Kabel Deutschland completes its first DVB-C2 field test

UNTERFÖHRING — Kabel Deutschland Holding AG (Kabel Deutschland), Germany’s largest cable network operator, has successfully completed tests of second generation DVB cable transmission system DVB-C2 in its Berlin cable network.

The tests demonstrated DVB-C2’s capability to deliver more digital TV channels and even faster Internet access in the same spectrum. In optimized networks DVB-C2 will allow to extend the theoretical maximum downstream capacity for 862 MHz from 5 Gbit/s today to up to 8 GBit/s. This marks an increase of capacity in the digital cable networks of up to 60%.

The major advantage of DVB-C2 is the excellent spectrum efficiency and its flexibility and granularity of solutions for all kind of cable networks. The key building blocks of DVB-C2 are the new modulation scheme (COFDM) and the powerful Forward Error Correction system (FEC). With DVB-C2 Kabel Deutschland will be able to significantly extend its digital offering, both for broadcasting and eventually for IP based services as well.

Kabel Deutschland expects that the first customer premises equipment (CPE) with combined DVB-C2/DVB-C tuners will be available by mid 2011.