Today’s successful cable operators are ramping up their networks to deliver advanced services—HD video-ondemand (VOD), tiered high-speed data, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and commercial services. MSOs are focused on improving network reliability and customer satisfaction, and understand the importance of “carrier-class” infrastructure. In order to reach the highest level of delivering the extremely reliable services customers expect, MSOs must begin thinking about the “ideal headend.” | The Ideal Headend Evolution to Carrier Class od LU Cable MSOs ideal headend the evolution to carrier class THE CABLE MSO S IDEAL HEADEND THE EVOLUTION TO CARRIER-CLASS Today s successful cable operators are ramping up their networks to deliver advanced services HD video-on-demand VOD tiered high-speed data voice-over-IP VoIP and commercial services. MSOs are focused on improving network reliability and customer satisfaction and understand the importance of carrier-class infrastructure. In order to reach the highest level of delivering the extremely reliable services customers expect MSOs must begin thinking about the ideal headend. Path to the ideal headend In the most basic terms an ideal headend is the key to enabling MSOs to grow their system without major rebuilds each time new services are added. In the past these networks were typically designed and built to meet only the needs of the day. To be successful in today s brutally competitive environment the mindset has to shift. Cable operators must look five to 10 years into the future and design a system that can easily accept and integrate new equipment into the existing network a system that can deliver voice video data and wireless services for the quadruple play. As high-tech hardware such as VOD servers is introduced to the network connectivity infrastructure must be designed to wrap the new equipment. Keeping in mind the old cliché that a network is only as strong as its weakest link proper network documentation a solid foundation of RF and fiber signal management and power distribution solutions must work hand-in-hand to make network reconfigurations faster easier to perform and far less risky to implement. This flexibility and reliability is only achieved by building the headend of the future. One path is to use modular components that enable operators to easily expand their systems to offer the best performance. The high density of these system components also requires a much smaller footprint within .
