As someone who focuses on mobile networks, sometimes I need to be reminded that apart from the very crucial radio access network and some types of backhaul, most of a “wireless” network is actually wired — and that the trends and challenges that face wireline and cable operators inevitably impact both wireline and wireless data networks.
Last week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver was a good reminder of how similar the pressures on, in some ways at least, for both the wired and wireless sides of telecommunications. Let’s run down some of the topics: How to deal with incredible growth in video traffic? Check. Handling quality of experience on mobile devices? Check. Love/hate relationship with OTT? Check. What role should Wi-Fi play in an operator’s network? Check. There was even a good bit of attention focused on small cells, both because cable operators are involved in helping figure out how to provide mobile backhaul for them as a wholesale service, and because they’re contemplating the use of the technology for specific applications such as, say, providing content to apartment buildings or other types of multi-dwelling units or for last-mile (or as it was put at the show, last 100 feet or so) rather than having to run wired connections to every unit or home.
So here are some of the common trends across both wireline and wireless data networks, including video interviews.
1. Needing a bigger pipe. Both Even as wireless operators continue to roll out LTE, LTE-Advanced features such as carrier aggregation are beginning to be implemented. On the wireline side, the ecosystem is moving from 10G as the ubiquitous network speed, to 40G and 100G — and in many cases, are skipping 40G entirely to go straight to 100G implementations. Barry Zipp of backhaul specialist Ciena told RCR Wireless News at the Cable-Tec Expo that 100G is expanding beyond long-haul transport into the urban metro ring space.
See more videos on 100G and related network trends in RCR Wireless News’ coverage of the Telecom Exchange West event earlier this year.
2. Exploring heterogeneous networks. In the wireless world, this means the concept of not just macro sites, but small cells, distributed antenna systems and Wi-Fi — including Wi-Fi offload to cable operators’ systems. But in a similar sense, cable operators are also looking to diversify their networks — they want a mobility play really, really badly and while Wi-Fi is the primary play at this point, I did mention that they’re not averse to considering small cells as well.
Five of the major cable operators have already banded together to provide a network that encompasses more than 250,000 hot spots that any of their customers can use. Once Hotspot 2.0/Passpoint is more broadly deployed in both Wi-Fi equipment, in mobile devices and potentially in small cells, will that allow cable operators to sidestep the fact that they don’t have a network operating in licensed spectrum? Maybe.
More on carrier-grade Wi-Fi:
3. Relying on network and device analytics to improve both network operations and monetization. Big data analytics are a hot topic in the telecom industry, regardless of whether the operator is primarily looking at stats on wireless or wired connections. Here are a couple of recent interviews on Wi-Fi analytics specifically, and telecom analytics more generally, to give you a sense of trends in that area.
4. The “Internet of Things.” While the mobile industry tends to see the IoT in terms of the wireless connections that come along with wearables, connected cars and smart cities, the cable industry sees the potential in the home and business to act as a bridge for controlling and orchestrating disparate types of wireless technologies  —after all, the wireless gateway in many homes comes directly from the cable company.
At the Cable-Tec Expo, I talked with Ken Morse, CTO of Connected Devices at Cisco, about the potential in this area, as well as CableLabs, which works on some of the wireless standards that are involved.
