Cisco announced the release on Tuesday of its “Infinite Broadband” Remote PHY solution (RPHY) for cable access networks. The solution is reportedly aimed at addressing the challenges of today’s HFC plant, which has grown from primarily a residential video network to a wireline aggregation network for all types of access markets, including small-medium businesses, WiFi and LTE backhaul, and IoT and M2M. Additionally, operators are looking to meet advanced broadband needs of customers, including support for new applications like OTT streaming video and 5G mobile backhaul.

Cisco notes that Remote PHY and DOCSIS 3.1, two CableLabs standards, work together to expand capacity of the cable HFC plants. Building on the Cisco cBR-8 converged broadband router and GS7000 node platforms, RPHY allows for a reduction of power, cooling and hub site sizing, providing significant total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits, the company says. It is the foundation for Cisco’s virtualization and Full Duplex DOCSIS strategy.

Cisco’s RPHY solution is based on open, standardized software that was contributed to CableLabs OpenRPD forum in 2016. This open source initiative creates an ecosystem of Remote PHY device (RPD) vendors, allowing operators to select an RPD vendor that best meets their needs, without being locked into a single vendor’s proprietary solution. Cisco is also planning to provide for interop testing between these OpenRPD vendors using a third-party testing facility. Among the companies planning to participate in the test are VECTOR Technologies, BKtel networks, Teleste, and others. RPHY has been shipping to customers in multiple countries since April 2017.

Also announced was Cisco’s RPHY deployment automation software based on model-driven network configuration protocol (NETCONF) and YANG technology. Cisco’s cable automation software reportedly ensures that the new Remote PHY devices can be easily and automatically provisioned, resulting in significant savings over existing manual provisioning solutions.

“Remote PHY is an exciting innovation, and as we continue to evolve our network to provide the best broadband experience to our customers, we are looking to leverage technologies such as this that support our goal of building a distributed, intelligent, IP-based architecture,” Robert Howald, VP, network architecture at Comcast, comments.

Mike Latino, VP, service infrastructure and delivery at Cox, notes that Remote PHY plays a key role in the evolution of the operator’s access network and will allow it to innovate and improve the customer experience. “Cox remains a strong supporter of open standards that drive innovation in the market; DOCSIS 3.1 and RPHY are key examples, he says. “Cisco’s support of the CableLabs’ open-source OpenRPD program for RPHY is important in order to drive fast adoption. As we work closely with Cisco to test and integrate this technology, we continue our network evolution to support the data, video, and voice services of the future.”