Multikabel Significantly Reduces Broadband Delivery Costs, Turns Up 50,000 Subscribers with BigBand Networks’ Modular CMTS Solution

BigBand Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: BBND) today announced an expansion of its groundbreaking deployment of modular cable termination system (M-CMTS) with Multikabel in the Netherlands. The Dutch operator’s rollout—which BigBand believes was the first commercial deployment of M-CMTS based on the CableLabs® specification—now serves more than 50,000 subscribers.

“The economic benefits of BigBand’s M-CMTS solution are substantial. BigBand’s solution has allowed us to roll out high-speed Internet services at a significantly lower cost than would’ve been incurred by a rollout with integrated CMTS from other vendors,” said Stefan van Dijk, manager at Multikabel. “Without M-CMTS we simply didn’t see how expanding bandwidth would be economically viable.”

BigBand’s M-CMTS solution enables functions of the CMTS hardware to be modularized, and can significantly drive down the cost to cable operators of delivering data services. With dramatically lower cost to increase bandwidth, cable operators can raise speeds on existing services and offer new premium services to attract new customers and retain existing subscribers. BigBand’s commercially-available M-CMTS solution can lower the equipment cost of increasing broadband speeds by as much as 75 percent.

”We believe M-CMTS’ substantial economic benefits give it the potential to be the most disruptive cable data development since the adoption of DOCSIS® itself,” said John Holobinko, vice president and manager of BigBand’s cable IP business unit. “Cable operators see accelerating demand for downstream bandwidth and higher downstream data speeds. The economics of M-CMTS can enable operators to offer higher data speeds at the same prices they incur to deliver today’s services, which can improve data service penetration and bandwidth efficiency. Simultaneously, with BigBand’s M-CMTS solution, operators can offer new 100 megabit-per-second (Mbps) services today on DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding modems, without waiting for new cards or new software.

Multikabel has begun to leverage BigBand’s support for DOCSIS 3.0 downstream channel bonding, which is designed to give the operator the option of offering subscribers data speeds of 100 Mbps. Unlike CMTS products that support proprietary wideband channel bonding techniques meant to operate only with specific modems from a single vendor, BigBand’s Cuda® supports both DOCSIS 3.0 downstream channel bonding modems and DOCSIS 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 modems on the same channels, and can increase bandwidth delivered over the widely-available DOCSIS 2.0, 1.1 and 1.0 modems to 25 Mbps or more.