JOE SELVAGE
Joe Selvage
Mediacom
Joe Selvage is vice president, IP networks, for
Mediacom Communications. Last year, Mediacom
ramped up its OneNet internal backbone.
Last year, you mentioned a migration to 10 Gbps
on your internal backbone. What technologies
and processes are involved in a deployment of
that kind?
The migration to 10 Gbps has gone smoothly, and we
have migrated significant amounts of digital video
over to the links. The largest impact has been on the
existing switching infrastructure. We are dealing with
1 Gbps port density and upgrade to 10 Gbps interfaces issues.
Does that backbone still carry traffic for about 80
percent of your subscriber base?
The current footprint is that more than 85 percent
of the subscriber base depends on the backbone for
high-speed data, VoIP and the majority of the digital
video content that subscribers enjoy.
How has that migration gone, and what’s next?
Our 24-month plan should boost the footprint to
more than 95 percent while providing additional
redundancy for all services. In addition, our ability
to provide disaster recovery sites for data centers and
headends should be greatly enhanced.
“We are watching the develop-
ments in RFoG with great interest.”
Do you see increased activity among MSOs of
similar size to Mediacom in this area?
There is increased activity with MSOs of all sizes.
The topic is gaining visibility within various industry
forums (CableLabs, SCTE, etc.). Mediacom is lucky
in that we have good geographic clustering in most of
our footprint. Other MSOs have larger distances to
traverse, and that adds to the challenge of building an
internal network.
Apart from speeds, how do you measure progress
and efficiency in metro and long-haul optics?
Well, progress and efficiency in business terms are
measured in maintaining or reducing our costs
while at the same time meeting the ever increasing
bandwidth requirements of our subscriber base. High-speed data and VoIP bandwidth requirements are
increasing at about 50 percent per year, and we are
moving from OC- 12 to OC-48 in most of our remote
markets. Circuits of this size are very expensive in
rural communities and really impact the bottom
line for these smaller markets. Progress is measured
in our ability to spend capital with the ROI coming
from circuits that we will not have to order. Most
of our efforts in 2008 are aimed at reducing costs in
2009 and 2010.
Is the technology rising to meet your own
growing QoS requirements?
The technology is rock solid and provides us very
granular control over QoS and bandwidth requirements
on a per service basis. We still have multiple access
networks in many of our facilities—one for high-speed
data, one for VoIP, etc. We don’t have a lot of different
services competing for the same bandwidth, so QoS
in a relatively simple model for us.
Are you still bullish on DOCSIS 3.0? Any plans
for 2009?
Absolutely. We will be rolling DOCSIS 3.0 in selected
markets in 2009.
What about optical access technologies? You
have deployed some PON solutions. Are you
looking to do more?
GPON has been the mainstay access technology for
several years now and remains a good choice for
certain customer sectors. With most of our GPON
and GEPON platforms in place, the push is to add
more customers to the existing platforms.
What about RF over Glass (RFoG)? Does that look
like a practical alternative in certain cases?
RFoG is very interesting, but not exactly mainstream
at this time. In our smaller markets, we are not getting
much pressure to deliver fiber to the home. The slowdown in housing is further damping the demand. At
this time, we are not making any changes to the way
we build plant, but we are watching the developments
in RFoG with great interest.
