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BRIAN SANTO
Just when the technology was beginning to settle down, with the industry pretty much united on two-way digital transmission, the DOCSIS standard, and pursuing voice-over-IP services, everything has been thrown into turmoil again.
The issue is the concept of the "gateway" - the point of access and control for all communications from, to, and now within a subscriber's home. This time, the industry may not have seven to 10 years to see what develops and then make a decision. Any operator who walked away from the Western Show without a sense of urgency wasn't paying attention.
The home is about to be networked. The approaches include piggybacking on the electrical system in the home, piggybacking on the phone lines in the home, installing a wired network, installing a wireless network or some combination of the aforementioned. For cable operators, that means the set-top box can no longer simply be a terminal in the dictionary sense of the word. It will become an interface, too, between the network at large and the network within the home. This box is the gateway.
It needs to either come standard with a wider array of jacks or has to be flexible enough to have more jacks somehow installed.
Confusion only can ensue. What jacks do you include? All of them? Too expensive. Some of them? Which ones, and what if you guess wrong? Do you make it flexible enough to allow for hardware extensions? Then you get away from the more desirable approach of having an addressable box that is entirely software-upgradeable.
But wait, it gets worse. Whatever you choose has ramifications for where the gateway goes, and that has further ramifications for business models. Installing the gateway inside the home doesn't necessitate that the gateway be sold as a retail item, but it certainly argues for it. Pace is making a gateway product that will be in-home. You lose control of the interface, however, and you relinquish some hold on the subscriber as well.
Install the gateway outside the home, however, and you have a good shot at controlling all access to the subscriber. AT&T has chosen this path. You now become responsible for a fairly complicated system, and you probably pick up responsibility for ensuring the delivery and quality of a bunch of other services that aren't yours.
The big advantages cable operators have over their competitors - a big pipe and interactivity - are still operative, according to Ofir Shalvi, manager of advanced technology at TI-Cable Broadband.
There is a third advantage cable operators should stress too - cable technology in general and DOCSIS in particular offer high quality of service compared to other approaches. The time to exploit those advantages is when you still have them, he advises.
There is a bewildering array of technological options, however. Many are aimed at getting a foot in the door but were designed with the variety of gateway options in mind:
- Tellabs cut a deal with Riverstone Networks and introduced its CableSpan 2700 carrier-class cable modem termination system. Tellabs has maneuvered to be able to bridge classic POTS telephony with IP telephony in the short term and, for the long term, open a path for working with gateway technology.
- Pioneer's new Voyager 3000 set-top box is designed to work with in-home networks, and Pioneer is prepared to follow whatever technology allows them to connect with networked home theater equipment - which Pioneer also happens to make. The new version of its software platform, Passport 3.0, was designed to support home networking.
- Tollbridge cut a deal with Syndeo that allows Tollbridge to offer voice-over-IP in the short term and positions the company to work with gateway technology in the long term.
- TI has added Jungo Software Technologies' Linux residential gateway software into its cable modems. These new cable modems are Bluetooth-enabled.
- Broadcom introduced a new single-chip product, the 3352, designed for gateway systems, that will accommodate video, data, voice and home networking.
- Home Wireless Networks introduced its Airway TransPort, a broadband Internet gateway for homes and small offices. It connects with the company's wireless phone system and with any cable, DSL or other broadband technology.
- Ericsson showed nothing new in terms of products but did create a booth that simulates a home with its appliances networked via Bluetooth.
- On the network side, Harmonic has Ethernet switching modules that allow an operator to run an Ethernet connection to subscribers' homes in parallel with their coaxial feed.
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