Cable Access’s Virtualized Future Has Arrived

The cable access technology business’s new, virtualized era has arrived for vendor Harmonic, which reported a 78% year-over-year spike in its fourth-quarter cable access revenue, to $43 million, driven by its CableOS software product. San Jose-based Harmonic also touted two new but unspecified Tier 1 cable operator clients for CableOS, which converts the formerly hardware-intensive converged cable access platform (CCAP) of the typical cable hybrid fiber coaxial network into a virtualized software-based architecture. CommScope, which acquired Arris last year, Cisco Systems and Casa Systems, respectively, led the old paradigm of supplying CCAP and cable modem termination system (CMTS) hardware.