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Jim Barthold
Comcast Corp. has not dismissed out-of-hand MediaOne Group Inc.'s open standards-based digital set-top box strategy, a Comcast executive said last week.
"We are still pursuing DVB-ish (Digital Video Broadcast) solutions," said Brad Dusto, senior VP of engineering operations for Comcast Cable Communications Inc. "I know that MediaOne kind of pioneered this (but) they had been talking to us before all this (merger) came up."
Many industry experts speculated that MediaOne's open standards deal with Canal+ DVB-based conditional access, DiviCom Inc. headend equipment and set-boxes from lead vendor Royal Philips Electronics NV, would fall by the wayside when Comcast took over in a $60 billion merger.
Comcast has prioritized rapid digital deployment using proprietary technologies from General Instrument Corp. and Scientific-Atlanta Inc. While remaining cognizant of field-deployed equipment, the MSO also needs a migratory path to open standards, said Dusto.
Part of that could include the DVB-based Philips boxes MediaOne ordered.
"We've had discussions with Philips and we're still taking a look," he said. "It has nothing to do with last week's announcement, it just has to do with what we're doing anyway, which is looking for all the OpenCable kinds of devices."
A Philips spokesman, citing company policy, declined to discuss Comcast or other "customer relationships."
David Baillie, VP-GM of C-Cube Microsystems' Inc.'s consumer network product business unit, which supplies interactive silicon for the Philips boxes, sees a bigger Comcast as a plus.
"It just expands the opportunity, and we don't expect it to stop there, but we're not in a position to say more about that," he said.
Philips, he said, has strengths and successes in markets outside of North America.
"I think Philips has a reasonably strong brand recognition, which will help them. They have been very aggressive (in Europe) in being first-to-market with digital set-top box technology," he pointed out.
Dusto said Comcast has met with Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., Pioneer New Media Technologies Inc. and Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., among others.
"We are meeting with our two hardware vendors that we have deployed today, GI and S-A, in trying to figure out how a DVB-ish solution might work for Comcast," he continued.
A Canal+ source said that Comcast executives have visited its Northern Canal+ U.S. Technologies operation.
"They've seen the system and they've liked what they've seen," the source said. "They're very smart players and Canal+ comes to the market with very strong support already from the consumer electronics industries."
Canal+ and C-Cube scheduled a conference call this week to discuss "a lot of what's been happening in the cable market in terms of open solutions, in terms of the recent change in players and how all this is going to impact the consumer electronics market and set-top boxes specifically," a C-Cube spokesperson said.
GI and S-A could include conditional access systems based on the DVB standard. GI, in fact, was part of the MediaOne deal and builds a DVB product for the European market.
"There is some development work that has to be done by both vendors in supporting a DVB common scrambling algorithm, but the technical wherewithal and the licenses are held by both vendors ... so there might be a path to migrate over there, which we're trying to pursue with each of them," Dusto said.
Baillie agreed.
"There is a compelling logic to an open standards-based competitive free market solution," he added. "I think it's staggering that someone like GI may be moving towards a solution that is open standards-based. It just shows the power of the argument."
The two MSOs also have different telephony approaches.
MediaOne has rolled out switched circuit broadband telephony over hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, Richmond, Va., and Jacksonville and Pompano, Fla. and will soon launch in Detroit in systems that generally abut Comcast systems. Comcast's approach has been more conservative.
"Primarily we have digital loop carrier systems going into MDUs (multiple dwelling units)," Dusto said.
The MSO gets a switched telephony system as part of its Jones Intercable Inc. acquisition and "will be exploring selling HFC to residences as well down in the Alexandria (Va.) area," Dusto confirmed. "We've also been pursuing PacketCable-type solutions with various vendors and just think that our networks are better suited for the data world."
Telephony is no back burner issue, no matter how it's delivered.
"Certainly we've been negotiating with AT&T and others about telephony services, and all of those plans start with switched services, like MediaOne has, and eventually migrate to IP phone," he explained.
Dusto did not dismiss the philosophical difference in the way the two MSOs view technology, but said it is more of a valley than a chasm.
"I don't think we're that different," he insisted. "We decided to deploy digital a little sooner, so we have a little bit of legacy. They decided not to deploy yet, therefore they can look at people like Philips."
As for telephony, a Comcast source said the two companies have always lined up well.
"They're running with circuit switched right now, but they're looking at IP as a way to do it as the next wave. We just bypassed the 'now' and went to the 'soon', and that's why we concentrated on it that way," the source concluded.
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