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Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals
Stepping boldly into the digital future
March 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by Roger Brown | CommentsWith two years and $150 million invested in a state-of-the-art facility, Tele-Communications Inc. is finally poised to enter the digital age later this year when its Headend In The Sky (HITS) facility begins beaming digitally compressed video to headends around the country. Instantly, the advent of digitally compressed video channels can transform a run-of-the-mill, 36-channel cable system into...
Finally, here comes the digital video set-top
March 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by Roger Brown | CommentsAlthough digital television is off to an admittedly slow start, a number of new initiatives are pushing set-top manufacturers and component developers to develop new approaches that will ultimately result in lower-cost units, paving the way for mass deployment. More specifically, as recently as last month there were at least four different requests for proposals (RFP) on the street, and at leas...
Advances spell end to net bottlenecks
March 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by Fred Dawson | CommentsMajor advances toward commercialization of cutting edge switching, optoelectronic and millimeter wave technologies are opening the way to an explosion in broadband services to the business community in '97. At the switching level, manufacturers have begun incorporating newly standardized capabilities into ATM equipment, enabling carriers to move the technology into the core of the telecommunica...
A unique approach
March 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by Duane Elms, Director of Advanced Systems, Southern New England Telephone, and Tom Osterman, President, Comm/net Systems Inc. | CommentsPowering of hybrid fiber/coax systems remains a topic of much debate and discussion in the industry today. Operators are faced with the requirements of system reliability, concern about competition, constraints on capital and operating costs and the need to solve the powering dilemma as quickly as possible.
Mitigation of lightning-induced ingress
March 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by David Fellows, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Technology, Continental Cablevision | CommentsIn areas of high lightning, the flash from the thunderbolt has been observed to induce optical impulses in fiber-optic cable, potentially limiting reliable transmission of analog and digital signals. This paper discusses an active pulse cancellation technique which mitigates this effect. Any architecture which uses fiber, especially passive optical networks and fiber-to-the curb, must use these...
Money talks, but how fast can it speak?
February 29, 1996 7:00 pm | by Roger Brown | CommentsCEOs of every major communications and hardware company were seemingly elated at the news. It is perhaps ironic now to realize that although the new law allows cable TV companies to get into the telephony business and telcos to offer video, neither scenario is immediately likely, except perhaps in some select markets.
Power (and telecom) to the people
February 29, 1996 7:00 pm | by Tom Robinson | CommentsFor many across this country, power to the people has meant the provision of public power. In fact, there are over 2,000 public power systems in operation today. Because some of these are currently expanding, modifying or upgrading their infrastructures to provide telecommunications services, and many more are taking a hard look at such developments, one day soon, public telecommunications in s...
How Time Warner is winning over Rochester with telephony
February 29, 1996 7:00 pm | by Roger Brown | CommentsWith the passage last month of the telecom reform bill, many are now predicting all-out war between cable MSOs, long distance carriers, local exchange carriers and every other communications provider as they skirmish to beat one another at their own game. In fact, battlelines are beginning to take shape in several locations, especially between the telcos themselves.
Cable modem mania is beginning to build
February 29, 1996 7:00 pm | by Thomas W. Carhart, Product Marketing Manager, Motorola Cable Data Products; and Raja Natarajan, Principal Staff Engineer, Motorola Multimedia Group | CommentsBroadband data services have recently received a lot of well-deserved attention from the media and cable system operators. These novel data services provide extremely high-speed and cost-effective access to the Internet and other electronic services to residential and commercial subscribers. They create new value for cable system operators by capitalizing on cable systems' most unique asset...
Cable on track to get what it wants in data
February 29, 1996 7:00 pm | by Fred Dawson | CommentsWhat would have seemed a dream list of capabilities for high-speed modem and data support systems just six months ago is now within reach for commercial rollouts this year. "We're much further along then I'd hoped to be at this point in the process," says Richard Green, president of Cable Television Laboratories, in reference to the industry's push for agreement on protocols.
Inside wiring - The next FCC attack
February 29, 1996 7:00 pm | by Jeffrey Krauss, Wiring Wizard and President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy | CommentsPart 68 Part 68 of the FCC Rules contains detailed technical rules that were adopted to limit hazardous voltages that might be produced by customer-owned telephones, in order to protect the health and safety of telephone company employees. But it was quickly expanded at the request of telephone companies to prevent customers from bypassing the telephone network billing systems.
Options abound for broadband network powering
February 29, 1996 7:00 pm | by Roger Brown | CommentsJust like the networks themselves, traditional thinking about powering options is undergoing a major revolution. As recently as a few years ago, there was one accepted network power design; today, there are numerous trade-offs to consider. For example, MSOs are already transitioning from 60-volt AC power to 90 volts to give them more "reach" with power.
Filling the potholes on the road to digital
January 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by Fred Dawson | CommentsThe past year saw many gains in engineers' understanding of the performance parameters of hybrid fiber/coaxial networks, but the technical cost/benefit equation that is the key to the digital future remains nearly as elusive as ever. "The key pacing item is our ability to upgrade our networks," says David Woodrow, senior vice president for broadband services at Cox Communications.
Multimedia distance learning networks
January 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by Bob Beaury, President, and Tom Donahue, VP Sales and Product Development, Broadband Networks, Inc. | CommentsCable television operators have a long history of providing service to institutional customers such as schools, businesses and government users. In the past 18 months, the combined factors of increased competition and demanding franchise renewals have made the provision of distance learning service mandatory for many operators, and for some, an opportunity to generate new revenues.
Seems like deja vu all over again
January 31, 1996 7:00 pm | by Roger Brown | CommentsThis isn't the first time that in-home cabling issues have risen to the top of the priority list. For years, the industry has been trying to deal with substandard in-home wiring and connectors that are typically installed by do-it-yourselfers. Often, the equipment used comes from retail hardware and electronics stores and is of poor quality, with little or no shielding.
