Harmonic Expands FTTH Solution to Improve Rural Broadband

Harmonic has announced expanded fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) PON capabilities with a new 60G-capable remote switch that leverages its industry-leading CableOS® cloud-native solution to bridge the rural divide, improve broadband deployment flexibility and stimulate economic growth.

Enabling sustainable and agile broadband service expansion, Harmonic's new Jetty 60G-capable remote switch provides cable, telco and fiber operators with greater operational efficiencies to rapidly scale their network, connect more communities to fiber broadband and quickly meet network capacity demands for an ultra-connected future.

Jetty enables precision PON and fiber deployments by placing latency- and loss-sensitive optical components closer to subscribers, eliminating the need for additional capital-intensive fiber-optic infrastructure and reducing overall time to market.

"The need for reliable high-speed internet can most quickly be addressed through next-generation virtualized broadband access networks," said Nimrod Ben-Natan, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cable Access Business at Harmonic. "The Jetty 60G remote switch is an exciting advancement for our existing virtual PON solution, offering operators a quick and agile way to deploy high-bandwidth services, converge PON and HFC-based networks into a single virtual solution and generate significant savings on infrastructure and operations."

Added Elad Nafshi, Senior Vice President of Next-Generation Access Network at Comcast Cable: "We're excited by Harmonic's continued innovation of 10G technology. While we remain focused on Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 as our primary approach, Harmonic's PON technology provides another powerful tool to deliver 10G benefits to customers. This is yet another illustration of how the Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) and the 10G ecosystem is growing exponentially more innovative and vibrant."

When combined with Harmonic's cloud-based vBNG and vOLT technology, the new Jetty remote switch brings a revolutionary leap forward in broadband network innovation. Two Jetty switches can be housed inside Harmonic's Ripple+ modular DAA node, and each switch supports up to six 10Gbps small form factor pluggable (SFP) ports, creating unprecedented remote OLT reach and density at the fiber network edge. Leveraging this unique distributed multi-access architecture, operators can:

Future-proof their networks with an agile, environmentally sustainable infrastructure that reduces operational costs and eliminates power-hungry hardware platforms requiring complex management and provisioning;

Reuse their existing DAA network infrastructure by deploying Jetty inside of Harmonic's Ripple+ modular DAA node or Shell compact DAA node;

Rapidly scale and adapt to future bandwidth demands, with the ability to deploy a single PON or hundreds of PONs, using existing network infrastructure, back-office systems and best-of-breed components;

More efficiently use existing fiber resources while consuming the lowest power in the industry; and

Use Jetty as a hardened outdoor, field-deployable foundation for quickly launching new high-speed services, including long-distance 10G Ethernet, 10G EPON and XGS-PON optical modules.

Harmonic's market-leading CableOS Platform powers more than 3 million cable modems for nearly 60 cable operators worldwide, including the largest operators in North America and Europe, and leading service providers in Latin America and Asia.