Posted by Rick Aspan on May 18th, 2012 | No Comments »
Category: Coverage and capacity, Green solutions, Innovations, Location, LTE, Wireless
CTIA Wireless is always a good industry forum for meetings and customer conversations. That’s a ton of talking! Many discussions at the show are centered around key topics such as LTE, small cells and spectrum. So, since we’re all talked out from the show, let’s hear from several show attendees about their thoughts on these topics—but using as few words as possible.
Watch the video and let us know your one- or two-word responses to these topics!
Posted by Carlos Morrison Fell on May 16th, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Category: Data Centers, Enterprise, Products/Solutions
Hi! I hope our customers and partners in South and Central America find my occasional posts useful and an additional Web tool.
We’ve had many conversations about the continuous advances in corporate network technology, and the question we asked ourselves was, “How can we protect the initial investment against these changing demands?” With that aim in mind, we’ve launched a “short video” campaign (What can you tell me in 3 minutes?) about the status of different technologies and the solutions that better adapt to these changes.
Watch the videos (In Spanish) here and leave your comments!
Let’s take, for example, a typical question posed by a copper infrastructure project: “Do I invest in Category 6 or Category 6A cabling?” There is a list of considerations and variables to analyze:
– Supported applications and lifecycle
– Difference in size and space requirements
– Installation time and costs
– Material costs
– For how many years will we be using 6? And 6A?
– Total project investment
That’s not necessarily true, if you consider that Category 6A was developed to support 10Gbps Ethernet, whereas Category 6 supports up to 1Gbps Ethernet. Therefore, the right question to ask is, “When are we implementing 10G over copper in our data center? In 3 to 5 years? What about our commercial buildings? In 5 to 7 years?”
So, if installing Cat 6 today, we might face in the future an additional investment to migrate to Cat 6A, hence, the total investment is greater than installing Cat 6A today.
It’s true, the outer diameter of a Category 6 cable is smaller, and so it requires smaller raceways and cable managers, and less space. For this reason, design is key, bearing in mind that larger cables will be used in the future. But don’t despair; planning for larger raceways supporting Category 6A in the design stage will save us much higher costs in the future. And after all, not all Category 6A cables are the same. CommScope offers size-reduced U/UTP and U/FTP cables!
Category 6A it enables higher speeds, greater bandwidth and a longer lifecycle, and so the material costs are higher than Category 6.
But a way of understanding the investment is to look at the whole picture. If we design the same raceways/ducts for Cat. 6 and 6A (foresight!) and, as we know, implementation costs are the same, the difference between Cat. 6 and Cat. 6A projects becomes smaller.
Another point to be considered is the hidden costs of some Category 6A solutions. For example, whether they support cable lengths shorter than 15 meters (less cable to be purchased); whether they support short patch cords (for example, at least 1 or 2 meters); and how many cables cable managers can accommodate (the smaller the cable managers, the lower the costs).
So what is the total cost of each project?
In order to see the “forest” (investment project) and not only the “trees” (cable vs. cable costs), the following factors should be taken into account: material costs, implementation cost, raceway/duct costs (foresight!), hidden costs (cable lengths, cord lengths, cable manager sizes) and replacement due to end of useful life (when I will have to invest again, how much dismantling the old installation and stopping operations costs).
We want to know your comments! What considerations you take into account when evaluating infrastructure projects?
We hope that we have shed some light on this issue and that you will enjoy watching the different short video sessions that are already available… AND IN SPANISH! Thank you for commenting!
Posted by Mark Alrutz on May 14th, 2012 | No Comments »
Category: Broadband, Green solutions, Innovations, Products/Solutions
Expanding service offerings are important for MSOs because they must evolve their networks to keep up with the competition. While they do that, they are also investigating ways to reduce power and fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse emissions and operating costs. Not only do they need the right solutions to maximize and improve their network’s technology, but also reduce their energy costs and improve network efficiency.
MSOs now have several options to reduce their energy cost, and they can accomplish that partnering with CommScope to implement the right solution for their specific needs. We’ve demonstrated how our energy conservation and alternative energy solutions can help operators:
By deploying a hydrogen fuel cell power solution, operators can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption at hub sites. Unlike diesel generators that emit greenhouse gases, the only by-products of hydrogen fuel cells are heat and water. The Society of Cable Telecommunication Engineers installed a hydrogen fuel cell at its corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania in June 2011. It was called into service when the building lost power during Hurricane Irene last summer, keeping its network online and functioning until power was restored.
Installations of free-air cooling solutions in the wireless industry have shown a reduction of approximately 25 percent (estimated $2,000 annually per site in energy savings) in overall power consumption in a variety of climates. By deploying a proper free-air cooling system for a shelter, operators can choose fan configurations and define filter specifications that meet their desired standard for air quality.
By adopting the OneBase InSite® Connect solution, operators now have the visibility and flexibility to more effectively control a number of operational parameters. This simple change to a company’s day-to-day operations can also save money on truck rolls and fuel costs, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve security at unmanned locations.
Not only is an all-digital, carrier grade wideband edge QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) vital to supporting additional advanced and next-generation services over HFC networks, but this innovative technology is also designed to lower power consumption in headend/hub environments through consolidation of equipment (requires less power for equipment and for HVAC). By deploying the award-winning Universal Wideband Edge QAM solution, this technology’s increased density provides cable operators with the ability to reduce capital and operating expenses by significantly lowering the price per QAM. With a low 0.5 watt per QAM power consumption, operators can now benefit from a dramatic reduction in power and cooling costs.
BrightPath® Optical Solutions (BOS™) provides operators with the ability to FTTx solution that meets their needs of today while providing a migration path to the technology of tomorrow. It also helps reduce power consumption in the outside plant by eliminating or reducing active components. BOS customers can cost effectively continue to deliver competitive high bandwidth services and fully leverage all of their existing infrastructures, while saving approximately $1,000 per mile, per year, on energy costs using an RFoG network.
By deploying an Intelligent Addressable Tap Solution, operators have the ability to remotely control taps from the system office, headend or technical center. The ability to remotely control individual tap ports yields maximum benefits to operators in vacation areas, campus environments, MDUs and other high churn areas. This flexibility allows operators to reduce truck rolls, thus reducing fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Are you ready to deploy energy conservation and management solutions? Continue Reading →
Posted by Tom Anderson on May 11th, 2012 | No Comments »
Category: Broadband, Coverage and capacity, Products/Solutions
Deploying broadband infrastructure to rural or sparsely populated areas has been an elusive goal for many years. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 helped to jump-start many rural broadband builds in the US. More importantly, these projects have established benchmarks for network costs, take rates, and revenue demonstrating the potential of the rural broadband market.
It is true that rural subscribers are underserved, but it’s not for lack of technology, because there are multiple ways to reach those subscribers with megabits of broadband. It’s also not the lack of subscribers holding up deployments, because rural residents are just as eager to buy broadband as those in more densely populated communities. The barrier has been the high cost of the network. Payback periods with traditional access network architectures are simply too long to justify the investment.
CommScope has examined this issue and recently published a white paper focusing on Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) pertaining to xPON (Passive Optical Network) such as RFoG (Radio Frequency over Glass), GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) and EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network) infrastructures.
Our studies concluded that the right network architecture can make rural broadband profitable. Conventional wisdom has dictated splitter networks as the choice for xPON systems. In extremely dense populations of more than 350 homes passed (HP) per mile, traditional splitters are an economical solution. However for rural areas, splitter-based architectures are more expensive than tap architectures.
A major reason is they use significantly more distribution and drop fiber than tap networks. For example, we modeled a 256 HP network with an average drop length of 75 feet. At five HP per mile, a splitter network uses more than 54 times the drop fiber needed for the same area with distributed taps. Even at 20 HP per mile, a splitter approach requires more than 14 times the drop fiber for a two-port tap network. To illustrate the difference, the red lines in these two networks below are drop fiber.
Another reason for the higher costs of splitter networks is that they require more fibers in the distribution cable, shown by the following illustration.
So, how much cost difference does a tap architecture make? We compared material costs for that same 256 HP model. We included distribution and drop fiber cable, plus enclosures, cabinets, splitters and taps, but not installation and labor. The following chart shows the cost curves. For example, at 20 HP per mile, just the fiber infrastructure materials for a centralized splitter architecture cost $285 per subscriber while a two- or four-port distributed tap architecture costs slightly more than a third of that (approximately $110). Lower densities have even larger cost differences as shown.
Network operators are taking advantage of tap architecture savings to make rural broadband profitable.
I encourage you to read our white paper (Fiber Architecture for Rural FTTx Deployments) in its entirety.
How are you deploying broadband network architecture to better serve your rural subscribers?
Posted by Vince Sumrall on May 9th, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Category: Data Centers, Enterprise, Products/Solutions
I was recently asked to accompany a sales manager on a customer visit to a large multinational business. The purpose of our visit was to share our experience and opinion on a situation that is becoming more and more common in the IT world. We were posed with this question: “When do you replace a Cat5e cabling infrastructure that is from all outward appearances performing perfectly normally?”
It was obviously a loaded question. With IT on one side of the table, facilities and security on the other side and the company money men seated across from us, all eyes focused on my sales manager and me.
As budgets continue to tighten in a very uncertain global economy, the question is certainly one that many companies both big and small are beginning to struggle with. Each side has somewhat convincing arguments for their respective positions. From a facilities and security standpoint, there is nothing wrong with a quality Cat5e infrastructure that was properly installed and well maintained. It meets all their needs, is in perfectly good working order and is readily available at a reasonable and decreasing cost. At the same time, IT is constantly being asked to provide more with less while supporting things like video conferencing to reduce travel expenses, online streaming capabilities for internet-based training, as well as VOIP and POE applications.
So, who’s right? How do you decide? I mean, it’s pretty easy to see when an infrastructure is on its last legs, right?
Down time is becoming more and more a factor. No one knows what route many horizontal cables take. The patch cords are so deep in all telecom closets that only one guy on staff has arms long enough to reach the patch panel through them. That’s when it’s time to re-cable!!
But, what if your current Cat5e cabling is “good enough” for now? What if there are no failures? What if you have maintained proper record keeping? What if you have done everything right to get the most out of your cabling?
In those situations, unfortunately, there is no easy or quick answer. I believe you have to take a look at two or three key factors, and then a company must make the decision that is best for its unique needs. One of those factors is obviously the budget. Can a company afford to incur the cost in dollars, time and disruption of services to re-cable at this point? Many times that’s as far as the discussion should ever go.
Another factor is whether a business can afford not to re-cable? What I mean by that is how much does the organization depend on IT? Banking, insurance, healthcare…. Can these types of organizations afford to have “good enough” cabling and expect to be profitable and grow long term? In a lot of cases the factors we see may not always give us the clear answer we need. If you’re a financial trader and your competitor across the street can execute trades a half a second faster than you all day long, what kind of edge is that going to give him? If you are a nurse in a critical care unit and could be notified a half a second sooner, would it make a difference?
Sometimes speed really counts. In those situations, it’s not a matter of being good enough; it’s a matter of being as fast as possible.
What factors do you consider when deciding if your cabling is “good enough?”
Building a high-quality RF site is a challenge our customers must meet everyday. Problem sites are often referred to as chronic, under-performing or “red” sites, as in the case of those using a dashboard monitoring system. Whenever a site falls into the problem zone, noise interference and issues with passive intermodulation (PIM) and voltage standing wave ratio can put the overall success of a carrier’s system at risk.
Legacy RF paths are often one part of the site challenge. During site audits, we see a lot of non-conforming, older products that don’t meet today’s current PIM standards. There are also multiple frequencies of varying age sharing the RF path. Many times, the RF path components consist of multiple suppliers and the many “hands” of numerous installers that complicate the expected site RF performance. There can be several different manufacturers of feeder cables, jumpers, connectors, antennas, tower mounted amplifiers (TMA) and diplexers, just to mention a few. The number of combinations that you can find on a cell site is in the thousands.
Despite the myriad of problems, trouble shooting is often ignored because it’s time consuming and requires a highly skilled crew to do the review. In a lot of instances, operational expenses aren’t available to the carrier due to budgets being dedicated to capital expenses for new site builds and capacity expansion.
Over the past year, our team performed dozens of site audits, concentrating on the RF path from the OEM baseband radio to the base station antenna. We found that about 75 percent of the problems experienced at the site were interconnect issues. It is critical that all connectivity points are meeting. We see a lot of issues with correctly connecting site components and not matching individual product specification guidelines for connectors, surge arrestors, bias tees and TMAs. Even if the original installation was performed correctly, subsequent field efforts interfering with the original interconnect often result in new path performance degradation. Frequently, poorly made RF jumpers are a significant reason for performance issues as about 90 percent of installers are still using field prepared jumpers versus factory-assembled PIM tested jumpers. Water migration due to improper weather proofing is also one of the major contributors to poor performance at a site.
Further, about 20 percent of the issues we encounter at sites come from products—mostly antennas and TMAs—that fail to meet published specifications. It may be due to the age of the product, supplied before PIM specs were introduced, or it could be simply product failure. The remaining five percent of trouble areas come from various scenarios, including near-field antenna shadowing due to improperly installed mounts and by external sources of signal interference near the cell site negatively impacting antenna performance.
How do your RF sites compare? Have you run into any similar conditions?
Think about how much time and money poorly performing sites could be costing you. Continue Reading →
Posted by Nate Stathum on May 4th, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Category: Coverage and capacity, Enterprise, Industry Trends, Intelligent Buildings, Products/Solutions, Wireless
As I’m walking to a meeting from the second level of a parking garage talking on my cell phone, I was impressed–the cellular service isn’t bad down here. I’m wondering whether the coverage is provided by a local tower close by or through a distributed antenna system (DAS). Now I’m curious about the coverage in the adjoining building….how good will that be? I need to contact a colleague and leave a short message before I head into my meeting, so I’m hoping the coverage inside is consistent.
Entering the building I see people on their cell phones in the lobby–that’s promising. Wait, one person is looking at his phone and moving toward the lobby windows. Not good. I check in with security and start to dial my colleague’s number before getting on the elevator. I hope there’s coverage in there. The doors close. I’m passing the second floor, now the third floor and then I hear a “hello” on the other end of the line–music to my ears!
Complete in-building wireless coverage used to be a luxury, but now it’s expected. Building owners are beginning to recognize that tenants and visitors expect seamless access to cellular networks both outdoors and inside. A well-designed in-building wireless system, or DAS, can be designed to augment the coverage and capacity offered by the outdoor cellular network. It should provide scalable, full-spectrum coverage of all of the carrier’s signals throughout the building or enterprise.
How was the cell service in the buildings you recently visited? Continue Reading →
Posted by Mike Schaefer on May 2nd, 2012 | No Comments »
Category: Events, Products/Solutions, Wireless
Many factors affect the total cost of ownership (TCO) in wireless networks. While some of those factors are beyond your control, others can be controlled by making the right choices in network infrastructure. I’m writing a series of blogs focused on an often overlooked consideration that can significantly decrease overall TCO – transmission lines featuring aluminum instead of all-copper. They offer immediate and long-term cost savings, but only if properly constructed.
It’s common knowledge that the cost of copper, as a raw material, is volatile. Over just the last two years, copper prices increased dramatically. There were some temporary dips, but the reality is copper consumption in developing nations continues, despite the supply remaining constricted. That’s a perfect combination for driving up costs.
The key component and biggest contributor to the cost of a traditional transmission line is, of course, copper. Copper traditionally has been used for both the inner and outer conductors. As copper prices rise, so does the cost of the transmission line that relies on copper as its major component. Given the sheer number of transmission lines deployed in wireless networks, even a small uptick in cost can have a serious impact on the total spend for a network. We analyzed a major U.S. operator and discovered that if it had made a simple swap from copper to aluminum transmission lines just one year ago, it could have saved well over $6 million by the end of that year.
Do transmission lines have to use copper in order to offer the electrical and mechanical performance expected by network designers? The consensus among transmission line manufacturers, and an ever-growing list of wireless operators, is that aluminum is a legitimate alternative to copper. In fact, more than 100 million feet of HELIAX FXL cable, which features an aluminum outer conductor, already has been installed by wireless operators in every part of the world. Nearly every major vendor in the industry now offers aluminum cable products. What’s more, aluminum as a conductor offers tangible cost savings – raw copper is approximately three times more expensive than raw aluminum.
What are the tradeoffs? Admittedly, aluminum has lower direct current conductivity and is softer than copper. At the same time, aluminum offers a lighter weight and more flexibility. That makes it a great material to use for a transmission line’s outer conductor, while maintaining the use of copper as an inner conductor. Performance of such dual-metal cables with an aluminum outer conductor can be as good as, or even better than, that of traditional copper cables. It all depends on how the aluminum transmission lines are constructed.
Next time, I’ll discuss specific cable construction techniques that have led to the success of such dual metal transmission lines. Meanwhile, we look forward to seeing many of our customers at CTIA WIRELESS 2012 in New Orleans to discuss this and other industry challenges and opportunities.
What is your viewpoint on these cables?
Posted by AnilTrehan on April 30th, 2012 | No Comments »
Category: Broadband, Enterprise, Green solutions, Products/Solutions, Wireless
Note: Seventh in a series on Energy Solutions
You’ve likely heard TV commericals which say, “Act now and we’ll throw in shipping and handling for free.” Today, in the telecommunications world, you can get your solutions shipped while minimizing the associated environmental impact. I know, I’m starting to sound like the TV announcer and you’re probably waiting for me to say, “But wait, there’s more.”
In the past decade, the world has seen tremendous growth in wireless networking. This growth continues unabated as wireless operators add more infrastructure to handle mobile data traffic. In today’s global economy, the equipment required to build and operate a wireless site is often manufactured and shipped from all over the world. As most wireless operators have thousands of sites in their network, the energy consumption and costs associated with shipping and handling equipment are substantial. Unfortunately, these costs are often overlooked.
When infrastructure providers reduce packing density and design products to be smaller and lighter—with the same high performance as larger-size products—energy consumption, costs and carbon dioxide emissions associated with shipping can be reduced. Okay, I think it’s safe to say, “But wait, there’s more.”
CommScope helps its customers reduce shipping costs and subsequent carbon dioxide emissions in a number of innovative ways, such as:
Have you considered reducing your costs associated with shipping and handling?
Posted by Joe Livingston on April 27th, 2012 | No Comments »
Category: Data Centers, Enterprise, Products/Solutions
I hate paying a premium price for a seat in a sports arena only to be packed in like sardines and unable to get a good view of the game. Team owners try to meet fans’ demand for seats because there’s nothing like being there in person, but density impacts access if not well planned.
Patch panel density presents similar challenges. Increasing equipment port counts, with data center space at a premium, mandate high density patching. Whether the connectivity is copper or fiber, interface footprints (ports) are standardized and have physical limits within the area of the panel. Jamming adapters/jacks into a panel for maximum density may at first seem like an obvious (and final) answer to the problem. It possibly could be if patch panels were only touched once during initial equipment deployment.
Unlike the sports arena analogy, fortunately, all links in the patch panel can still “see the game,” even if the user doesn’t have access to the port. Moving the interface (port) is an answer many patch panel providers deploy to solve the port access challenge. However, movement adds an additional risk to the panel problem, much like it does at the sport arena. When a view is blocked at the arena, many people stand to improve their position. This often impedes and negatively impacts others’ access. Such an impact is unacceptable with patching.
Movement of ports or sections of ports within the panel must be planned for, and managed, to assure an “unobstructed view of the game” for all links. When designed correctly, link connectivity is assured even in high density applications where some port movement is necessary.
What experience have you had with patching and port movement?
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