Denmark’s Stofa and Arris launch first R-PHY service in Europe

Danish cable operator Stofa has initiated Europe’s first Gigabit internet service based on the new Remote-PHY (R-PHY) networking specification in partnership with technology provider Arris.

Stofa is using Arris’s E6000 CCAP Core and NC2000 R-PHY optical nodes to deliver the services.

Arris’s R-PHY technology enables Stofa to virtualise and decentralise headend functions and elements of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) layer. This enables more efficient use of the network media, enabling service speeds of up to 1Gbps. The upgraded network also supports streaming for broadcast video and VOD for customers without impacting their headline broadband speed, according to Arris.

Stofa plans to deploy additional Arris NC2000 opticanodes in the future to bring Gigabit broadband to additional customers. Later this year, it will roll out the new service to additional parts of its footprint.

“We’ve been trialling Arris R-PHY technology for many months now. We have over a hundred customers currently using this technology, and the initial feedback is very, very positive. We are extremely happy with the results of our partnership with Arris,” said Stofa CTO Jacob Larsen.

“We’re very excited to be pioneering Remote PHY deployments in EMEA and seeing the real-world speeds and video quality first-hand. Stofa has shared our vision for a next-generation network from the start, and we’re proud to be making history with them,” said Dan Whalen, president of network and cloud, global services at Arris.

Stofa teamed up with Arris for the project last May, with Stofa CEO Ole Fruekilde telling journalists at an ANGA COM press event that Stofa’s competitors were already offering synchronous high-speed services and would be in a position to offer Gigabit speeds in 2018.