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Jim Barthold
Four years ago a Western Show introduced cable modems and what would become DOCSIS. Today, these high-speed data portals are a hot commodity with new tendrils snaking out around other parts of the show.
"DOCSIS modems have been hot for three years, so I don't know if they can get any hotter," said Dick Day, corporate VP/GM for Motorola Inc.'s markets division.
Perhaps, though, they can get spicier and more flexible via a home network.
Service providers have reached the stage where they know subscribers want more than a single high-speed connection point. They also know nobody wants a second modem. Thus, there is a market for devices that can make more than one PC - and later, any electronic appliance - speak the same high-speed language.
ADC Telecommunications Inc. will showcase a Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HPNA) concept that goes outside the home and supports high-speed data and multiple telephony. The signal arrives at the house through the cable TV coaxial and is tapped off into the home phone lines for residential distribution.
Glen Skrivseth, ADC's technical marketing analyst, said he is interested in reaction.
"I'm actually going to walk around and get the answer to how much and how involved an MSO wants to get with home networking," he explained.
Skrivseth said he is primarily interested in whether home networking is "strictly coming up from a consumer's interest or is that something that's going to be provided by the MSO?"
Maybe both, says Andy Chang, business development VP for NDC Communications Inc., whose company offers in-home networking devices via either retail or e-commerce.
"The reason we devised this is because the MSOs want to focus only on the services. They do not want to get into the hardware or home networking componentry," he said.
The MSOs, he said, give the product a field test before approving it and recommending it on their Web sites.
"In return, we will give them a percentage of the revenue for each transaction," said Chang.
Consumers, like cable operators, are wary about doing anything that might, even temporarily, disrupt their computer or their high-speed service. Home networking has the potential to do just that.
"If you look at home networking, the main reason why they (service providers) have been so slow in adopting any vendor is tech support and whether or not you really can increase their service revenue or decrease their service revenue," Chang pointed out.
Today, he said, "I think they are justified that it can not only increase their service revenue, but also increase the customer's loyalty to cable Internet as opposed to DSL (digital subscriber line)."
Effort is involved to make this seem easy.
"You're going to have to set up some automated tools on a Web site to help consumers," said Day. "It's relatively simple, but it's engineering work."
Day was wary about sending personnel into the field to work with home networks.
"You'd be spending two hours in a house to offer somebody a $150 home networking system. There's not going to be any margin on that," he pointed out.
Adam Stein, Broadcom Corp.'s marketing director, agreed.
"I don't know that today is going to come out and install home networking as part of your cable modem service, but I definitely see it happening, probably within six months," he explained.
That's because there's a consumer interest to connect home devices.
"A lot of people aren't interested in a home network," he continued. "What they want is a transparent way to hook up the PCs they have in their house to the cable modem and a home network just happens to be the product that does that for you."
Home networking, Stein said, "fulfills the retail promise of DOCSIS" because it allows consumers to buy and interconnect high-speed data devices running off their cable lines.
"Whether you hook up one PC or 10 PCs to that cable modem, the cable modem operator does the same thing, and that's just ship out the cable modem," he said. "It allows them to scale their subscribership much faster with less dependence on truck rolls and in-home installation."
And it allows the subscribers to network appliances built off cable's broadband pipe.
"Broadband home networking is still an emerging category. It's data, but next year it will be video and voice," said Chang. "When you get to the video, perhaps that will be even hotter, 10 times hotter than what you have seen."
To reach that point, Chang insisted, is "not about a product" because operators "cannot provision with complex products."
It is, he said, about simplicity.
"Don't put too much technology into a single box and scare all the MSOs.Let them get some feel in the trial program and get some benefit from the revenue sharing, from the e-commerce, and gradually go to home networking," he added.
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