Vidéotron became the first company to commercially offer a 50 Mbps broadband service using Cisco’s DOCSIS 3.0-based cable modem termination system (CMTS) equipment.

At the same time, Cisco reported second-quarter 2008 earnings. The company had net sales of $9.8 billion, up from $8.4 billion in Q2 2007, and net income of $2.1 billion, up from $1.9 billion a year ago.

Vidéotron, Canada’s third-largest cable operator, installed Cisco’s wideband equipment – including the uBR10012 CMTS and cable modems from both the Scientific Atlanta and Linksys units of Cisco – in Laval, Quebec, a city of 112,000 located next to Montreal. The operator plans to continue rolling out the service to other areas in Quebec, and as DOCSIS 3.0 technology advances, it expects to eventually offer a 100 Mbps tier.

During the quarter, Cisco completed the acquisition of WiMAX specialist Navini Networks and Securent, a provider of policy management software for the enterprise market. The company also signed a technology development deal with the United Arab Emirates.

Also, AT&T deployed the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System and Telus became the first Canadian provider to deploy and support Cisco’s videoconferencing technology; Cisco said that as of Q2, it had 100 TelePresence customers.

Today, Telus also announced that it has enhanced its Short Messaging Service (SMS) in its Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) with Cisco's carrier-class Signaling Transfer Point (STP) technology, known as the Cisco 7600 IP Transfer Point (ITP) solution.

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