Arris bows ‘Touchstone’ cable modem

By JEFF BAUMGARTNER
From CED Broadband Direct, August 19, 2002

Arris said it has launched the Touchstone Cable Modem 300, a device based on DOCSIS 1.1 specifications.

Arris said it submitted that model to CableLabs for 1.1 testing during certification wave 23. That wave is scheduled to end on Sept. 20, with results made public on or around Sept. 26.

The rollout marks the first cable modem to be marketed under the Touchstone brand, Arris said. The vendor also markets the Touchstone Telephony Modem 102A, a DOCSIS 1.1-certified embedded multiple terminal adapter for cable IP telephony services.

In addition to DOCSIS 1.1, the CM 300 also supports A-TDMA (Advanced Time-Division Multiple Access), one of two advanced physical layer schemes required by DOCSIS 2.0, an advanced CableLabs specification designed to mitigate noise and boost upstream bandwidth three times that of networks based on DOCSIS 1.1. However, a cable modem or cable modem termination system (CMTS) must also support S-CDMA (synchronous code-division multiple access) before it can win certification or qualification for DOCSIS 2.0.