The cable HFC plant passes within 1/2 mile of 80 percent of all US businesses, presenting an enormous opportunity for cable operators to compete with traditional carriers in the business services arena. Enterprise customers welcome the chance to do business with an alternative supplier to traditional carriers, particularly since you can offer greater flexibility for provisioning flexible bandwidth rates.

Challenges

Most of today's cable access networks were designed primarily for residential data services, but business services require greater flexibility, QoS control and scalability. Medium to Large Enterprise customers accustomed to the reliability and availability of the PSTN are unlikely to switch business providers—unless you step up to offer more flexible services with SLA guarantees.

Solution

To fully exploit this opportunity and become the facilities-based service provider of choice, you need a converged, multiservice carrier-grade optical Ethernet switching and transport network. Flexible platforms at the customer premises can support robust, business-class services, and scalable transport infrastructure can allow you to deliver higher-bandwidth rates with QoS controls.

Ciena's offerings

Ciena provides metro switching and transport for third-party coax or wireless aggregation systems and directly enables cable operators to offer the following services to fiber-fed business customers: dedicated Internet access; storage extension; business continuity and disaster recovery; and dedicated wholesale access to third-party service providers. The fiber-fed solution set extends from a managed customer premises demark, through the optical access network, to the d-hub for aggregation and/or switching and through the headend and beyond for switching, interconnect and regional transport. Ciena's carrier-grade network elements and management systems allow you to provide a more profitable, higher-quality service to win in the enterprise market. Flexible platforms provide support for robust business-class services, while scalable switching and transport networks enable greater bandwidth delivery with stringent QoS.

Benefits

• Open exciting opportunities for selling high-value services into the multi-billion dollar business market
• Unlock the hold service providers have on enterprise customers by providing an alternative, lower cost-per-bit and more flexible approach to business services
• Extend existing infrastructure investments by supporting the delivery of residential and business services over a common transport network  
• Deliver business services with carrier-grade reliability, QoS control and network management
• Increase network utilization by allowing more services to be carried over existing fiber capacity