The Premier Magazine of Broadband Technology
FREE Email Newsletter
Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals
Liberty Global wraps up deal to buy Virgin Media
June 7, 2013 12:31 pm | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsJohn Malone’s Liberty Global announced this morning that it had completed its $24 billion deal to buy Virgin Media. Denver-based Liberty Global first announced it was buying Virgin Media in a stock and cash deal back in February. Since then Liberty Global has ran the gauntlet of gaining regulatory and stockholder approvals, as well as wrapping up the closing conditions that were associated with the deal.
Tivo settles up with Cisco, Motorola and Time Warner
June 7, 2013 12:20 pm | by Associated Press | News | CommentsTivo settled patent dust ups with Cisco, Motorola Mobility and Time Warner Cable, averting a trial that was to begin next week and bringing to a close a string of long-running legal squabbles over its pioneering digital video recorder technology. The settlement fell well short of what most investors had expected, however, and shares of Tivo plunged 17 percent in early trading Friday.
This Technology hires MacDonell as VP of product management
June 7, 2013 12:11 pm | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsAdvanced advertising vendor This Technology has hired Denise MacDonell as its vice president of product management. In her new job, MacDonell will lead will lead a product management organization focused on defining product strategy, developing product roadmaps, and implementing repeatable product processes for This Technology’s dynamic ad insertion (DAI) and alternate content delivery product lines.
Report: NSA demands Verizon hand over all U.S. call records
June 6, 2013 2:04 pm | by Ben Munson, Wireless Week | News | CommentsThe Guardian has received and published the order which outlines that Verizon is to deliver to the NSA the numbers of both parties, location data, identifiers like IMSI and IMEI numbers, and time and duration of calls. The order has been in place since April and has demanded Verizon give over the requisite information for both international calls originating in the U.S. and calls made within the U.S.
Entropic buys mixed signal specialist
June 6, 2013 1:50 pm | by Brian Santo | News | CommentsEntropic has acquired Mobius Semiconductor, which specializes in low power, high performance analog mixed-signal circuitry. Entropic said it will spend approximately $13 million in cash plus employee equity-based incentives to buy Mobius. Separately, Access Co. said it is integrating its DLNA and HTML5 technologies with the latest set-top box chipset solution from Entropic.
Xfinity Home to add remote control light bulbs
June 6, 2013 1:37 pm | by Brian Santo | News | CommentsComcast Xfinity Home subscribers will soon be able to install light bulbs from Sylvania that can be controlled via remote. The Sylvania Ultra iQ LED BR30 flood light bulb has integrated dimming controls that use the Zigbee Home Automation standard to create a system that can be controlled wirelessly for quick and easy adjustments using a smartphone or the Xfinity Home app.
ADB offers major revision of Commercial Video Solution
June 6, 2013 1:34 pm | by Brian Santo | Product Releases | CommentsADB announced several new products, leading with its first major revision of its Commercial Video Solution, the company’s system for supplying video to hotels, universities, hospitals, and other commercial businesses. The company’s other introductions include set-top boxes and a gateway.
ActiveVideo beefs up cloud platform; adds Charter to customer list
June 6, 2013 12:06 pm | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsActiveVideo has shifted its cloud platform into overdrive with today’s announcement that it can deliver TV as an application over IP along with the news that it’s behind Charter Communications’ cloud-based user interface. ActiveVideo also said it has partnered with Sumitomo Corporation to target cloud-based deployments in Japan and in the Asia-Pacific market
Report: Service provider router market declines in Q1
June 6, 2013 11:55 am | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsThe service provider router market declined in the first quarter of this year, according to a recent report by Dell’Oro Group. The latest results were part of a continuing trend with quarterly market revenue growth stagnant since mid-2011, which was the last time the market experienced double-digit growth.
NA up, other regions down in broadband spending
June 6, 2013 11:48 am | by Mike Robuck | News | CommentsThe broadband aggregation equipment market has dipped in most regions, but service providers were spending in North America to combat cable operators’ DOCSIS 3.0 deployments. Spending on DSL, PON and FTTH equipment decreased 7 percent from the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year for a total of $1.5 billion worldwide, according to a recent report by Infonetics Research.
Connectors in the field make plug and play WDMs a snap
June 6, 2013 12:07 am | by Tom Warren | Articles | CommentsWith some forethought and up front engineering, the connectorization of WDM components may relieve much of the pain associated with WDM deployments. Let’s take a quick look at how most MSOs are currently installing WDM components and propose some alternatives that could reduce the restoration time of field outages to hours instead of days.
In Perspective: Flexinets
June 5, 2013 11:39 pm | by Brian Santo | Articles | CommentsWhen people watch video on cellular networks, the meter is running, and that’s a severe inhibitor to increased consumption. Wireless carriers are understandably reluctant to stop running the meter. So what to do? Subsidize the minutes, somehow - an idea ESPN has been floating.
Open Mic: Taking the tethers off of TV Everywhere services
June 5, 2013 11:25 pm | by Michael Willner | Articles | CommentsThere is one more big challenge - TV Everywhere isn’t really everywhere is it? Unfortunately, if you’ve got a TVE app on your iPad, you still can’t access all those great shows and movies in lots of places. You’re out of luck if you’re traveling or simply not connected to a high-speed pipe, as is the case for most of us many times a day.
Engineering-wise: Time for the Time Domain
June 5, 2013 11:10 pm | by Daniel Howard | Articles | CommentsIt’s time for upstream engineers to start thinking in the time domain as well as the RF spectrum domain. We can use time domain data to maximize our upstream capacity and robustness as we load up the upstream with DOCSIS 3.0 carriers, turn on S-CDMA, and/or prepare for OFDM in DOCSIS 3.1. The good news is that there are lots of options for how to get that data.
Memory Lane: Cable then and now – halfway home
June 5, 2013 11:05 pm | by Stewart Schley | Articles | CommentsA tipping-point moment in cable television history happened sometime in the fall of 1987, when the industry’s presence among U.S. homes topped 50 percent for the first time. The achievement produced legitimate cause for celebration, as an industry that had spent its first three decades struggling to survive could now effectively claim to be the dominant medium for television reception in the country.
