AT&T Broadband deploys BigBand solution

By Susan Rush
From The October 1, 2002 Edition Of CED Broadband Direct

BigBand Networks Inc. has launched a self-healing redundancy solution for digital cable services and has landed AT&T Broadband as the first customer for the new product.

The product is designed to increase cable network reliability by enabling an alternative headend to immediately restore digital video to subscribers if the primary headend fails, BigBand said. "It is increasingly important that the cable industry avoid service interruptions, given the expansion of revenue-generating programming provided," said Richard Peske, BigBand's vice president of product marketing. The product leverages Gigabit Ethernet to improve system reliability, he said.

The company claims its self-healing redundancy product is the first of its kind on the market.

AT&T Broadband is the first customer to deploy the redundancy product. The cabler will deploy the solution in its Atlanta system, which passes more than 1.2 million homes. Financial terms were not disclosed.

In August, BigBand announced its Broadband Multimedia-Service Router had reached a milestone, serving more than 1.5 million digital cable subscribers in North America. The company has deployment deals for its BMR with Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Blue Ridge Communications and Rogers Cable.

BigBand's technology is designed to boost bandwidth efficiency by grooming standard-definition television (SDTV) and high-definition TV (HDTV) in the same channel. The BMR platform also is designed to handle new services such as targeted digital advertising and video-on-demand over standard video and data interfaces such as DVB-ASI, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet.

When connected with BigBand's headend redundancy solution, BMRs accessing digital programming overcome outages by switching to remote backup sources via high-speed transport.