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Home > SDTVplus > White Papers > Foxcom's SDTVplus™
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Foxcom's SDTVplus™: A SINGLE-WIRE ACCESS SOLUTION PAVING THE WAY TO SUCCESS FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS IN THE MDU MARKET
Overview
Once viewed as bothersome and costly to serve, the Multiple Dwelling Unit (MDU) marketplace is now seen as the coveted road to success by Private Cable Operators (PCOs), Multiple Service Operators (MSOs) and other providers of consumer multimedia services. The SDTVplus™ single-wire architecture from Foxcom paves the way for operators´ MDU success.
The MDU market is huge, continually growing and wide open to penetration by providers of integrated video and data services. In the United States, there are 20 million MDUs, half of which have 50 or more units; 100 million MDUs exist in the rest of the world. Only five percent of U.S. MDUs receive communications services from an integrated provider. Ninety-five percent of the U.S. MDU market is "up for grabs," according to "The MDU Market: A Challenge for the Cable Industry," a 1999 report by the Yankee Group, the industry analyst firm.
Everyone wants a slice of this booming market. Providers range from the PCO that serves MDU customers without using public rights of way, to the MSO that, as the local cable franchise operator, is regulated by local authorities. New-breed competitors, who tend to be better capitalized and more technically advanced, are jumping into the fray as well. The MDU market is also targeted by the overbuilder, who is awarded a city franchise to upgrade an existing cable system.
An especially attractive segment of the MDU market is the "lifestyle" sector, whose average tenant has enough income to buy a house but instead chooses to rent. While the mean income for all apartment households is $29,603 a year, mean annual family income for the lifestyle market is $62,383. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, 80 percent of lifestyle tenants own personal computers. The lifestyle tenant often selects a MDU based on its amenities, such as high-speed Internet access and digital TV service.
The MDU market has enormous potential, but it also points to opportunities in other promising applications, such as dense single-family subdivisions. The service provider who succeeds with MDUs may be able to extend that business model to single-family neighborhoods as well.
Despite the MDU market´s promise, it´s not easy for an operator to provide property owners and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) with a complete, easily engineered package of integrated video and data services. The transient nature of MDUs also makes it difficult for a provider to adequately serve this market. Thirty-three percent of MDU residents moved last year, compared to six percent of homeowners.
The challenge is even more daunting in garden-style MDUs. The typical spread-out garden-style development consumes a large plot of land, is located in the suburbs and attracts younger residents with higher-than-average incomes. To succeed in the MDU market, the service provider needs capital for growth, a commitment to customer care and the right technology platform. Choosing the technology platform often proves to be a major hurdle for operators.
Doing the Technology Hurdles
Based in Princeton, New Jersey, Foxcom, which also has operations in Jerusalem, Israel, has developed the single-wire hybrid fiber coax (HFC) SDTVplus platform. This platform empowers the MDU convergence market to support multiple services from one infrastructure.
To date, coaxial cable has been the technology of choice in delivering multimedia services to MDUs. However, a coax-only system has difficulty supporting the bandwidth-hungry applications that tenants now want.
Coax also suffers from attenuation, which refers to how a signal loses volume during transmission. Attenuation causes transmission errors in data and appears on the resident´s television as an unclear image. Coax´s signals deteriorate quickly even over short distances. For example, when transmitting a 400-MHz signal over 1,000 feet of standard RG11 coax, a coax-only system will experience a 25-decibel (dB) loss in signal strength. Transmitting a 2 GHz signal the bandwidth needed for satellite transmission over the same 1,000-foot cable will result in a 60-dB loss.
Attenuation worsens over longer distances and as bandwidth increases. If substantial attenuation occurs at 1,000 feet, loss is even greater in a garden-style development, where cables may need to run for miles to reach all the buildings.
A fiber-optic delivery system overcomes coax´s attenuation and bandwidth problems. Over the same 1,000-foot distance, fiber has 0.2 dB attenuation. With fiber, attenuation is independent of bandwidth; attenuation does not vary, regardless of what is being transmitted. Foxcom's solution offers wide bandwidth, so the resident can take advantage of newer advanced communication services without worrying about the distance the signal must travel.
Fiber enables the MDU owner to provide the highly sought after multimedia services that the property must offer to remain competitive. Pioneering work is now being done to bring fiber all the way to the home. Foxcom is at the forefront of these efforts. At this time, however, an all-fiber delivery platform is still more expensive for the MDU service provider.
The typical local franchise cable operator today has a hybrid fiber coax network with up to 1 GHz of bandwidth. Franchise cable now faces a serious threat from Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS); a single DBS dish provides a subscriber with up to 200 channels with CD-quality sound. DBS, however, has its own limitations. Some MDU residents are not able to receive DBS because of property zoning restrictions or because their windows do not face in the right direction.
Non-MSOs, meanwhile, need a single solution that cost effectively and easily supports the delivery of multiple services, while utilizing the property´s existing infrastructure.
The PCO: Competing to Offer More for Less
Selecting the right technology platform from which to deliver popular high-bandwidth services is not easy for the service provider. Competitive pressures influence the provider¹s selection of a platform. For example, consider the concerns of a Private Cable Operator trying to garner a larger slice of the MDU market. Unlike the MSO, the PCO is largely unregulated and shares subscriber revenues with the property owner.
Franchise cable operators serve three-fourths of the 10 million U.S. MDUs with 50 or more units. However, PCOs now can compete more effectively in the MDU market, due in part to new technology and satellite options.
Whether pitching a new property or trying to retain the business against the threat of a franchise operator, the PCO wants to:
- Provide residents with more competitive rates and greater service offerings, including a comprehensive (between 60-150 channels) lineup of digital video selections, analog satellite master antenna television (SMATV) reception, high-speed Internet service, and competitively priced local and long-distance telephone service.
- Be able to cost effectively customize channel lineups to match the property´s demographics.
- Keep equipment, labor and other costs per home passed as low as possible.
- Maximize subscriber take rates to help defray such costs as getting DBS service to the property.
- Install a high-capacity, low-cost architecture that delivers multiple services from a single infrastructure.
- Select a highly reliable communications delivery network that is easy and inexpensive to install. The MDU owner is reluctant to dig up the property to install new infrastructures, even if the anticipated benefits are compelling.
- Have "future-proof" bandwidth.
- Choose a system that can be replicated at numerous properties and on which the PCO can standardize.
- Deal with one vendor, which simplifies operations and training.
Property Owners: Attracting and Keeping the Right Tenant
Meanwhile, property owners -the service provider´s end customer -have their own concerns. An owner wants to
- Protect the property´s aesthetics.
- Minimally disrupt tenants´ lives, if at all.
- Select a system that can be expanded easily, accommodating both new services and new tenants.
- Offer as attractive a mix of services to tenants as possible.
- Be able to tell tenants that the development is prewired for satellite, cable and broadband access, so that only a converter box is needed.
These capabilities help make MDU properties appealing to the right kind of tenant -the younger, more affluent renter who demands high-tech services. The key for the property owner is to attract new tenants, protect current tenants and make the complex more attractive than competing developments. Offering the right kind of services helps the owner attract lifestyle tenants who choose their development based in part on its amenities.
The Foxcom Multiservices Solution
Foxcom's architecture helps both the service provider and MDU owner to future-proof their investment. In using the Foxcom solution, owners and service providers have an infrastructure that can support current as well as future communications needs.
The Foxcom hybrid fiber coax infrastructure combines the best of fiber and coax technologies. While utilizing the property´s existing coax infrastructure, the Foxcom's solution¹s fiber-optic backbone provides unlimited bandwidth to support tomorrow´s communications applications. The fiber backbone can easily accommodate DBS systems requiring 1 GHz of bandwidth, as well as the CATV/VHF/UHF signals that need from 54 MHz to 860 MHz. In addition, reverse path transport from 5-42 MHz is supported for data services. By making unlimited new services possible, both the property owner and service provider can reap additional revenues.
The SDTVplus product family allows the service provider to easily add or drop services to the MDU. There are no costly upgrades to expand service to additional units. Delivering entertainment and communication services from a single infrastructure allows the service provider and MDU owner to lower costs.
The Foxcom platform offers a low-per-home-passed cost, which is critical as operators strive to boost take rates and contain equipment and labor costs. The platform is scalable and affordable, and readily supports the delivery of multiple services from a single wire.
SDTVplus delivers DBS, local off-air TV, SMATV, cable and Internet access. With SDTVplus, service providers can deliver L-Band and SMATV television services over a single coax/fiber infrastructure at high bandwidths (L-Band is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with frequencies in the 950 MHz to 2,150 MHz range.).
Within the Foxcom architecture, a stacked low-noise block downconverter (LNBF) combines or "stacks" both 500 MHz horizontal and vertical polarities of the Ku satellite downlink onto one 950-to 2,050-MHz output. This signal is sent via coax to the Foxcom fiber-optic transmitter, which is centrally located, perhaps in the complex´s electrical or equipment room. Next the signal is transmitted over a single fiber cable to one or more Foxcom receivers.
Each Foxcom transmitter has either eight or 16 ports. Ports are connected to receivers; typically, one receiver is located in each building. Within the receiver, the optical signal is reconverted to radio frequency (RF). Each port connects to individual apartments via a short coax cable, known as the home run, which is part of the building´s existing infrastructure. Combined with off-air channels, the signal is transmitted to each apartment via the home run.
At the apartment, the subscriber unit "unstacks" the L-Band signal into the vertical and horizontal polarities. The resident´s satellite receiver (the Integrated Receiver/Decoder or IRD) switches the required polarity by sending either an 18-or 13-DCVolt signal via a coax cable that connects to the subscriber unit. The IRD extracts the chosen polarity. This one-cable solution lets the customer connect multiple TVs using the same single coax.
Over the same single-wire fiber/coax infrastructure, Foxcom's newest convergence product delivers broadband data via cable modem, along with L-Band and SMATV services. These expanded capabilities further cut the service provider´s costs per home passed.
Cost and Maintenance Issues
Given coax´s bandwidth limitations and attenuation problems, it is difficult to design and install a coax-based system that effectively addresses both the MDU owner´s and service provider´s concerns. Cost and maintenance are two limiting factors to a coax-based delivery platform.
With a coax-only system, attenuation can be mitigated by using amplifiers, a spectrum analyzer, a field strength meter (FSM) and a calculator. Even with this equipment, it is expensive, difficult and time-consuming to design and install a coax-only system that will successfully operate at high bandwidths, especially in a garden-style MDU. Extensive maintenance is required to keep the coax-based system operating.
Consider a 300-unit, 25-building, garden-style development served by a coax-only delivery system. Without amplification, an L-Band signal can travel only 300-350 feet from its source. To minimize attenuation, the operator must install L-Band satellite antennas and stacked LNBFs on each building roof. Cost becomes a factor when all this equipment is added.
Even with a DBS antenna installed on each rooftop, a coax run-forward path is needed to deliver SMATV signals to the buildings from the headend. Because the SMATV feed runs over coax, it also must be boosted with in-line amplifiers. The 300-unit MDU needs 25 in-line amplifiers, one for each building.
The service provider must install and maintain two separate networks - one for DBS and one for SMATV. Each active component represents a potential point of failure, which sends anticipated labor and maintenance costs soaring. In fact, maintenance becomes a larger concern for the service provider than the cost of the equipment.
Now consider the same 300-unit complex served by Foxcom's SDTVplus, the single-wire solution that carries broadband data, SMATV and DBS. Nearly all possible points of failure - the amplifiers, directional couplers, equalizers and other equipment required in the coax-based system - are eliminated, dramatically lowering equipment and maintenance costs.
SDTVplus includes only five components: a low-noise block downconverter, a transmitter, a receiver, a subscriber unit (downconverter) and the fiber cable. There are only five potential failure points, as compared to dozens with the coax-only delivery system. SDTVplus also eliminates the labor costs associated with installing the L-Band satellites and LNBF amplifiers on each building. The fiber backbone transmits signals from a single satellite, carrying the signal at least 3 kilometers from its source without the need for amplification. Furthermore, Foxcom's single-wire infrastructure serves hundreds of apartments, providing an excellent revenue-generating scheme for the provider.
Because of fiber´s unlimited bandwidth, the Foxcom SDTVplus product family is easily expanded. Fiber system design is simple and easily duplicated within the complex, or from property to property. When the system needs to be expanded, it´s as simple as laying more cable. Within even the largest garden-style development, signal attenuation is negligible.
The Solution for the Provider and the Owner
Compared with the limited bandwidth and attenuation problems of a coax-only system, Foxcom's solution addresses the concerns of both the service provider and the MDU owner. SDTVplus offers a single-wire infrastructure, wide-open bandwidth and easy expandability.
With only five percent of this country´s MDUs served by an integrated service provider, opportunities are ripe for operators to deliver converged broadband data and video services. Armed with the Foxcom SDTVplus single-wire solution, the service provider is well on the road to success in the booming MDU market.
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