CED articles from April 2006

CED archives from April 2006

Vonage-Shaw barbs just the beginning.(Vonage Holdings Corp. and Shaw Communications Inc.)(Column)
April 1, 2006... It did not take long for the "Network Neutrality" debate to go from simmer to boil. What was once a topic relegated to the tech and trade side of the media has quickly become a mainstream, hotly debated issue. While Leslie Ellis, an...

S-A to retain independence.(Scientific-Atlanta Inc. acquired by Cisco Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Although Scientific-Atlanta (S-A) has been absorbed by Cisco Systems in a deal valued at $7 billion, S-A will retain a good portion of its independence, company officials said. Suraj Shetty, director of marketing for Cisco's routing...

Cisco travels OEM route.(Cisco Systems Inc. enters into deal with TAZZ Networks Inc.)(original equipment manufacturer)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Cisco Systems Corp. has entered the policy server sector via an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) agreement with TAZZ Networks Inc. The policy server is a key component of PacketCable Multimedia (PCMM), a CabteLabs-specified...

MovieBeam is back.(relaunched by Walt Disney Co. and backed by Intel Capital Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... The Walt Disney Company has I resurrected MovieBeam, a service that uses broadcast spectrum to deliver movies to special set-tops outfitted with hard drives. Although MovieBeam will continue to stock movies and other content, the new...

Net2Phone preps wireless play.(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... It's still a ways off, but Net2Phone said it has plans to offer a "wireless overlay" platform that will enable its cable VoIP partners to offer an array of mobile services. Targeting a Q4 launch, Net2Phone is already in negotiations with a...

MoCA finds second silicon source.(Octalica Ltd. joins Multi-media over Coax Alliance)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Octalica Ltd. has become the second silicon supplier to join the Multi-media over Coax Alliance, a group behind a coax-based home networking scheme that supports theoretical throughputs as high as 270 Mbps. Entropic Communications had...

Graham on board to lead RGB growth.(Jef Graham of RGB Networks)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Scaling a technology startup is one of the primary tasks of Jef Graham, the incoming chairman & CEO of RGB Networks, a digital video specialist based in San Mateo, Calif. At RGB, Graham has been brought on board to grow the company's...

WorldGate, Motorola hang up videophone partnership.
April 1, 2006... WorldGate Communications and Motorola Inc. have scuttled a distribution agreement centered on the "Ojo" broadband videophone. Going forward, WorldGate will head up all sales, marketing and distribution of Ojo and any other video telephony...

CommScope picks up Trilogy assets.(acquires Trilogy Communications Inc.)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... CommScope Inc. has sealed a deal to acquire the cable technology assets of Trilogy Communications, including its MC2 line of trunk and distribution cable products and PB10 gear. CommScope did not disclose the value of the deal, but said it...

Paying the freight on 'free' VOD.(up front: Latest news and insight)
April 1, 2006... Operators have offered socalled "free" VOD fare for several years, leveraging it as a retention tool, to add value to the digital tier, and as a way for consumers to grow comfortable using VOD without getting charged for it. Although cable...

Boltax joins PixelPlay.(Jonathan Boltax)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Cable vet Jonathan Boltax has been named VP of programming and service management for PixelPlay Inc., a provider of interactive games and services. Boltax, who will head up the company's cross-platform gaming and community services and assist...

EGT encoder thinks small.(Head End Micro encoder)(HEMi)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... EGT Inc. has introduced a high-density encoding platform targeted to the multiple-dwelling unit and the "closed community" sector. The HEMi (Head End Micro), as it's called, can handle off-site insertion of "hyper local channels," such as...

NTL boots up 100-Meg trial.(channel-bonding data service)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Taking an early glance at the promise of DOCSIS 3.0, U.K.-based MSO NTL Inc. is conducting a 100 Mbps channel-bonding data service trial in tandem with ARRIS. In what follows earlier lab trials, the field test is featuring ARRIS'...

Coxt aps Juniper for backbone upgrade.(Cox Communications Inc. using routers of Juniper Networks Inc.)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Cox Communications will expand a national. IP backbone project using routers from Juniper Networks. Under a second phase of Cox's national backbone strategy, the MSO will upgrade its core network with Juniper's T640 core routers in an...

Nicholson relearns his ADCs.(Hilton Nicholson joins ADC Telecommunications Inc.)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Hilton Nicholson has rejoined ADC as president of its Active Infrastructure Business Unit. Nicholson was president of ADC's IP Cable Business Unit until the company divested it in 2004. Most recently, he served as SVP of product operations...

Must-carry, from A to B.(broadcasting rules)
April 1, 2006... There are 119 TV channels available to customers of the cable company Cebridge Connections in the central Washington town of Quincy, a small farming community near the Wenatchee Valley. Channels 2 through 12 are populated mostly by local...

The big squeeze: HDTV ops are mulling how to shoehorn more high-def programming into limited spectrum.(high-definition television)
April 1, 2006... The rush to find bandwidth to accommodate an inevitable spike in capacity-heavy high-definition (HD) channels and channel-bonded high-speed data services is on, though with varying degrees of urgency, and with a long list of decisions about how...

Battle royale: a look at the stakes and combatants in the 'network neutrality' debate.(franchising )
April 1, 2006... If you think cable lobbyists lead placid lives, think again. The 2006 regulatory season is in full harrumph, and its a doozy. There are the telcos, not wanting to follow established video franchising obligations. And the broadcasters, still...

Game planning for broadband: some of the industry's top technical minds tackle content mobility, the 'quad-play,' IMS, DCAS and the all-important issue of bandwidth management.(Discussion)
April 1, 2006... CED recently conducted a conference call with some of the top technical minds in the industry to check the pulse of MSO priorities and to discuss the status of technical hotspots such as content mobility, IMS and mobile voice services,...

Waxing wireless.(point of entry)
April 1, 2006... It wasn't really all that long ago that wireless was viewed primarily as foe, rather than friend, to the cable industry. WiMAX and WiFi, once thought of as competitive, can now also be considered complementary. Now, with all of the...

Explosion: the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) powder keg is about to detonate, fueled by operators' desire for fixed mobile convergence end the budding PacketCable 2.0 platform.(IMS geared up for industry-wide)
April 1, 2006... It's the rare occurrence when vendors and cable operators show excitement about a new technology at the same time. Typically, the vendors beat the drum first, while operators keep it at arm's length for a while to determine its true...

Meshing things up: cable operators and municipal service providers alike are looking to make a wireless connection with customers.(wireless communications)
April 1, 2006... The emergence of wireless mesh technologies as a potential low-cost alternative to more traditional, but pricier wireless networks, and their appeal as a possible component of the quadruple play of video, voice, data and wireless services, is...

Wireless weapons of war: the size of this arsenal is matched only by the varying capabilities within.(Bluetooth, WiBro, WiFi, DVB-H, WiMax, Ultrawideband)(Column)
April 1, 2006... It seems you can hardly turn around without bumping into yet another flavor of wireless, with yet another multi-company support group behind it, promising yet another way for consumers to get more stuff faster, and without wires. In this...

Balancing 'smarts' and dollars: an economic analysis of major DWDM architectures.(dense wave division multiplexing)
April 1, 2006... In today's competitive environment, service providers must respond quickly and cost-effectively to new revenue opportunities, such as advanced video and IP services. In order to capitalize on these opportunities, they need a transport...

Water in the drop: tapping a million-dollar problem.(minimising the effect of moisture using F-connector)
April 1, 2006... Wet weather conditions over the past few seasons have wrought havoc on thousands of miles of cable plant. The "closed-loop" system, designed to contain and control RF signal transmission, isn't very effective with the presence of moisture from...

View from the top: insight's Michael Wilner speaks about the private life, 'Net neutrality and bandwidth.(Broad band: BUSINESS AND NEWS PERSPECTIVE)
April 1, 2006... In addition to running the ninth-largest MSO in the U.S., Michael Wilner is considered an industry statesman, able to speak on all the issues--including the technical toughies--that are affecting cable operators across the country. Wilner...

Consumer electronics and cable: Deja vu forever?(Cicora's corner)
April 1, 2006... The consumer electronics and the cable industries have had a "love/hate" relationship for decades. This goes back to the early 1980s when a joint committee was formed between the Engineering Committee of the NCTA and the then Electronics...

QAM channel inserter.(new products)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... SOUTH PLAINFIELD, N.J.--Radiant Communications has introduced the QRF5000, the first in a series of QAM channel inserters. The single rack-unit device encodes local baseband video and audio channels into quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)...

Agile micro-modulator.(new products)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... OLD BRIDGE, N.J.--Blonder Tongue Laboratories Inc. has introduced the new AMM Series of analog modulators. The Series is the latest addition to the HE-12 and HE-4 Series of compact, modular-based products designed for the cable TV, private...

Broadband test tools.(FIELD TESTING GEAR)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... SAN JOSE, Calif.--JDSU has released its SmartClass family of access field testers for broadband access networks. Included in the portfolio are the SmartClass ADSL for ADSL 1/2/2+ testing and the SmartClass OTS-55 optical test set for dark fiber...

In-home video distribution.(capital currents)
April 1, 2006... For me, the big story at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show was in-home distribution of video. In-home data networks have been around for awhile, but video is more demanding. I saw a number of products, both wired and wireless, that hope to...