AOL Time Warner puts big bucks into BigBand

Jeff Baumgartner, CED
From the October 8 edition of CED Broadband Direct

AOL Time Warner Ventures is the latest big name to invest in BigBand Networks, a start-up based in Redwood City, Calif.

Neither company disclosed the specific amount of the investment, but simple math suggests that AOL Time Warner injected about $3 million in the fledgling vendor. In April, BigBand said it closed a $27 million financing round, giving it an aggregate $57 million. With the funding from AOL Time Warner factored in, BigBand said today that its funding total had risen to $60 million. Other BigBand investors include Charles River Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Pilot House Ventures, Cedar Fund, Evergreen Investments, CommVest and Lauder Partners.

BigBand Networks, maker of the Broadband Multimedia-Services Router, has deployments with a spate of large and mid-sized MSOs, including Time Warner Cable, AT&T Broadband, Cox Communications, Blue Ridge Communications and Canadian operator Rogers Cable. BigBand’s BMR gear, to date, provides advances services such as digital broadcasting, digital ad insertion and high-definition television to more than 1.5 million digital cable subs.

Time Warner Cable has tapped the BMR for digital broadcast grooming in its Shreveport, La., Milwaukee, Wis. and San Antonio, Texas divisions. Time Warner Cable is also using BigBand equipment to support its HDTV rollouts in a number of markets, said Seth Kenvin, BigBand’s vice president, corporate development.

In addition to high- and standard-definition grooming, ad insertion and transport redundancy applications for the BMR platform, BigBand also has VOD and network-PVR applications on its product roadmap.

BigBand’s new applications and “switched” video architecture that targets specific content to specific homes might come in handy at Mystro, an AOL Time Warner-backed start-up that is presently exploring the virtues of so-called “everything” on-demand services. Jim Chiddix, the former chief technology officer of Time Warner Cable and the current president of AOL Time Warner’s Interactive Personal Video Group, is heading up those efforts.

BigBand was less specific about its ties to AOL Time Warner and what role the BMR will play in the media giant’s future.

“Our two companies are collaborating on expanding the volume and variety of high quality content and advanced, interactive services provided to broadband network subscribers,” BigBand CEO Amir Bassan-Eskenazi said in press release.