Spend on cable broadband infrastructure dropped 3% last year

Jeff Heynen

Spending on cable broadband infrastructure dipped by 3% year-on-year in 2015 to US$1.74 billion, (€2.23 billion) according to SNL Kagan.

The research firm said that competitive pricing combined with a rise in software licences helped push down the average price per downstream channel.

Despite this, global cable operators took advantage of low downstream channel prices and boosted shipments of converged cable access platforms (CCAP) to “record levels”, according to the report.

Total Data over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) downstream channels also jumped 41% for the full year to top six million, with cable operators looking to ramp up downstream bandwidth to stay ahead of growing fibre to the home (FTTH) deployments.

“The imminent availability of DOCSIS 3.1 linecards and full-spectrum channels won’t slow the continued purchase and deployment of current DOCSIS 3.0 channels as cable operators must continue to increase throughput to reduce the likelihood of churn among their broadband subscribers,” said SNL Kagan senior research analyst, Jeff Heynen.

According to the report, Arris accounted for 53% of total revenue among providers of cable broadband infrastructure last year, ending 2015 as the global revenue leader.