BRIEFS

CABLEWORLD STAFF

Advent Networks and Wireless Bypass have teamed up to help cable ops provide wireless broadband service to small and medium-size businesses. According to Advent president and CEO Geoff Tudor, the joint effort will help ops to ?extend the reach of the cable plant, but in a wireless fashion.? Tudor estimates that building a parallel network can cost an operator up to $50,000 per mile. ?The end gain of our joint solution is you're investing a very small fraction of what you'd pay in a pick-and-shovel operation,? he said.

Concurrent Computer Corp. and Optinel Systems announced last week that they have successfully completed a set of interoperability tests between Optinel's Plexis MFX Transport System and Concurrent's line of MediaHawk video servers. It's the first such integration for Optinel, which says that the Plexis MFX can scale up to 60,000 video streams over distances greater than 300 miles.

C-COR.net and Trilithic have hatched a software integration scheme to help improve the overall productivity of field techs. C-COR will integrate its Mobile Workforce Manager (MWM) software system with Trilithic's new 860 DSPI signal analyzer. Terry Bush, president of Trilithic, said the cooperative effort would help operators ?improve quality and customer satisfaction while reducing operating costs and increasing workforce flexibility.?

US SONET is set to launch a fiber-based network that will reach 3,600 homes and businesses in Salem, Ill., a town located about 60 miles outside of St. Louis. The company will build out the network on the backbone of Wave7 Optics' Last Mile Link optical access product line. Symmetrical data speeds of the new network will range from 256 kbps to 500 Mbps.

SMC Networks has launched the SMC8013WG, a wireless cable modem router that incorporates CableLabs DOCSIS and CableHome specifications. The device supports 802.11g and will be available to MSOs beginning next month.