No one needs to tell you that there is a lot going on with DOCSIS 3.1 rollouts.
Watch the video, shot at SCTE Cable Tec Expo, where Koji Okamoto, one of Viavi’s most-knowledgeable DOCSIS 3.1 experts, talks deployment issues and emerging virtual test technologies.
The video is important to see how we can help you accelerate the best-quality deployments.
Video Transcript
Hi I’m Alan Resnick, cable video practice leader for light reading. I’m here in New Orleans at SCT Cable Tech Expo. We’re visiting with Viavi and I’m talking to Koji Okamoto who’s director of product line management for be VIAVI. Hi Koji nice to meet you. Nice to meet you and good to have you here. Tell us a little bit of background about the VIAVI Brand. Yes, sure so we used to be JDSU formerly JDSU and we split it into two publicly traded company in august of 2015. and VIAVI has actually two kind of component into the name. One “VI” is kind of way and other part of the “AVI” is vision so we’re setting the vision for operators and trying to get them becoming the really the vision to become true. And for us to also set a priority and focus. Even though the name change, our actual heritage and experience hasn’t really changed. Same passionate people working on the product. Right. And the biggest difference is that our vision now is really providing site for information through visibility end-to-end inside the network. Koji, DocSIS 3.1 has been a big topic lately in the industry and also at this expo. Absolutely Yeah. What is VIAVI doing to enable operators to roll out lots of DocSIS 3.1? Yeah, it’s a very very big topic for sure for the last 12 months or so and we’ve been working with some of the top operators around the world who are very much in the phone line or DocSIS 3.1. You know from both Europe side and also North America, we’ve been helping out with the preparation of their network to be ready for 3.1 and obviously one of the biggest change for 3.1 is the frequency potential extension as well as OFDM. So those two things, we do have a two different product categories trying to help them out with the head end and hub site to be ready for the 3.1. As well as for the field technicians going to carry around with the DocSIS people to enable test set. So we are actually showing both of those at our booth today. So two different sets of testing. Yeah, absolutely. How is Wi-Fi affecting operators? It seems like Wi-Fi is everywhere. Oh yes, that’s a big big challenge for operators. Some of the study even show 30 to 40 percent of all technical calls coming into the operators are Wi-Fi related. That’s because we’re so used to the wire coax medium which is still you know one of the very important medium inside a home. But so many customers are now using the small phones and tablets and PCs through Wi-Fi now. The technician really need the ability to see what’s really happening behind the scene for Wi-Fi because Wi-Fi is unlicensed spectrum so anybody can transmit the frequency band. So to be able to distinguish the desire signal to the Wi-Fi signal and undesired signal which could be coming from all kind of noise source. And this things to think is very very important. So we’re providing another tool showing here has been a very big hit and an important topic for us for Wi-Fi. What about the relationship between DocSIS 3.1 and Wi-Fi. Oh yeah, it’s still a big big issue because you’re gonna have a pipe to the home with over Docsis 3.1 but after that it’s really going to be both COAX distribution as well as the Wi-Fi distribution so they’re both coupled together. The technicians and the work group and operator perspective, they need to have a tool to be able to actually troubleshoot and verify for both DocSIS 3.1 as well as the Wi-Fi in the home to be competing the entire service delivery to the end-user. Koji we’ve also been hearing a lot about virtualization and the impact that it’s going to have on the network. What’s VIAVI’s posture on that. How can you help operators prepare for virtualization? Yeah a great question. Definitely virtualization starting to happen for full cable operators and actually industry in general across the telco and cable and you know the wireless providers as well. What’s what it really means the operator now with the virtualization is ability for them to see things, the insightful information you look from the location that they may not actually have to send a technician. So that’s really going to be the biggest benefit for operators. Another thing about virtualization is
sometimes you can’t have visibility and customer experience. For example, if you’re going to be watching video on your iPad, how do you know what the quality look like for that end customer? Yeah you don’t. Even when you send a technician over there you gotta know exactly what they’re watching and what device you’re watching and so on. Right. So virtualization you really help in that context because you could start putting those software agents into those different locations on network including maybe the tablets and PCs in the customer premise device that allow the operator to be able to really view remotely what’s happening to the account in to the customer experience. And that allowed them to sectionalize also the problem throughout the network because you know you want to be able to say the problem between this part of the network this part of the network. and you wanted to do that virtualization is a very effective tool because your ability to put those software agent sprinkle around the network to be able to segment problems. That’s interesting so what do you think will be the first step towards virtualization. It’s actually couple of things are happening. One definitely in the video side so we call multi-screen services so you used to be all TV it was your primary screen but now actually primary screens, iPad, iPhones, PCs so that’s one virtualization opportunity and enablers for operator to really manage and custom experience. Other parties actually business services. Business service is a big growth factor for operators and it’s very difficult to have a very skills skilled technician to be able to send it to every location they want to turn up or troubleshoot so there is a way to virtualize some of test capabilities and deploy directly into the enterprise and be able to remotely troubleshoot and then determine whether or not you should really send somebody there or not. Koji thanks for explaining things. Thank you very much appreciate it. Sure.