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Like the cable industry itself, the displays of broadband technology at this year's edition of cable's Western Show largely will reflect incremental advances rather than stunning new developments.
Home networks, residential gateways and portals, and the technology which will allow cable operators to enter the e-commerce, television-oriented t-commerce and phone businesses are expected to lead the parade of tech at the show, running Nov. 28-Dec. 1 at the Los Angeles convention center.
Many of cable's tech leaders, who years ago began the push toward Internet Protocol and optical-based platforms, are emphasizing their most current technologies and products and are trying to continue raising operator awareness of new services.
Some new generation technologies will be on display, and front and center will be a technical suite of demonstrations through the annual CableNET tech expo staged by vendors and Cable Television Laboratories Inc., the industry's research and development consortium. Among some of the demonstrations will be Intel's internal cable modem, Nortel Networks' five redundant cable modem termination systems, which are housed in one chassis and flip service from one to the next if one fails, and other demos by broadband hardware and software vendors.
Broadband Access Systems, recently acquired by ADC, will show its Cuda 12000 next generation carrier-class CMTS specifically designed for IP telephony while IBM and SpotOn will demo their solutions enabling personalized ads via the set-top box. Redback Networks will show its self-provisioning cable modem, which it says will enable the company to move deeper into the cable market once operators provide access to their networks for multiple ISPs.
"We'll show our SMS (Subscriber Management System) in the CableNET section at the show and demo the authentication process for subscribers. But for us, open access is a very hot topic. We could technically provide open access with SMS," says Chris Johnson, director of cable marketing for Redback Networks.
Lucent Technologies is planning to roll out its "blazing data" Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) solution which will deliver data service with a high redundancy and streaming video at 100 megabits per second.
Outside CableNET, additional companies will be providing demos and a peek at new technologies as well. Lucent, for example, will show its FTTH solution at the cable show following its inaugural deployment by WINfirst, a Denver-based overbuilder that recently announced an $800 million contract for the platform with Lucent.
"We've packaged several technical components and use an architecture that can be terminated in the home with a single fiber. It enables huge amounts of streaming video to be downloaded. For example, two hours of video in five minutes," says John Slevin, vice president and general manager of broadband fiber/HFC access for Lucent.
2Wire, Inc., a home portal provider, will show its next generation HomePortal 1500 residential gateway in tandem with customers such as TollBridge Technologies. Home Portal 1500, which was released last month, offers support for multiple networking protocols, including Ethernet, wireless, Home PNA, and multiple operating systems.
On the online commerce side, Commerce.TV will demo its next generation interactive TV product and software. The demo will be hands-on and include a fully functional t-commerce application. "The demo will allow customers to scroll through lists of products and actually purchase them and have them shipped. Every port and all the connections are real. The actual network functionality will be there," says Evan Saks, Commerce.TV's marketing director.
High Speed Access Corp. (HSA) will be live at the show as well. It plans to bring out its full package consisting of a provisioning system, full cable CMTS, cable modems and PCs to demonstrate how open access to multiple ISPs really would work. "It will allow the user to see the operators that want to provide ISP service and will allow the customer to choose their ISP service. It will actually show how open access would work, and show the choices," says Chad Thornburg, HSA's vice president of engineering.
Among major cable vendors, Scientific-Atlanta will demonstrate its Explorer 6000 Home Gateway set top box in conjunction with partner Net2phone. The combination of Net2phone's VoIP device and S-A's set top will allow migration to VoIP and the first multiple applications of video, voice and data over a set top, S-A said.
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