its kind in the cable industry designed to help cable operators compete with fiber-to-the-home systems. With this new program, Cisco aims to improve the economics of offering multi-gigabit services via distributed access cable architectures employing Remote PHY (RPHY) technology.

The new Cisco IBU licensing program allows cable operators to focus on business outcomes by simplifying license acquisition and management. Unlike traditional licensing models for converged cable access platform (CCAP) devices, which require cable operators to purchase large numbers of new bandwidth licenses for every service group where they want to offer the expanded service, IBU has only one license type based on bandwidth consumption. For the first time, cable operators have the capability to provision all of the capacity of their CCAP platforms without restrictions or upfront licensing expense.

IBU offers compelling business benefits to cable operators, helping them:

• Provision and promote multi-gigabit service tiers across their footprints without the risk of stranding capital

• Simplify service group splits and video/data convergence by eliminating the need to purchase additional license types.

IBU licensing is aligned to the number of subscribers across the network, so license investment is highly aligned to revenues. This makes licensing investment much more predictable and simpler to manage.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)