Entropic’s c.LINK EoC Being Deployed in China & Europe

From The Online Reporter   

- Fiber-to-the-Basement and c.LINK Broadband to the Residence
- From Savonlinna, Finland to Tianjin, China
- LG Uses c.LINK EoC in TV Sets for Hotels’ Broadband  

MoCA developer and chip maker Entropic Communications has been selling an Ethernet over coax (EoC) technology called c.LINK Broadband Access to cable operators in Europe and China and to hotels that want to bring broadband to every guest room without running another wire. c.LINK is derived from Entropic’s MoCA implementation and so has many of the same attributes, such as being able to coexist without conflict on the same wire with a cableco’s pay TV signal.  

Entropic’s c.LINK EoC-on-a-Chip to Bring Broadband to Millions of Chinese Homes  

Entropic has upped its focus on China, a country that needs low-cost EoC technology to deliver broadband within the thousands of multiple dwelling units (MDU) that have 20 to 200 or more residences. To that end, it has signed deals with China-based network equipment makers H3C Technologies and Jiangsu Yitong High-Tech, according to Sean Martin, Entropic’s senior director of marketing.  

Entropic’s most recent deal in Europe was with the telco Blue Lake in Finland for boxes from equipment maker InCoax, whose Gigabit over Coax Access devices use Entropic’s EoC technology. The EoC devices are installed in existing coax networks in apartment houses and buildings that offer high speed broadband, IPTV, IP-telephony and video-on-demand. InCoax has also installed its devices at other rural area telcos.  

Martin said that the market for EoC access technology is going to be a significant opportunity. China is happening now because of the Chinese government’s efforts. China could, within a decade, have over 100 million broadband subscribers, perhaps as many as 300 million.  

That’s another 100 million or so homes to which the entertainment industry could soon be directly delivering its goodies. North America and Europe are each estimated to have about 100 million homes that could get broadband — so the Internet-connected home entertainment market is already in the process of doubling.  

China has made significant investments in evolving its cable plant from analog, one-way communications for delivering videos to the home, to a digital two-way network that will make possible broadband and interactive television.  

Entropic’s c.LINK is derived from its MoCA technology, but unlike MoCA, Entropic is not obliged to license c.LINK technology to another chipmaker, as Broadcom has done with MoCA.  

The networks that need EoC have a “deep fiber” architecture where the fiber is run deep into the network — to the MDU, in fact. A pedestal in or outside the MDU is the termination point for the fiber that comes from the service provider. The coax carries broadband, TV and telephony from the pedestal to the residences. c.LINK is the broadband technology to the residence, not DOCSIS. c.LINK is only for coax, not for fiber.

 

Several larger tier-one operators in Europe are investigating EoC and plan trials for technology assessments and business planning, Martin said.  

South Korea’s consumer electronics maker LG is using c.LINK technology in TVs it sells to hotels that adapt existing coax to carry both broadband and pay TV on the same wire to guest bedrooms. An attribute that MoCA and c.LINK both have is they can coexist on the same coax cable without interfering with each other. It saves the hotel from running an Ethernet cable to each room.  

Rival HomePNA cannot exist on the same coax cable with the cablecos’ pay TV signal. 

China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) is pushing the pay TV companies to upgrade their networks and is helping to fund them. Its goal is to have 40 million more broadband subscribers by the end of 2014. Currently about 40% of pay TV homes are connected with an analog network and about 60% with digital. SARFT wants to bring them all up to two-way digital so they can offer broadband.

 

Wins

In China, the network gear for c.LINK is currently being made by H3C, a wholly-owned subsidiary of HP (yep, Hewlett Packard), and by Jiangsu Yitong High-Tech.  

H3C has developed gear called EPCN 2.0, a broadband system that supports an optical to coax platform for Internet protocol (IP) delivery.  

H3C said it’s evolving its existing EPCN product line to include high radio frequency transmission to service passive cable networks in SARFT’s Next Generation Broadcasting requirements. The c.LINK Broadband Access solution, based on Entropic’s field-proven MoCA 1.1, is a single-chip. It is a cost-competitive solution for operators that performs 60% faster on coax than current c.LINK implementations and enables higher throughput with additional channels.  

Liu ZhiLing, marketing director of H3C Technologies, said that as fiber moves closer to the end user and the cable infrastructure becomes an all-passive network, “Entropic’s c.LINK technology becomes even more ideal for our new EPCN platform. It provides a performance roadmap based on the MoCA standard and helps us to better service and meets fiber-to-the basement requirements now and for the future.”  

There is a c.LINK deployment at Tianjin Broadcast & TV Network in a city in the northeast of China with 10 million people, most of whom live in MDUs. That makes a home networking chip maker’s mouth water, eh, and the content producers drool!  

Jiangsu Yitong High-Tech is the company that handled the development and deployment of Entropic’s solution in the Tianjin network. Wang ZhenHong, chairman and general Manager of Yitong said, “The Entropic Access EoC solution is proven and has a technology roadmap to meet the cable operators’ needs for advanced services over coax.”  

Another Entropic win is at Guangzhou Digital Media Group in Guangzhou, China’s sixth largest city with about 12.7 million people. It has two million subscribers including 170,000 broadband subscribers and 20,000 IPTV subscribers. Its goal is 200,000 broadband subscribers and 100,000 IPTV subscribers by year-end.  

Martin estimates that approximately two to three million broadband lines using EoC technology will be deployed in China in 2011.  

Pushing Beyond Europe & China 

India could follow, Martin said, but has a poorly wired infrastructure and no government backing. Brazil is promising but is still in its infancy. However, it’s a possible candidate because its economy is stable and growing. Two large Brazilian pay TV services have inquired about deploying EoC technology to MDUs. Some c.LINK installations have been made in Russia by makers of c.LINK network gear.  

c.LINK’s advantages, Martin said, include its field proven MoCA technology, low deployment cost, the outstanding properties of coax in carrying video reliably and the ability to coexist with the pay TV signal on the same wire.  

c.LINK’s Advantages 

Martin lists these advantages for c.LINK Ethernet over coax.  

Coexistence:

• Designed from the beginning for coax and to coexist on coax with all services
• DOCSIS, analog & digital broadcast, DBS and ODU

Reliability and Ubiquity:

• c.LINK uses a pre-equalized and bit-loaded OFDM modulation scheme
• Automatically and continuously adapts to noise and echoes
• Results in PER better than 10-5 by spec, typical 10-6
• Maximizes throughput for any channel

Throughput:

• 165 Mbps of MAC throughput shared with all clients
• c.LINK access does not need or rely on retransmissions  

Quality of Service:

• Supports prioritized QoS and parameterized QoS
• Parameterized QoS ensures great customer experience by reserving actual bandwidth required for the stream  

We asked Martin about the feasibility of EoC in densely populated cities in the States that have lots of MDUs, such as New York.  

“We believe there are opportunities in the US for MDU deployments. Carriers are actively looking for product solutions,” he said.  

“Our market and technology leadership in MoCA is being translated into powerful solutions for the EoC market in China,” said Tom Luan, VP and general manager of Entropic’s China and Hong Kong operations. He said Entropic is leveraging its years of investment in MoCA’s advanced home networking technology and applying the same know-how and expertise to building high performance solutions for the Ethernet over coax broadband access market. 

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