Liberty Global trials Technetix direction neutral DOCSIS technology

The cable vendor Technetix recently completed a trial of its Direction Neutral Network (DNN) access amplifier solution with Liberty Global. The company would only specify that “the trial was in Europe.”

Liberty operates in six countries in Europe, including Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The Technetix system that Liberty recently trialed will enable the operator to upgrade from its current DOCSIS 3.1 access network to DOCSIS 3.1/high-split 204 MHz services now. And then Liberty will be able to evolve to DOCSIS 4.0 ultra high-split 492 MHz services at a later stage, via a software update without revisiting the plant.

Asked if Liberty is planning to deploy this technology, a Technetix spokesperson said, “Yes, in Europe in 2023.”

The technology works by transporting overlapping downstream and upstream signals, without the need for diplex filters or echo cancelation.

The Technetix spokesperson said, “The direction neutral network is a unique solution that does not use diplex filters, and as a result there is no guard band area. It allows operators to decide at which frequency they want to transmit the upstream or downstream, and it is a transparent pipe between the cable modem and RMD node. The downstream goes up to 1.8 GHz, and the upstream up to 492 MHz, and the network is completely software controlled.”

Although downstream is usually faster than upstream in DOCSIS, with DNN the split location is dynamic.

DNN enables increased capacity on both DOCSIS 3.1 or DOCSIS 4.0 in the future. When Liberty wants to evolve to DOCSIS 4.0, they simply change their profile remotely.

Technetix’s One Touch ecosystem will also allow maintenance of legacy set-top box out-of-band carriers throughout future spectrum upgrades. This DOCSIS 4.0 ready network uses the existing cables, connectors and powering system.

Colin Büchner, Chief Network Officer of Liberty Global, said in a statement, “The great thing about DNN One Touch amplifiers is that they will drop into existing amplifier locations without using additional power and no digging.”