Harmonic adds Vodafone to its 'CableOS' win list

Harmonic notched another big deal for its "CableOS" network virtualization platform, announcing that Vodafone is rolling it out to help underpin the launch of gigabit broadband services in Germany.

Vodafone is basing the deployment of its "GigaCable Max" service on DOCSIS 3.1 and software and hardware from Harmonic's overall CableOS portfolio, including the baseline CableOS virtual cable modem termination system (vCMTS) software, remote PHY devices and a cloud-connected management service that ties it all together.

Harmonic didn't reveal the financial impact of the deal and how rapidly revenues will scale up as a result. But the agreement does solidify Harmonic's position at Vodafone Germany, the largest cable operator in Europe, with north of 25 million homes passed. Vodafone represented 12% of Harmonic's overall revenue in Q1 2020, just behind Comcast (17%).

The Vodafone deployment builds on Harmonic's CableOS activity with a handful of tier 1 cable operators and its work with well over a dozen tier 2/3 operators. Vodafone is also the latest big name to be officially added to the CableOS list, joining Comcast, which has a multi-year, $175 million enterprise software license agreement in place for CableOS.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down some of CableOS's momentum as cable operators added capacity to their legacy DOCSIS platforms, Harmonic ended Q1 2020 with 27 commercially deployed customers of CableOS and deployments covering about 1.3 million served cable modems. Harmonic is expected to put out some updated deployment numbers when it reports Q2 2020 results on August 3.

Harmonic is using CableOS to elbow its way into a portion of the cable access market that's been dominated by CommScope/Arris, Cisco Systems and Casa Systems. Adding to the competitive makeup of this segment of the market is Vecima Networks, which is poised to make more noise after striking a deal to acquire Nokia's cable access product portfolio just this week.

Harmonic has also adapted CableOS to work with fiber-to-the-premises networks, a move that could be applicable to the telco FTTP market but likely more so to cable operators that are deploying FTTP in targeted situations such as greenfield buildouts.

Harmonic shares were up 30 cents (5.37%) to $5.78 each in afternoon trading Wednesday.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading