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21-Jul-2010
by Philip Hunter
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European cable could be first with ‘God Box’
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Delivery Networks
Start thinking inside the box...
Momentum is growing in Europe behind Comcast’s CMAP (Common Multimedia Access Platform), dubbed the ‘God Box’ because it will incorporate all headend functions including existing DOCSIS CMTS and QAMs within a single unit. CMAP was developed by US MSO Comcast as an alternative to the Modular Headend Architecture (MHA) in which the CMTS and QAM components of the DOCSIS infrastructure are separated, driven by the need to reduce the space and power consumed by proliferating broadcast, multicast and unicast services.
“I have met with most European MSOs, and they are all considering CMAP for deployment,” reveals Jorge Sallinger, VP of Access Architecture at Comcast, one of the CMAP pioneers and cheerleaders. “So much so, in fact, that European MSOs have asked Cable Europe Labs [CEL] to represent them in the CMAP spec development efforts. CEL has participated in every aspect of the CMAP spec development process, and is the author of several sections of the specs.”
Jorge even suggests that one or two European MSOs might beat Comcast itself in deploying CMAP. “Comcast is very interested in deploying CMAP as soon as it is possible and practical. But I'm not sure if we will be the first or not. Many MSOs have the same expansion needs we have, and as such are just as likely to be the first ones to deploy CMAPs when these become available.”
Indeed, if Comcast had not invented CMAP, some other MSO probably would have done, which does suggest vendors themselves had been lax in failing to identify the need themselves earlier. “Yes, the objective of CMAP is to offer an alternative to the current MHA architecture followed by some vendors,” said Jorge tactfully.
The need for CMAP arose as many MSOs were running out of both space and available power in their headends for their growing populations of QAMs and CMTSs for terminating DOCSIS modem links. While MHA on paper brought efficiencies through allowing QAM and CMTS to scale independently of each other, so that operators could avoid having to overprovision one to meet demand for the other, this also consumed more power and space.
“Amongst the most important savings with CMAP are space, power consumption and cooling, which we think will amount to 50%, even as capacity is quadrupled,” says Jorge. “Operational simplifications will also be achieved through considerable reduction of the RF combiner, headend "plumbing", and in the number of managed devices.”
On top of these immediate benefits, it will become simpler to migrate from existing MPEG transport streams to DOCSIS for video distribution, as many MSOs plan to do. This is because both will run on the same platform and through the same ports, requiring just reconfiguration without any additional CMTS hardware.
Cable Europe Labs agreed that CMAP represented an enormous increase in flexibility, with its programme director Jelle Cnossen emphasising recently that it did not change DOCSIS at all, and that it would therefore integrate readily with existing deployments of EuroDOCSIS, the European version of the standard. The Europeanised version of the CMAP specification is expected to be ready by the end of 2010, the main difference being that channels are 8MHz wide, compared with 6 MHz in the US.
About the author
Philip Hunter is a leading specialist writer on the business of delivery and consumption of digital entertainment. He writes widely for both technical journals and specialist web sites, as well as more general interest publications such as Prospect Magazine, conveying complex ideas and subjects in a clear but not condescending manner. In the multimedia content and TV arenas, Philip combines in depth technical knowledge with appreciation of the business models that will bring success in the new age of on-demand content consumption, identifying the opportunities and pitfalls facing operators, broadcasters and content providers as they embrace new platforms beyond the traditional end point of the set top box.
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