CableLabs, a nonprofit research and development consortium founded by the cable television industry, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Cable Europe Labs, a promoter of  technical collaboration among operators on issues including EU and international standardization and certification of vendor equipment, in order to extend the reach of their working relationship.

Both the organizations are supposedly working together for five years on specification development and certification testing on high-speed data and digital voice to assist cable operators in North America and Europe achieve global economies of scale on new technologies. The MoU was signed to extend that collaboration into fields like advanced network architecture and WiFi (News - Alert) technologies which can offer substantial benefits to both of them.

The agreement expands upon informal coordination over the past several years which have seen such collaboration as EuroDOCSIS 3.0 and EuroPacketCable, as well as alignment in certification programs and standards initiatives. CableLabs (News - Alert) and Cable Europe Labs will figure out new technical directives for each of them so that the other organization can directly participate and contribute.

Cable Europe Labs officials exclaimed that cable needs scale to thrive, and this is a major step in creating more worldwide scale in our technology development. By bringing together the attributes of CableLabs and Cable Europe Labs, significant benefits can be realized in developments fields such as Hybrid Fiber Coax network evolution, Metro WiFi, energy management and the digital dividend/LTE (News - Alert) interference. A study revealed that this collaboration also allegedly combines two massive markets between Europe’s 72.5 million cable homes and the US market’s 91.2 million cable homes.

In an effort to foster further collaboration, the laboratories will hold two joint summits annually to focus on mutually agreed upon technologies or projects. Officials from both the organizations will come together to share best practices and latest technologies at these summits.