- CommScope exec Guy Sucharczuk said discussion around “smart” amplifiers for cable upgrades is picking up
- Comcast is now rolling out AI-powered amps built by CommScope
- Operators weigh different ways to process amp data, Sucharczuk said
As operators plot DOCSIS 4.0 and other cable network upgrades, “smart” amplifiers are a critical piece of the puzzle and picking up more steam, said Guy Sucharczuk, SVP and president of CommScope’s Access Network Solutions (ANS).
Instead of just boosting a cable signal, smart amplifiers can collect detailed data and send it back to a central control facility so the operator can better pinpoint network issues. Sucharczuk told Fierce while smart amps aren’t a new development, the tech is now gaining further attention because of how AI can be rolled into it.
“The smart amps are a thing now,” he said in an interview following SCTE’s Tech Expo. “There’s enough out there that people understand how they work and what they really do, and Comcast is driving this a lot with their AI models.”
Sucharczuk referred to Comcast’s latest announcement that it’s deploying AI-enabled amplifiers (which happen to be CommScope-branded) to bolster autonomous maintenance across its footprint.
These amps can perform network diagnostics, such as “tell you when the squirrel and where the squirrel bit your coax,” he said. “They can tell you when you’re going to have a power outage because the amplifier is starting to die. They can tell you where [a fiber cut is] within two feet.”
Edge vs centralized AI in cable
Comcast, which claimed it’s leading the charge with AI-based amps, is part of a cohort of operators that want to embed AI into the amp itself, “where it can handle all the data sifting and figuring out what’s going on in the network,” said Sucharczuk. Other operators want to use AI in the headend to process data coming from the amp.
In those cases, operators want better visibility into the amplifier’s health and when it needs replacement, but they don’t want to “invest the extra dollars in doing the AI stuff,” he said.
Such a centralized approach may be cheaper at first, but Sucharczuk noted that as operators collect all that data and move it back to the headend, “it becomes so expensive to process because there are so many of these endpoints.”
There’s only so much a central facility can take. Smaller providers may not have that problem, but big multiple systems operators (MSOs) “hit that tipping point pretty quickly,” he pointed out.
Aside from CommScope, other notable manufacturers of cable smart amps include AOI, ATX Networks, Technetix and Teleste. Charter is using a combination of amps from vendors like AOI and ATX for its Extended Spectrum (ESD) DOCSIS 4.0 rollout.
ESD aims to boost cable network speeds by expanding an operator’s available spectrum from 1.2GHz to 1.8GHz. Whereas the full duplex (FDX) approach, favored by Comcast, uses noise cancellation to enable higher speeds while sticking to the 1.2GHz-sized pipe.
“You have two different groups within the industry, but all of them now have kind of reached the point where they’re thinking, ‘I need a smarter amp,’” said Sucharczuk.
CommScope’s take on cable deployment challenges
Commercial DOCSIS 4.0 deployments are still in the early stages, with only Comcast and Mediacom publicly announcing rollouts to date. One issue hindering widespread deployment is the availability of 4.0 customer premises equipment (CPE), as Sucharczuk said production just started to “[come] online” this year.
“There are like three or four vendors that I’m aware of that currently are shipping in the tens of thousands of [4.0 modems],” he said. “So that’s been another issue, just getting that done.”
Another problem operators run into is “you can only do so much, it’s a disruptive upgrade.” That just comes with the territory when you need to make changes on an already live network.
Operators typically “will do it from one in the morning till three or four in the morning, when most people are asleep,” said Sucharczuk. Or they provide a maintenance window for the customers telling them how long they can expect a service disruption.
“Which is fine, but you can only do so much, and you only have so many people, and that’s why it takes as long as it does,” he added.