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Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals
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.
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.
New Products: Sonus, Digital Rapids, Averna/Pace
June 5, 2013 9:11 pm | by CED | Articles | CommentsSonus Networks has upgraded its session border control (SBC) portfolio with software and hardware enhancements; Digital Rapids recently started shipping version 3.8 of its the Digital Rapids Stream software; Averna has forged a design-validation partnership with Pace that it said would accelerate customer premise equipment certification (CPE) for cable operators.
Usage-based service management
June 5, 2013 8:38 pm | by Stephan Collins and Bob Hunt | Articles | CommentsThe profitability of fixed broadband service providers is being threatened by the tremendous growth in residential broadband Internet usage. MSOs could restore diminishing residential broadband profitability by moving to a model that matches usage to service tiers.
Conax offering SDK for PlayReady DRM client
June 5, 2013 2:25 pm | by Brian Santo | News | CommentsDevelopers can use the SDK to create a client capable of secure delivery of video content from the streaming server to the native player of the client device. The Conax security-hardened implementation for MS PlayReady fully conforms to Microsoft’s rules for Compliance and Robustness and is developed according to Conax’ security requirements including security requirements from major Hollywood studios and content providers.
Grand unification for home networking standards
June 5, 2013 2:19 pm | by Brian Santo | News | CommentsManufacturers of gear that operate on a grab-bag of networking technologies – HomePlug, MoCA, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet – are setting up a certification system for a new category of home networking equipment that will make all four networking approaches interoperable. The result should be a boon for service providers setting up whole-home services.
Casa Systems tallies another CMTS win
June 5, 2013 2:09 pm | by Brian Santo | News | CommentsFinland’s largest cable operator, DNA Ltd, has placed an order for Casa Systems’ C10G chassis. The C10G is the predecessor to the vendor’s purpose-built CCAP system, the C100G, but the use of C10G allows DNA to offer scalable broadband services to its more than 600,000 subscribers, while giving the operator a clear upgrade path to CCAP.
Comcast combines CMC, IP Services, into Wholesale unit
June 5, 2013 2:05 pm | by Brian Santo | News | CommentsComcast announced the reorganization of several operations dedicated to managing services on behalf of customers, essentially by folding the previously separate IP services operation with the Comcast Media Center under an umbrella unit called Comcast Wholesale. Comcast Wholesale now incorporates CMC units including Content Solutions, HITS and AdDelivery, with the IP Services unit, which provides data and voice services.
