FEATURE STORY
Cable Upgrades Continue!

That may not be the headline that execs at the top MSOs are trumpeting these days. But it's true, nonetheless.

Amplifier upgrade provider CableServ (http://www.cableserv.com) announced last month that a leading MSO had selected it to upgrade 10,000 miles of its network's bandwidth from 750 to 860 MHz. The project, which began on January 5 and is slated to end in July, entails upgrading as many as 400 units a day at CableServ's Ontario headquarters, President Audley Alexander says. Once upgraded, the amps are shipped back to the operator, who manages the relatively quick install.

"A minute is long," says Alexander. "The project (in the field) is nothing more than taking modules out and putting them back in again."

CableServ isn't the only company enabling upgrades. "We've got upgrades going on in a lot of the East Coast and the South, Georgia, Alabama and Maryland," Mark Shumacher, sales manager for Tulsat (http://www.Tulsat.com), says. "And that's just out of my office (in Oklahoma.)"

"There's still a tremendous amount of work to do," Shumacher says, a message he says was reinforced by what he heard at last month's CableConnects Show in San Antonio. "A majority of the U.S. is still not set up on return path."

Tulsat differs from CableServ in that it doesn't upgrade the equipment itself. Instead it sells product, serving as a distributor for numerous suppliers. "550MHz is the bottom that we're buying now," he says.

And that now applies almost universally. There was formerly a robust secondary, overseas market for lower-end gear, but no longer. "Ninety percent of the 330 MHz and 450 MHz gets tossed," he says. - Jonathan Tombes

ENGINEERING NEWS
Letters to the Editor

Here are some letters we received in response to our "Broadband by Blimp" story in last week's issue.

Pipeline welcomes letters to the editor at . All letters may be published and edited for style or length.

"The use of an aerostat to cover large areas with broadband signals is nothing new. Many years ago, I helped Westinghouse's T-Com Division get permission to fly a blimp over the Bahamas at 15,000 feet. It transmitted TV pictures that we were able to pick up with rabbit ears in a moving vehicle 180 miles downrange." - Jack Rickel, CEO, Comex Worldwide Corp.

"I remember reading a plan a few years back about a company with some funding (miss those crazy dot-com days) that was going to do the same thing with large jets, similar to AWACS planes, which would fly over metropolitan areas in a figure-eight pattern, about 40,000 feet up. There would be three planes, each taking an eight-hour shift to provide 24- hour service. I recall that Washington, DC, would be one of the cities that would have the service. Obviously they never got off the ground, but it is amazing how necessity used to be the mother of invention and now making money is the mother of invention!" Tom Gorman, Charter Communications

CAREER ENGINEER
Get PacketCable Savvy

SCTE is hosting a web-based seminar on CableLabs' (http://www.cablelabs.com) PacketCable^TM. Part of its SCTE Live Learning Seminar series, "PacketCable^TM: Architecture, Equipment and Transport," will be presented on April 21, at 2 p.m. ET. Hosted by Randy Reynard of Arris (http://www.arris-i.com), the seminar will focus focuses on the nuts and bolts of building a PacketCable^TM network. Participants will learn which equipment is needed, how each component works, how it is connected and transport options.

SCTE Live Learning seminars will be offered on the third Wednesday of every month, with the exception of June (because of the timing of SCTE's Cable-Tec Expo). Each seminar is one hour. SCTE Live Learning is free to Society members, and is $29 for nonmembers. To register, visit http://www.scte.org/events/index.cfm?pID=940.

BROADBAND SOAPBOX
P2P: Big Headache or Big Revenue Potential?

Peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic is the dominant traffic on your data network, but you're not getting revenue from it. If you do nothing about P2P, you're setting yourself up for increased bandwidth and equipment costs. Many solutions are available to minimize costs while gaining P2P revenues. What are you looking to deploy and why?

Share your opinions by sending an email to . All letters may be published and edited for style or length.

SCTE ANNOUNCEMENTS
Breaking News -- VoIP Symposium in Philly

Hold the date: Sept. 14. Get the fresh details at http://www.scte.org/news/detail.cfm?ID=244.

Eight New SCTE Live Learning Seminars Slated -- First up: "PacketCable(tm): Architecture, Equipment and Transport," Wednesday, April 21, 2 p.m. Eastern, presented by Randy Reynard of Arris. Free to SCTE members. Get details/register today at http://www.scte.org/events/index.cfm?pID=940.

Beat the SCTE Board Election 2004 Vote Deadline -- It's Friday, March 26. Vote online. It's simple. Use your member ID and ballot control number, which SCTE sent you. Or use your paper ballot. Don't know the candidates? Biographies available. http://www.scte.org/membership/index.cfm?pID=126

Thriving SCTE Standards Program Welcomes 11 New Member Companies -- They've come on board since the first of the year. Among them -- three MSOs and five vendors. http://www.scte.org/news/detail.cfm?ID=242

Annual Membership Meeting Set for Cable-Tec Expo -- It happens Tues., June 15, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Orange County Convention Center, Room W222, in Orlando. Get up to speed on all the Expo happenings and register for the show at http://expo.scte.org.

Tom Polis Classic Returns July 12 -- Tee up in the annual suburban Philadelphia benefit golf tourney or make a donation. The Classic supports the Thomas J. Polis Memorial Scholarship Fund and the Chester County, PA, chapter of Young Life. To participate, contact Mark Manning at or ; Rick Pieper at , ext.509, or ; or Jim McCauley at or .

IDEAS AND INNOVATIONS
Cable, Taps, Splitters, Installation Products and More

This week's "virtual trade show floor" features cable, taps, passives, splitters, couplers and installation products.

Moving into Telephony? Arris TeleWire Supply's (http://www.arrisi.com/telewire%5Fsupply) telephony installation product offerings are anchored by its Regal telephony installation product line. Products include cable, jack panels and accessories, splice enclosures/mini splices, indoor and outdoor telephone wire, and wallplates. The company also stocks installation products from suppliers like 3M, Harris, Lucent, Ortronics, and Marconi.

Lower-Priced Addressable Taps -- Blonder-Tongue (http://www.blondertongue.com) is offering its addressable multiport tap (AMT) at "a significantly lower price than previously offered." The 9-inch tap housing eliminates extension connectors and accommodates the widened gap in the feeder cabling. According to Blonder-Tongue, if the system has already been upgraded with Lindsay LGT expandable multi-tap series of passives, you can change out the tap lid to add addressability for a significantly lower cost than any other manufacturer.

Taplock Protection After the Sale - The 41-624 taplock, available from Budco (http://www.budcocable.com) has a durable, UV-stabilized polypropylene body, and is available from stock in yellow, orange, purple, gold, white, black, light green, light blue and red. Budco keeps a record of each unique serial number on these taplock shipments. The products also feature high-shouldered, stainless steel hasps and tamper-evident cones. Two-letter, five-digit serial number are unique to each taplock.

Got RF Questions? Andrew Staniak, who headed Antec's Design Validation Laboratory, joined dB-tronics (http://www.dbtronics.com) to head the development of improved RF products and services. The company is making Staniak's expertise available at http://www.dbtronics.com/ask_andrew/index.html. Check out the Web site for answers to questions like: "We use many different brands of equipment in our cable systems. Is that a problem when it comes to upgrades?" and "What are the distortion issues now that signal is delivered by fiber?" Or pose your own query.

Building the Hardened Drop -- Extreme Broadband Engineering (http://www.extreme-broadband.com), which offers amplifiers, couplers and splitters, has made its "Extreme Product Installation and Application Manual" available. The training guide is divided into four major areas, each of which serves as a building block in order to train in a logical sequence. "When all of the building blocks are in place, you will be better prepared to select the correct product and then properly install it for a perfect hardened drop," according to the company.

Toner Distributes Remee -- Toner (http://www.tonercable.com) was appointed a worldwide distributor for Remee Products Corp. Remee is an ISO 9001 certified manufacturer of the following kinds of cable: fiber-optic, LAN, WAN and premise, communication (Cat 5E-Cat 6), composite hybrid cables, low temperature electronic and Plenum high temperature electronic.

Next week, stroll the "Ideas and Innovations" exhibit hall for the latest on enclosure products.

If you find CT's Pipeline to be a valuable resource, e-mail this issue to your colleagues and tell them it's just one of the many exclusive benefits of SCTE membership--only a click away at http://www.scte.org/membership/index.cfm?pID=27.

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