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ESPN Picks DigiCipher
By , Deployment Editor

Sports channel ESPN tapped Motorola’s DigiCipher II technology to help launch its digital transmission system.

Motorola’s DigiCipher II uplink digital compression and access control system will reside at ESPN network operations center (NOC) in Bristol, Ct. On the downlink side, ESPN’s affiliates will have Motorola’s DigiCipher II DSR4500X integrated receiver/decoders (IRDs).

Behind this deal were the particular programming demands that frame the ESPN network.

"We are the worst-case scenario for any manufacturer out there," ESPN Vice President of Technology, Engineering and Operations Chuck Pagano says.

ESPN Director of Technical Services and Transmission John Eberhard, who is managing this digital launch, emphasized in a statement ESPN’s need for equipment that could manage a complex and fluid programming schedule and eliminate the manual switching responsibilities of local affiliates.

The encoding system will handle on-line and backup compression, multiplexing and encryption processing for ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, and ESPN Classic, and alternate feeds used in the case of regional blackouts of live sporting events. Within the digital uplink is a network of layered control systems that manage the affiliate program authorizations, encoder system health and status monitoring.

Flexible links

The DSR4500X IRD complements the uplink’s flexibility with an eight-input radio frequency (RF) selector that enables switching programming from various satellites. It also features a disaster recovery mode.

"If the satellite signal is lost, the IRD will select another port," Marty Stein, Motorola senior marketing director, says. "It has built within it a list of other places to go."

Stein says the IRD is able to connect directly to digital cable headend systems through its digital headend expansion interface (DHEI) and asynchronous serial interface (ASI) output. The IRD also uses Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) packets for signaling local affiliates of commercial avails.

"We didn’t have to waste one of the audio channels," Stein says.

A 10Base/T Ethernet port on the IRD will enable ESPN to deliver Internet protocol (IP) data or streaming IP.

In its overseas operations, ESPN uses digital transmission equipment from Scientific-Atlanta that Pagano says is "absolutely fantastic." Domestically, ESPN uses Motorola’s VideoCipher II analog distribution network.

Pagano says ESPN’s relationship with General Instrument (now part of Motorola) goes back to 1986. "They understand our business," he says. "The command and control systems (of DigiCipher II) were integrated within our specs."

AT&T Breakup Could Boost Cable
By , Senior Editor

Industry insiders say they expect the recently announced breakup of AT&T will allow its cable unit, AT&T Broadband, to be more focused in its offerings, although they don’t foresee any immediate changes in how the company will operate.

"They will still aggressively deploy local telephone service and do cable modem service and try to become a lean-and-mean cable player," says Keith Kennebeck, an analyst with The Strategis Group. "But I don’t think much is going to change in the near term."

Under the new plan, AT&T will create four new companies, all operating under the AT&T brand. AT&T Broadband and AT&T Wireless will be represented by independent, asset-based common stocks. Depending on market conditions, AT&T plans to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) next summer for stock that will track the performance of its broadband unit. As part of the IPO, the company will assume AT&T’s ownership interest in high-speed Internet access provider Excite

AT&T Business will manage the company’s core enterprise communications and networking products and continue to use AT&T Broadband’s cable systems in serving some customers, the company says. AT&T Consumer will explore new growth opportunities, and some of its cash flow will be used to invest in technologies like digital subscriber lines (DSL) to provide broadband communications and Internet services.

A welcomed move

Companies doing business with AT&T welcomed the reorganization, saying they believe it will push the company to bring cable products to market sooner.

"It’s a huge deal," says Nancy Goguen, vice president of marketing at Telogy Networks, which provides AT&T with telephony products. "This should make things better if you’re a single (source) company and want to provide cable telephony to the home."

Some industry and Wall Street analysts have criticized AT&T for its sluggish roll out of services, particularly in the wake of its $1 billion purchase of cable operator Tele-Communications, Inc.

Steve Lang, an AT&T spokesman, says AT&T Broadband won’t be able to deploy services any faster than it is already doing so.

"However, (the reorganization) lets us focus more intently and put all of our energy in deploying products and services," he says.

AT&T Broadband reached a milestone last month when it passed the 400,000-customer mark for its AT&T Digital Phone service.

Dan Somers, president and CEO of AT&T Broadband, says the unit is on track to meeting its year-end target for telephone subscribers. AT&T Broadband added more than 50,000 customers since the end of September, the company says.

The broadband unit generated $9.3 billion over the past 12 months, AT&T says.

Roving Reporter: A Cable Telephony Success Story
By , Editor-in-Chief

While recently visiting with the Nortel Networks’ folks down in Atlanta, I stopped by Arris Interactive to celebrate the shipment of the one millionth Voice Port by the Nortel and Arris team. The shipment represented 2,836,178 lines of Voice Port capacity.

Oscar Rodriguez, president and COO of Arris, noted that 26 different operators in 42 towns and 12 countries have now installed Cornerstone products.

This telephony success story began back in 1996 when Arris introduced its Model One Cornerstone unit, a TR909-compliant, two-line package with 4.9 watts of idle power. Recognizing that it had to solve the power consumption problem, Arris continued its development efforts.

The following year, Arris launched Model Three, and cut idle power to 4.0 watts. By 1998, the Model Four sported an idle power of 2.0 watts. Now, in 2000, the Model Five boasts four-line capacity, and the idle power has been further cut to l.9 watts.

To better understand the actual growth, let’s look at the numbers. In 1999, Arris deployed 172,420 lines of Cornerstone cable telephony. By October 2000, that figure had skyrocketed to 711,950 lines—a 412 percent increase.

Because Cox Communications was the first cable operator to enter the telephony market with its systems in Hartford, Conn., and Orange County, Calif., Arris bestowed upon Alex Best, Cox’s vice president and chief technology officer, a plaque representing that one millionth Voice Port shipment.

I wondered about what Alex would say when he strode to the podium to accept the award and address the audience. His remarks were incisive, and I’m sure Nortel and Arris were appreciative of the accolades he made about their service to Cox’s cable telephony program.

Alex said that Cox does not usually work exclusively with any company in launching an expanded service. But, with cable telephony, Cox decided to depend on the expertise of Arris, and the company was pleased it made that decision. He stopped in the middle of his talk to applaud the whole Arris team.

If you haven’t launched your cable telephony service yet, take note of what else Alex said. He noted that Cox had run the numbers on entertainment television service, high-speed cable modem service and cable telephony. The cable operator found that, dollar for dollar, the return-on-investment was higher with cable telephony service.

Deployment Watch Monthly Update

Capturing PC Screens
By , Deployment Editor

Streaming video leaves much to be desired. Good content is scarce and there are those troublesome plug-ins.

Shaumburg Ill.-based, broadband software provider ClearBand aims to change that experience. Its system enables broadband network providers to broadcast any real-time video to personal computers (PCs) and provides subscribers with a transparently streamed thin software client.

So far ClearBand has licensed its product to European broadband Internet service provider (ISP) chello, which tested international Web-casts of National Football League games. And its software streams CNBC content in a trial over NBC’s Internet protocol (IP) network at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

ClearBand Vice President of Marketing Jeffrey Huppertz emphasizes that ClearBand is a broadband multi-cast solution.

"As opposed to uni-cast, as in the open Internet, we use multi-cast protocol, so that that one stream can be used by any number of subscribers simultaneously, without increasing bandwidth," Huppertz says.

Private broadband networks are the only practical way to support multi-casting across an entire set of users consistently today, he adds.

Huppertz also distinguishes the 200-KB thin-client ClearBand Tuner from alternative methods. "It’s not like a plug-in from Real Networks or Microsoft that’s installed on your hard disk and takes up 40 to 50 MB."

Instead, the software automatically is downloaded into a PC’s random access memory (RAM) when a subscriber requests a channel. "When you’re done watching that channel and you close that window, it goes away," Hubbertz says.

That feature convinced NBC executive Bob Luff to push for a trial at Rockefeller Center.

On the operator side, the ClearBand System can be configured variously. Providers can control picture quality through streaming rates that scale from 300 Kbps to 2 Mbps, with optional encryption. They also can offer essentially a multi-channel video service to PCs through the system’s capturing, encoding, storing, scheduling and playback capabilities.

User-friendly

At either end, the product appears to be easy to use.

Hubbertz thinks the product’s off-the-shelf performance could appeal to cable operators wary of any service requiring additional on-site tech support.

A cable modem is the only device (apart from a Pentium class PC) that subscribers need. At the headend, the system uses a various number of standard servers. On the network, it requires relatively little space.

"We like it because it conserves bandwidth," says Peter Brickman, senior director of operations and technology at the National Football League.

Huppertz explains that in place of one 6 MHz slot for a single analog channel, you get one Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) channel, which at 64 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), carries 27 Mbps.

"And if, as we did with the NFL in Amsterdam, you were to use a 1 Mbps stream, that means you could do 27 channels simultaneously."

New C-COR.net CTO Speaks

New chief technology officer at C-COR.net, Ken Wright (no relation to his predecessor and former CT columnist, Terry Wright) previously served as CTO for 21e.net and chief technical officer for InterMedia Partners, and has held positions with four additional cable operators. Ken spoke with CT shortly before assuming his new position.

What brought you to C-COR.net?

Ken Wright: The big driver was meeting Dave Woodle and hearing the vision on the direction that he wants to take the company, as well as what he’s been able to do already to execute against that vision.

What’s that vision?

KW: The C-COR of yesterday used to be basically an amplifier manufacturer. We will continue to do that, but the vision was really to expand the company and diversify the offerings that they have for cable operators. So they acquired a company that got them into the optics field, Silicon Valley; they acquired WorldBridge, which got them into the field services. They also bought Convergence.com, which got them into the high-speed data area. That, along with some people they got from Raytheon, gives them some very solid expertise in the network management area.

How do you see your role at C-COR?

KW: One aspect of my role is to help integrate all of these acquisitions into a seamless mix of offerings and solutions for cable operators. So whether you’re after fiber optic gear or amplifiers or network management software or field services or consulting services, C-COR has the whole continuum available. It’s going to only get better as we work to integrate those separate businesses.

The second thing that I see going forward is spending a lot of time with the cable operators themselves: identifying the directions they’re headed, their architecture, and their service offerings, and then helping to translate that into new product development at C-COR. The third is just to spread the awareness that C-COR has grown beyond just being an amplifier manufacturer.

What’s driving the industry today?

KW: As we move to dedicated services, as opposed to broadcast-type services, there’s a need to segment the network to a much greater level. And as we move to lifeline services, I think there’s a need to have a greater ingress immunity and greater network reliability. Those are two key drivers.

What about network management?

KW: For so many years, cable’s network monitoring has been the telephone. In its day, that was appropriate. But it just doesn’t cut it in today’s business.

At Jones Intercable, what we found when we deployed element management is a half a dozen computers running half a dozen software platforms. And they all just sat there and collected dust. But if you’ve got them all tied into one manager-of-manager system, then suddenly it becomes a very valuable tool. At Jones, we worked with a couple of companies trying to come out with a beyond-prototype, production-level software tool that did just that, but it just really never caught on.

Is the time right now?

KW: The industry is ready for a true network management system, and that’s something that C-COR is bringing to the fold. It’s one of a number of things that the CEO has done to diversify C-COR...one that holds a lot of promise.

Arris Gets New Name
By , Senior Editor and Deployment Editor

It’s a merger, it’s an acquisition, it’s a spin-off….It’s Arris International!

But don’t blink, you might miss the details of how Arris Interactive—a joint venture between Nortel Networks and Antec—changes its last name.

Nortel is trading its 81.25 percent stake in the joint venture for $325 million in cash and 33 million shares in the new company, to be named Arris International. Meanwhile, Antec retains its ownership share but undergoes its own name change.

"The merger of Antec with Arris Interactive so fundamentally changes the composition of Antec that we, in essence, will form a new company with a new name," Antec CEO and President Bob Stanzione said in a statement.

Last year Antec, with about 3,500 employees, generated $826 million in revenue. Antec and Nortel, in a joint release, said Arris Interactive had revenues in 1999 of $328 million, half of which were from sales to Antec. About 400 people work for Arris.

Dan Middleton, vice president of local Internet services for Nortel, says the deal arose because of interest in taking Arris Interactive public and Nortel’s desire to concentrate on its core businesses. But Nortel isn’t walking away.

Nortel’s 33 million shares translate to an approximately 47 percent ownership interest in—and two seats on the board of—the new company. Middleton adds that Nortel and the new company will collaborate closely.

"We’re now able to take the level of investment support pouring into Arris and see how we can make the network better for cable," Middleton says.

Next-generation focus

Arris recently announced the shipping of its one-millionth Cornerstone Voice Port. Combined with the company’s Converged Host Terminal (an Internet protocol and constant bit rate headend), the port creates a voice application for hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks.

Deployment of Cornerstone cable telephony lines has increased fourfold over last year, the company says. (For more on Cornerstone, see "Roving Reporter,".)

Another Arris product, Packet Port, delivers bundled Internet (over cable) and voice services to the residential market. Both offerings suggest a shift away from Antec’s traditional radio frequency (RF) focus.

Nearly half of Antec’s business will now be devoted to next-generation solutions, Antec spokesman Jim Bauer says.

"This alliance brings Nortel’s tremendous capacity to deliver information and with Arris’ ability to do it in a cost-effective manner," Bauer adds.

Michael Harris, president of the research firm Kinetic Strategies, says the new company will face a challenge in producing high-quality next-generation products, such as bringing to market a Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 1.1 cable modem.

"They’re going to have their work cut out for them," Harris says.

ITV Research: Big Growth Ahead
By , Deployment Editor

A new report from The Strategis Group predicts that that by 2005 interactive TV (ITV) households will number over 40 million by 2005, 16.6 million of which will be video-on-demand (VOD) subscribers.

The report also offers a snapshot of consumer interest in ITV.

Co-author Ty Cottrill says that a survey of 504 geographically dispersed heads of households in August found relatively strong consumer interest in VOD and interactive programming, and less interest in Internet over TV and so called T-commerce.

Of those surveyed, 23.4 percent were "extremely/very interested" in VOD and 17.5 percent responded similarly to interactive programming. As for Internet over TV and T-Commerce, 15.5 percent and 11.5 percent, respectively, fell into that category.

While skeptics are beginning to wonder whether VOD will deliver as promised, the Strategis report’s authors remain upbeat.

Co-author Keith Kennebeck admitted that, while unlikely, technical or licensing snafus could slightly dampen the growth rates. "But otherwise, we see great adoption rates," he adds.

Cottrill says the challenge for providers is to educate consumers. "If the industry does a good job of presenting the service in the right way, they’ll get good results."

In addition to covering ITV’s range of services, the report surveys categories of interactive platforms (thin set-top, thick set-top, headend-based) and types of service providers (broadcast TV, direct broadcast satellite and cable).

For more information contact The Strategis Group at or on the Web at www.strategisgroup.com.

Lucent’s Lasers Run Hot and Cold
By , Deployment Editor

Looking for a very hot—and cool—technology? Try the 1550 nm analog laser module for forward and return path dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) cable TV applications from Lucent Technologies.

Lucent’s soon to be spun-off Microelectronics Group says the A1751A module operates over a 125 degree C temperature range, from –40 degrees C to +85 C. At the Western Cable show, look for a demo that involves either end of that range.

"What is unique about these lasers is that they are DWDM-capable over a wider temperature range than what was available previously," Lucent Senior Manager of Broadband Marketing John Frame says.

The basic issue is that temperature effects the behavior of wavelengths; hence the rise of thermo-electric (TE) coolers.

"With other lasers, the TE cooler would kind of run out of gas at the temperature extremes," Frame says. "You would lose the temperature control and, therefore, lose the wavelength accuracy as well."

Temperature concerns are not limited to field applications of fiber rich architectures.

Ann Elizabeth Rogers, product line manager for laser modules, says that customers were asking for a wider temperature range for the node, but also raising the issue of more densely populated—hence hotter—transmitters at the headend.

Rogers also says the module increases coupling efficiency, or the amount of light that goes into a laser and the amount of power that comes out.

Technology tradeoffs

This component, aimed at original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), presents another factor in the ongoing price/performance tradeoff of competing technologies. Coarse WDM (CWDM), while "uncooled" and less expensive, has greater channel spacing requirements and carries fewer wavelengths than DWDM.

Stephen Montgomery, president of opto-electronics research firm Electronicast, predicts that the cheaper option will take off first. "We see a lot of activity in cable TV really starting in CWDM, and DWDM probably beginning in 2003 very early, and really not until 2005."

What Lucent is trying to do is get operators such as AT&T to notice DWDM and so move those estimates up, Montgomery suspects.

Is Lucent’s attention-grabber newsworthy, after all? Mani Ramachandran, chief technology officer of Synchronous, says the temperature range on the lasers that his company uses is already sufficiently wide. Moreover, he questions the product’s premise.

"Why use analog in an uncontrolled environment?" Ramachandran asks.

The advantage is transmitting cable signals in "their native format," says Frame. But Ramachandran suggests that other techniques are more effective, especially in the return path.

"They’re all going digital, anyway," Ramachandran says.

Obtaining information about who uses such components can be tricky. "Most of our customer alignments are under NDAs (nondisclosure agreements)," Lucent spokesman Brian Bardwell says.

Electronicast’s Montgomery is surprised that Lucent’s Microelectronics Group is even talking, given the imminent spin-off. "I thought this was their ‘quiet period,’" he says.

The significance is that, quiet or not, Lucent and others are solving optical transmission problems that OEMs in the cable space have flagged. In a related development several months ago, 3M announced an athermal package for optimized temperature stabilization designed for DWDM applications.

3M says its package expands the use of fiber Bragg gratings (a DWDM filter technology) to uncontrolled environments from –40 to 80 degrees C.

The A1751A module originates from Lucent’s "Opto-West" unit in Alhambra, Calif. Formerly Ortel Corp., it is now distinguished from the Lucent’s facilities in Breinigsville, Pa.

A High-Speed Letter from Canada
By , Senior Editor

High-speed data service is booming in Canada, by some measures outpacing the United States. Why?

One reason is an effort by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s FCC, to make the Internet available everywhere.

"It was part of the social imperative," says Angela Draskovic, vice president of sales in Canada for General Bandwidth, a voice over broadband technology provider. "That is part of the Canadian psyche. We don’t want haves and have-nots."

The CRTC also has mandated open access, a policy that remains hotly debated in Washington, D.C.

Canadians are wrapping up an open-access trial that will help implement that policy. Participants include America Online, UUnet and Groupe Videotron, Montreal’s largest cable operator.

Canada is also highly penetrated by cable. Three of every four homes passed in Canada as of September 1999 subscribed to basic cable, Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) spokesman Bill Allen says.

By May of 2000, the comparable U.S. basic cable rate was just shy of 70 percent, according to Paul Kagan Associates.

Whereas cable in the United States initially provided TV signals to those outside the major markets and only later came to urban centers, cable hit Canada’s major cities early.

A relatively high, largely urban cable usage gives Canadian operators a good base from which to launch advanced services. Draskovic says the implication is a shorter technology adoption curve.

Of course, investment also is necessary, and industry has responded.

Nick Hamilton-Piercy, chief technology officer for Rogers Cable, Canada’s largest cable operator, says 95 percent of his company’s plant is two-way data-ready. "We have close to 14 percent penetration of high-speed services," he says, noting that Rogers launched Internet access before most U.S. cable companies.

The overall picture also is impressive. "We are now in a situation where about 5.5 million homes are capable of high-speed Internet access," says Janet Yale, CCTA’s president and CEO.

Bottom line

By mid-2000, Canadian cable operators had 670,000 high-speed Internet customers, while telephone companies had approximately 220,000, the CCTA reports.

The comparable number for U.S. cable operators was 2.3 million, according to Kinetic Strategies. (Recall, however, that the United States is about nine times as populous as Canada.)

Convergence Consulting Group of Toronto estimates that more than one million Canadian homes will have high-speed Internet access of some kind by the end of the year. That figure is expected to double by the end of 2001.

Canadian operators are exploring various ways to satisfy consumers’ data needs. Rogers, for instance, has a 15-year service deal with Futureway Communications, a small telecom company, to provide fiber optic links in new housing developments.

Shaw Communications, the nation’s second largest cable company, is also making advances in providing high-speed access.

In a deal valued at $662 million, Shaw recently acquired a 94.5 percent stake in Canadian Satellite Communications (Cancom). With 400,000 customers, this deal makes Shaw the largest provider of video signals in Canada and boosts its efforts to expand high-speed Internet access.

The likelihood that a comparable U.S. deal (say, between Time Warner and DirecTV) would fail to pass regulatory scrutiny suggests additional differences between the U.S. and Canadian regimes.

Hamilton-Piercy says the approval process in Canada is both more bureaucratic and open than in the United States.

"The Washington approach is not as effective here," Hamilton-Piercy says. "If a new initiative comes up, whether buying a cable system or (granting) equal access for high-speed data, it goes through a public forum process."

Heavy lobbying by incumbents does not always pay off, he adds.

Satellites Go Interactive
By , Contributing Editor

Now is not the time to grow complacent when it comes to competition from the sky. Yes, the cable industry is making great strides toward interactive television and data services, but the direct broadcast satellite (DBS) industry is not exactly sitting on its hands.

In fact, the two main satellite providers in the United States—DirecTV and EchoStar—are turning to many of the same companies you are to provide interactive services to customers.

That fact was highlighted recently at a New York demonstration of the DirecTV Interactive service powered by the Wink Enhanced Television platform using new RCA decoders from Thomson Multimedia. Services include largely the same line-up available to digital cable subscribers, namely: interactive programs and advertisements, e-commerce, and news, sports and weather services.

DirecTV will download the Wink software to Wink-compatible RCA units free of charge. The company expected to have 1 million interactive viewers by the end of 2000, jumping to 5 million within a year.

DirecTV also has partnerships in place with Liberate and Microsoft to provide interactive services.

Meanwhile, EchoStar is working with Wink and OpenTV as it rolls out three new interactive platforms. One is DISHPlayer, which requires a souped-up decoder outfitted with a 17 GB hard drive to store video and programming. It features WebTV software for web-surfing over a 56 kbps dial-up modem. The company claims to have 100,000 DISHPlayers on the market.

EchoStar is gearing up to launch the GEOcast service, which features a 40 GB hard drive and is aimed at personal computer (PC) users.

But the most significant development for EchoStar is a recent joint agreement with a company called StarBand that will offer customers a mini home-uplink system operating at 150 kbps. The service will offer "always-on" broadband access via satellite. Hardware is expected to be pricey: $300 to $500 for a slightly larger dish than current EchoStar users employ. Service fees are expected to run $50 to $80 per month.

StarBand is a joint venture of Gilat Satellite networks, Microsoft, EchoStar Communications, and ING Furman Selz Investments. In November, the company launched its "Just Look Up" brand campaign.

"All (consumers) have to do is look up," StarBand’s President and Chief Marketing Officer David Trachtenberg said in a statement. "If they can see the southern sky, they can enjoy StarBand service."

StarBand is scheduled to launch services in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico in 2001.

EchoStar spokesman Mark Lumpkin says interactive services are intended to provide more than just another revenue stream for the company. They are designed to keep the satellite industry out in front of the public.

"This is one of the arguments we have to counter customers who say ‘I can get a cable modem or DSL [digital subscriber line], so why should I bother with satellite?’" he says. "It’s one more way to get into the person’s home."

According to Jim Stroud, a satellite industry analyst with The Carmel Group, expect to see more solutions focusing on the back-channel as a way to bring satellite-based interactivity into the living room.

"With the release of the StarBand communication dish, and the DirecPC service going to a two-way dish, you’re going to see a migration from the PC-centric model to a two-way ITV service," he says. "These satellite companies also are making agreements with DSL providers for a back-end connection that is always on."

To get a glimpse of the future of satellite, Stroud says look at Europe, where BSkyB’s OpenTV and Canal Plus’ Media Highway are the two most popular services.

CableLabs Gives Nod to Three CMTSs
By , Senior Editor

RiverDelta Networks, Riverstone, and Terayon Communications Systems are the latest companies to receive CableLabs’ stamp of approval for their cable modem termination system (CMTS) products. In addition, CableLabs requalified Motorola for a CMTS product and recertified one of its cable modems.

This brings to total eight companies that now have CableLabs-qualified CMTS products.

"This is a great milestone," says Elisa Camahort, director of product marketing for Terayon.

Although three companies were qualified, Terayon and Riverstone are putting the same product on the market because the two companies worked together to create the modem, Riverstone Director of Corporate Marketing Stephen Garrison says.

"It’s branded as theirs and ours," Garrison says. Terayon’s CableLabs-qualified product is the BroadbandEdge 2000 system, and Riverstone’s is the RS 8000 switch router.

The two companies designed their CMTS from the ground-up to support the creation and delivery of a range of Internet protocol (IP) services.

The doubly branded CMTS can go up to 38 megabits per second on the downstream for 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). It supports both quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 16 QAM on the upstream, and may be upgraded to Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 1.1.

RiverDelta Networks claims it is the first company to receive qualification after only two passes through the interoperability test suite. Its CMTS is part of the company’s broadband services router (BSR).

Jeff Walker, RiverDelta vice president of marketing, describes the BSR as having a cache-based system that is dense in radio frequency (RF) capability.

Walker says the BSR is the most compact on the market, and is aimed at supporting advanced services.

"We really designed the product from day one to be DOCSIS 1.1 compliant," Walker says.

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