Video-on-Demand Solutions for Cable Operators
Video-on-Demand (VoD) is considered the next major application being launched by cable operators today. Global revenues from on-demand services are expected to reach into the multi-billion US dollar range within the next few years displacing pay-per-view and VHS and DVD rentals in the consumer entertainment expenditures. VoD leverages the cable operator's most key assets: its high-speed access connection to and set-top-box media gateway to its subscriber's locations. By adding new equipment such as video servers and Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) based optical transport to their existing infrastructure, cable operators are able to add new revenue generating value rich on-demand services that also help attract and retain premium digital cable and high-definition television cable subscribers and differentiate them from competitors.
Nortel has cost-effective Optical solutions which meet cable operators' current network needs and projected future growth driven by the increasing adoption of higher speed data and digital video services. Nortel's enhanced Optical Ethernet solutions leverage the cost-efficiencies provided by Ethernet including the delivery of digital video content distribution and commercial services that a legacy DVB-ASI transport infrastructure is limited in providing.
Nortel offers a suite of technology options for converged Regional, Primary and Secondary Metro Optical Networks with solutions that have been optimized for high bandwidth VoD transport using the Common Photonic Layer (CPL) and Optical Metro 5000 Layer 0 dense/coarse wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM/CWDM) or Optical Metro 3000/4000 Layer 1 Next-Generation Synchronous Optical NETwork (SONET) / Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) and Layer 2 Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) based Optical Packet Edge System equipment. Alternatively, the Optical Multiservice Edge (OME) 6500 converges multiple services and network layers (Layer 0-2) onto a single platform to deliver an optimized converged services platform that significantly reduces the Total Cost of Ownership.
The Nortel Optical Networks portfolio offers cable operators the ability to use their optical investment as a future proof highly scalable service-specific infrastructure or a converged multi-service transport network. Using a converged optical multi-service transport solution for VoD offers sustainable cost improvements over the traditional MSO strategy of building dedicated overlay networks specifically to carry VoD traffic.