With 2013 in the rearview mirror and the rest of 2014 on the horizon, analysts and industry experts are beginning to place their bets on this year’s biggest trends in cable television and broadband. With the growing popularity of over-the-top (OTT) video services combined with the increasing use of mobile devices there’s been a rise in data demand, which has placed more stress on the network.

In order for operators to meet these requests, provide the necessary bandwidth, and stay competitive, they must evolve their network. But how? Below we explore four trends that will drive key changes in the network.

1. Fiber Travelling Deeper into the Network: Typically, operators serve between 250 and 1,000 homes per HFC node; however during peak demand periods, this level of bandwidth sharing can create congestion. To prevent this from happening, operators have to continue to split nodes and create smaller service group sizes.
2. Headend Convergence: In order to keep up with demand, operators have to make their networks and network management systems more capable.  One way for operators to make their network management systems more efficient is to eliminate duplicate network engineering efforts and simplify the headend.
3. Upstream Bandwidth: One of the biggest limitations of today’s network architecture is its inability to effectively upstream bandwidth. In order to accommodate subscriber demand, the mid-split needs to move to free up more upstream capacity; however, this type of move isn’t easy as it requires significant network investment.
4. TVE Authorization: After a solid year’s worth of OTT momentum, authorization remains challenging for most operators.  You’re getting the content but authorizing subscriber access to it is  still clunky.  Looks for that field to clear as operators push for tighter integration between billing, authorization platforms and content providers.

GLDS continues to invest a tremendous amount of energy into these another other trends to make sure that when you’re ready, we’re ready.