CED articles from March 2005

CED archives from March 2005

Coming out of the cave.(in perspective)
March 1, 2005... Like a groggy bear waking from a long hibernation, the nation's largest telecom companies are beginning to stir. But instead of feasting on a nearby cache of meat, the bear seems to be settling for a decidedly less-filling diet of fruits and...

Charter switches it up in St. Louis.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Charter Communications upgrades video-on-demand)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Charter Communications has "upgraded" its video-on-demand platform in St. Louis, essentially replacing existing VOD gear from Concurrent Computer Corp. with servers and software from rival vendor C-COR Inc. Charter has since said it plans to...

RCN tees up 10-meg tier.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... RCN Corp. has once again raised the bar on residential cable modem service speeds, this time capping the downstream of its high-end tier at 10 Mbps. RCN has launched the new service, dubbed MegaModem Mach 10, across all its markets....

Arroyo gets 10-GigE with it.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Arroyo Video Solutions Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Video server startup Arroyo Video Solutions Inc. has moved ahead with a platform that supports native 10-Gigabit Ethernet broadband networks and can push out up to 5,000 standard-def video streams per 3-RU server. Support for 10-Gig...

CableCARD installations hit 25,000-plus.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The cable industry has installed about 25,000 CableCARDs, up from the 700 the National Cable & Telecommunications Association reported to the Federal Communications Commission back in August 2004. Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a law firm...

AOL, TWC do the high-speed dance.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(America Online Inc.)(Time Warner Cable)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... America Online and Time Warner Cable have finally joined forces on a broadband service that will combine an AOL front end with high-speed connections from Road Runner. Under the deal, between corporate cousins, AOL will handle the...

Terayon sheds silicon tech.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Terayon Communication Systems Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... ATI Technologies Inc. will pay $14 million to acquire the cable modem silicon intellectual property of Terayon Communication Systems Inc. ATI plans to use Terayon's silicon technology and expertise to build DOCSIS-based two-way capabilities...

CableLabs releases PacketCable 1.5.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... With little fanfare, CableLabs has released a new iteration of the PacketCable specification that fuses together some previous versions and adds important new features such as fax support. PacketCable 1.5, released on Jan. 28, essentially...

Infinera has photonics in the chips.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
March 1, 2005... Infinera has developed a photonics platform that condenses and integrates multiple optical elements-including lasers, modulators and receivers-onto one chip. Infinera, which was founded in 2001 and developed the silicon in-house, is using...

TiVo opens up.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... In a move that shares some aims of the CableLabs OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP), DVR pioneer TiVo said it has opened its doors to third-party software developers. Following up on the company's new "Tahiti "service strategy, TiVo's...

GigaBeam does high speeds at high frequencies.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... GigaBeam Corp. is using a new $2.5 million round of capital to fuel the technology behind a fixed wireless system capable of data speeds as high as 1.25 Gbps. GigaBeam's "WiFiber" platform delivers point-to-point links in the 71-76 GHz and...

RemotePipes offers Internet mobility.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... RemotePipes is giving cable operators the ability to roar, if they want to Counting customers such as Adelphia Communications Shaw Communications, Rogers Cable and Charter Communications, RemotePipes, a small firm based in Minneapolis provides...

Cable VoIP subs jump 900 percent.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The number of North American cable VoIP subscribers jumped to about 500,000 in 2004, a 900 percent increase from 2003's totals, according to Infonetics Research. Operator spending in the area matched sharp VoIP subscriber growth....

To catch a cable thief.(Upfront: latest news and insight)
March 1, 2005... New research from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) suggests that operators must discard a "one-size-fits-all" approach to signal theft in favor of deterrence tactics that target specific groups based on how...

Motorola snaps up Ucentric.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Motorola Inc. has sealed a deal, to acquire Ucentric Systems, giving the set-top maker a suite of whole-home entertainment networking software. Financial terms were not disclosed. Founded in 1999, Maynard, Mass.-based Ucentric has been a...

SCTE seeks nominations.(Upfront: latest news and insight; Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) is accepting nominations for awards to be handed out during the Society's annual, Cable-Tec Expo, including the Member of the Year, Hall of Fame, and Safety honors: SCTE has set a...

Terayon makes wireless a snap.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Terayon Communication Systems )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Terayon Communication Systems has introduced a wireless home net working module that snaps onto the vendor's line of TJ700x DOCSIS cable modems. Teravon said the Wx-54G module lets operators deploy home networking capabilities to cable...

Comcast invests in RGB.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(RGB Networks)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... RGB Networks has polished off a $12 million round of funding from a group that included participation by Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC). The round also included help from Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners and from existing RGB investors...

CableLabs integrates testing.(Upfront: latest news and insight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Discovering that one head may in fact be better than three, CableLabs has pooled all of its testing resources. The newly streamlined System Evaluation Group now heads up all certification, qualification and verification testing for projects...

Channeling the telcos: they've abandoned video before. Will they do it again?(memory lane)
March 1, 2005... The turn-of-the-century futurist S. Colum Gilfillan believed technology evolved in a sort of biological fashion, progressing not in revolutionary leaps, but in increments that arose from a steady flow of relatively small ideas. Yet even...

Drilling for bandwidth: a pipeline full of options can help MSOs keep pace with the spectrum demands of HDTV, VOD, 'channel bonding,' and digital simulcast.(Capacity)(Cover Story)
March 1, 2005... Depending on who you talk to these days, cable operators--if they hope to keep up with the demand wrought by new services--can either continue to pump bandwidth from their existing wells, or drill even deeper to uncap that next, big "gusher."...

Gunnin' for big game: technology arms MSOs to hunt bigger enterprise customers.(Commercial Markets)
March 1, 2005... In the hunt for more lucrative commercial subscriber business, cable operators are finding that mid-sized enterprise animal is not just fair game--it's desirable game. With estimates that mid-sized businesses make up a solid majority of...

Headends: the next generation: IP support with a modular CMTS architecture maximizes flexibility.(Networking: advanced networking technology)(cable modem termination system)
March 1, 2005... Next-generation IP headends will be expected to support the profitable delivery of data, voice and video services. But operators face a number of major challenges, High-speed data services are under pressure from DSL and fiber deployments. This...

TV-to-go: cable, satellite providers put in order for portable DVRs.(Broadband: business and news perspective)(digital video recorder )
March 1, 2005... Martha Cable Customer is in a hurry, and her two young children are fussy. So to make her trip across town easier, she fires up her digital video recorder (DVR) in the living room, accesses the video-on-demand (VOD) menu and tells it to...

The smallest of things.(In the loop)
March 1, 2005... The upcoming remake of the 1952 movie based on H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" made me think of how, in that film, it was the smallest of things that ultimately took down the murderous monsters from the Red Planet. Also, it is still amazing to...

Counting on content: the Walt Disney Internet Group has its hands and brands in just about everything broadband.(Broadband: business and news perspective)
March 1, 2005... As President of the Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG), Steve Wadsworth helped steer the company through the bursting of the dot-com bubble and now helms a division that turned the financial corner in 2003, thanks to its rapid development and...

Splice closure kits.(New products: product review)(Uraseal Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... DOVER, N.H. -- Uraseal Inc. has introduced its Shake N' Seal splice closure kits for protecting connections and underground repair splices. "Uraseal has designed the CT series of closures specifically to meet the demands of the cable industry...

Receiver/decoder.(New products: product review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- Sencore has introduced the Atlas MRD 3187, a new concept in receiver/decoder technology. The system is comprised of a hardware platform that is configurable to specific applications. In addition, the system features remote...

MPEG advanced coding analyzer.(New products: product review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... SINGAPORE -- Pixelmetrix has introduced full support for H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10) via its VISUALmpeg product family of analysis tools for evaluating and testing MPEG-based advanced coding. With a flexible software application,...

Ethernet services provisioning switch.(Triple Play)(CN 4350 Ethernet services provisioning switch)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... LINTHICUM, Md. -- Ciena Corp. has announced the CN 4350 Ethernet services provisioning switch. The CN 4350 is a carrier-grade Ethernet platform specifically designed for telco and cable service providers to deliver triple play services to...

TV anytime, anywhere.(capital currents)
March 1, 2005... One thing that caught my eve at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was a flat satellite antenna-one that mounts on a car or SUV roof, so your kids can watch DirecTV in the back seat. And then I saw several other antenna manufacturers...