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Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals
OpenCable closing in on a standard
October 31, 1998 7:00 pm | by Michael Lafferty, Associate Editor | CommentsJust like cable modems, the key to an interoperable, retail-available digital set-top is a standard to which manufacturers around the world can build. And just like cable modems, the digital set-top standard has made incredible progress in a short amount of time. It was only a year ago that CableLabs' Executive Committee officially stepped on the gas and put the "OpenCable" standardization effo...
Turnkey solutions: Bringing smaller ops online
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by Michael Lafferty, Associate Editor. | CommentsConventional wisdom says high-speed data-over-cable means you have to be big for the economics to work. As a result, companies have been designing huge data networks and planning for the traffic they'll carry. Yet interestingly, mid-sized and small operators are rushing into the high-speed data industry, often beating their larger brethren to the punch.
Comparing high-speed data turnkey providers, part I
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by Staff | CommentsBelow is part I of CED's October, 1998 comparison of high-speed data turnkey providers, which accompanied our article: Turnkey solutions: Bringing smaller ops online. Subscriber/customer totals represent cable subs or homes passed by a cable system. @Home Network 25 Broadway Redwood City, CA 94063 Tel: 650-569-5000; Fax: 650-569-5100 Web address: http://www.
Comparing high-speed data turnkey providers, part II
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by Staff | CommentsBelow is part II of CED's October, 1998 comparison of high-speed data turnkey providers, which accompanied our article: Turnkey solutions: Bringing smaller ops online. Subscriber/customer totals represent cable subs or homes passed by a cable system. HSA Corp. 4100 E. Mississippi Ave., Ste. 1150, Denver, CO 80222 Tel: 303-256-2000; Fax: 303-256-2050 Web address: http://www.
Christmas On Hold?
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by David Iler, Associate Editor. | CommentsThe Internet has always been about waiting-waiting for Web pages to download; waiting for more reliable and faster service; waiting for that killer application. Now the cable industry, with bandwidth-hungry customers anxious to move into the fast lane of the information superhighway, waits as the clocks ticks on an important deadline.
Evaluating upstream modulation techniques
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by Jeyhan Karaoguz, Ph.D., Principal Staff Engineer, Research and Advanced Development, Internet and Networking Group, Motorola. | CommentsThe North American cable industry's adoption of the Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is solving long-standing problems of interoperability. But while this offers the cable industry the promise of lowered costs and good reliability, it presents only a partial solution to the vexing problem of interference on the upstream link between subscriber and headend.
Pass the buck and point the finger
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by Jeffrey Krauss, Finger Pointer-in-Chief and President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy | CommentsDigital television will get here soon, but the broadcasters, TV manufacturers and movie-makers are squabbling with each other over various last-minute details. This squabbling could blossom into huge battles that delay the deployment of digital television, or they could be settled quickly. While new disputes seem to arise every month, this month's hot topics are copy protection, V-chip content ...
Who killed DTV?
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by Roger Brown, Editor | CommentsLet the finger-pointing officially begin. The long-awaited transition to digital television is running into snags. Given its complexity, that probably doesn't come as a surprise to most engineers. But for politicians and others, it's shaping up to be a public embarrassment. With digital TV scheduled to go live in November, you can be sure that if there are delays, regulators will come looking f...
Morphing to a software-centric future
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by Craig Kuhl, Contributing Editor. | CommentsThe morphing of the cable industry from its traditional hardware-centric mentality to a more complex and puzzling software-centric bent is affecting even the most pro-active cable operators, and with them, a whole generation of vendors who are scrambling to find the ideal network management and application software solutions.
Putting the right pieces in place
September 30, 1998 8:00 pm | by John Mattson, Manager, Product Marketing, Broadband Networks; and Jim Forster, Distinguished Engineer, Cisco Systems Inc. | CommentsCable operators and their affiliates building broadband cable modem networks are experiencing exceptional demand growth. This expansion in subscribers and services is projected to accelerate through the remainder of 1998 and 1999, and is a major reason for the growing market value of most players within the cable industry.
Will new content push HFC's limit?
August 31, 1998 8:00 pm | by Fred Dawson, Contributing Editor | CommentsThe cable industry will soon be confronted with a paradigm shift in interactive television that could drastically affect how operators design their networks and even how they make money. In a nutshell, the new challenge arises from the fact that, contrary to previous assumptions, consumers are likely to have a wide range of sources to choose from for access to long-form, on-demand television vi...
Must-carry, Firewire and PSIP
August 31, 1998 8:00 pm | by Jeffrey Krauss, Must-Carry Maven and President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy | CommentsThe FCC has proposed seven alternatives for must-carry policies during the transition from today's analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting. These range from requiring cable systems to start carrying all digital TV broadcasts as soon as they begin, to not requiring any digital carriage until all analog broadcasts have terminated, and a variety of intermediate alternatives.
Falling, with style
August 31, 1998 8:00 pm | by Roger Brown, Editor in Chief | CommentsAlready, the local telephone marketplace is experiencing consolidation frenzy, with SBC Communications, Bell Atlantic (and maybe) US West seemingly poised to control the country's local connections. Long distance carriers AT&T and MCI are either making acquisitions or are being acquired as well. AT&T, of course, announced its intention to buy Tele-Communications Inc.
Squeezing Cadillac services into economy plant
August 31, 1998 8:00 pm | by Don Sipes, Vice President of Technology, Transmission Network Systems, Scientific-Atlanta | CommentsCable services that once were considered futuristic, such as interactive video-on-demand, fast Internet access and IP telephony, are quickly becoming today's reality, and their rapid rise is placing increasing demands on the hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks that provide them. Today's advanced networks must provide for reliable two-way communications, scalability to support ever-increasing amoun...
Pushing fiber deeper in HFC networks
August 31, 1998 8:00 pm | by Dr. Lawrence A. Stark, VP Strategic Marketing; and Bill Moore, VP and General Manager for Broadband Communications | CommentsIf you are a cable TV system engineer, you can't be blamed for feeling just a little bit smug these days. It wasn't that long ago that everywhere you looked, national publications such as Forbes, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, etc. were pushing and shoving to be the first to hang the cable industry out to dry.
