It's not exactly the Rolling Stones slouching into town on the back of their Forty Licks juggernaut, but for BigBand Networks' Amir Bassan-Eskenazi and Seth Kenvin, the press tour they're on is about as important to their business as a 30-city tour is to Mick and Keith. President and CEO Bassan-Eskenazi, along with VP, corporate development, Kenvin, are in New York to discuss the deployment of BigBand's Broadband Multimedia-Service Router (BMR) in AT&T Broadband's Atlanta system.

Bassan-Eskenazi and Kenvin have sailed into New York on a wave of redundancy ? insert Stones joke here ? specifically, that which allows an alternative head-end to immediately restore video to subscribers whose primary head-end fails or loses a source. BigBand calls this feature ?self-healing? redundancy. ?Once the BMR is in service, it's always operational,? Bassan-Eskenazi says. ?This allows for the network to achieve more sophistication while keeping operating expenses down.?

Essentially a grooming device that allows cable operators to multiplex and rate-shape both standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) signals, the BMR improves channel capacity by up to 50%. ?The rate-shaping algorithm we use allows the operator to mix SD and HD signals in the same output QAM,? Kenvin says.

Standard protocols such as Gigabit Ethernet are used to efficiently route and transport digital video programming between facilities.

The BMR is also designed to overcome outages by switching to remote backup sources via high-speed transport. Any such outage is immediately detected, and a switch is then made to overcome service interruptions.

Economically, the BMR offers operators a solid value proposition, Bassan-Eskenazi says. ?Our customers are leveraging their legacy investments,? he says. ?It's a matter of adding software to their already deployed equipment.?

AT&T, which has dragged its heels on VOD deployments, wouldn't go into specifics as to what advanced video services it hoped to launch with the assistance of the BMR. Spokesperson Sarah Eder did say, however, that BigBand's technology would help it to ?increase system reliability,? which in turn would result in ?reduced operating expenditures, so we can expand revenue generating service offerings.?

Bassan-Eskenazi couldn't speak directly to the VOD issue, but did suggest that AT&T was gathering no moss on its end.

?I can't speak for our partners,? he said. ?Stay tuned.?

THE NEXT QUESTION:

• Will AT&T's embrace of BigBand's BMR signal a move toward a more aggressive VOD strategy?
• What service (or combination of services) will customers see as the most compelling add-ons?

Back to this issue