Concurrent announced its MediaHawk 4500 high-density server for VOD, which will be available third quarter 2006. The 4500 will allow ops to store in excess of 20,000 hours of on-demand content and enable VOD ingest rates exceeding 2,500 hours per day. Stream density has been dramatically improved to 2,400 streams per 2RU enclosure, enabling both small and large-scale deployments with minimized footprint and power consumption.

Auspice Boosts TLX Line and Power Monitoring

Auspice Corp. unveiled its TLX 5.0, the next generation of its TLX real-time systems integration and operations automation platform. The latest version is said to enable ops to deploy TLX-based solutions more cost-effectively through its ability to run on the Linux OS. It also contains a user-friendly TLX Dashboard and TLX Console that provide a more complete view of enterprise-wide deployments of TLX-based solutions, including detailed status and expanded execution control. Other features include enhancements to the MetaScript Language and the Database TIL.

In other Auspice news, the company introduced its OpsLogic PowerSense, an automated power supply maintenance, testing, performance power outage event monitoring and reporting solution. It uses DOCSIS HMS Transponders to "quickly integrate a cable operator's power supply management with their existing management and trouble ticketing systems." This enables ops to detect any outages and proactively monitor power supply performance, alarms and events in real time. PowerSense also utilizes DOCSIS HMS Transponders to test power supplies, and to schedule standard tests as well as on-demand tests of groups of transponders.

Engineering, Management and Training Services

SCTE Recognizes Engineering Pacesetters at ET

SCTE honored three individuals earlier this month at its Conference on Emerging Technologies 2006 in Tampa, FL: John Leddy, VP of network and transport engineering of Comcast; the late Roger Brown, publisher of CED magazine; and Mike Coral, director of network operations for Time Warner Cable, South Carolina Division.

Leddy received the IP Innovator Award, sponsored by Cisco. The IP Innovator Award recognizes a member of SCTE who, as an engineer or manager, has displayed innovative achievement and creativity in the advancement and development of IP networking.

Brown received the Polaris Award. Jim Hughes of CommScope presented Brown's wife, Birdy, with the award on Roger's behalf. The Polaris recognizes a member of SCTE who has displayed exceptional achievement and commitment to the development and/or deployment of HFC networks for commercial services applications. As part of its support for the Polaris Award, CommScope regularly donates funds toward an education fund chosen by each year's winner. This year, CommScope is donating $5,000 to the Roger Brown Family Fund.

Coral received the Star of Integrity Award, sponsored by C-COR. The Star of Integrity Award salutes a member of SCTE who, as an engineer or manager, has contributed to the efficiency and effectiveness of next-generation networks in delivering on-demand services.

Distribution

Outside plant, construction, installation and transmission products including amplifiers, test and monitoring equipment, fiber-optic cable, conduit...

Trilithic Opens European Office

Trilithic announced the opening of a new sales office in Europe. The office is located outside of London. "Europe is one of our biggest marketplaces, and this new office will allow us to better serve our customers and be more accessible in such a demanding marketplace," Mark Burton, director of sales for the company's RF & Microwave Division, says.

WiFi/WiMax

Wi-Fi to the Nth Degree

An IEEE working group announced it approved a draft specification for 802.11n, which it reportedly has been developing for more than a year. Theoretically, this Wi-Fi standard would offer downstream throughputs as high as 600 megabits per second. Final ratification of 802.11n could come later this year. After the draft spec was announced, both Broadcom and Marvell said they were prepared to ship 802.11n chipsets.

Broadcom announced the availability of its new Intensi-fi family of WLAN chipsets designed to comply with the IEEE 802.11n draft specification. Marvell said its 88W836X family, first announced in October 2005, complies 100% with the draft spec.

BelAir Networks Enlists Cable Execs For Wireless Mesh Advisory Board

BelAir Networks has established of a wireless mesh and cable technical advisory board made up of cable industry executives. The inaugural meeting of the board took place earlier this month at SCTE's Conference on Emerging Technologies in Tampa, FL.

"With a broadband network in place, and strong uptake of VoIP services, cable operators are well positioned to capitalize on wireless mesh technologies for mobile voice, video and data," Bernard Herscovich, president and CEO at BelAir, says. "In creating the technical advisory board, BelAir aims to generate a better understanding of how wireless mesh technologies can be successfully integrated into cable operators' existing businesses offerings."

Transport Platforms and Solutions

Riverstone Ethernet Edge Routers Enhance Knology's VPLS

Knology is deploying Riverstone's 15008 Ethernet edge routers to enhance its offering of virtual private LAN services (VPLS) to its enterprise customers in select cities within Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. By deploying VPLS, Knology allows its enterprise customers to communicate over a WAN as if they were connected via a private Ethernet LAN. Knology's business customers are able to enjoy intra-company networks that look and act the same across all of a company's office sites. Moreover, they are benefiting from the cost-savings of bundled services including VoIP telephony services running atop the VPLS network.

The Riverstone 15008 employs the combination of a modular operating system and redundant hardware to prevent failures as well as Graceful Restart with Non-Stop Forwarding to immediately recover from them.

Harmonic Expands Commercial Services Plays

Harmonic announced the FLXLink iCPE commercial services gateway, an addressable device that facilitates the introduction and provisioning of value-added network access and managed services. The iCPE is said to be ideal for hotels, schools, small and mid-size businesses, MDUs and other apps requiring numerous independent outputs that are compatible with the existing CAT5 wiring at the user's premises. This new device extends and works in conjunction with Harmonic's FLXLink family of scalable CWDM transport solutions that are already in use today by cable ops and telcos.

CableLabs Qualifies Juniper for PCMM

Juniper Networks says that its SDX-300 service deployment system was awarded qualification status for the PCMM specification from CableLabs. The SDX system enables the creation and deployment of new IP services in a scalable architecture. With the SDX functioning as a PCMM-compliant platform with integrated application manager and policy server functions, Juniper Networks says it enables MSOs to offer premium, end-to-end, QoS-based services concurrently across both the DOCSIS and IP networks.

Cox Gives Another Big Nod to BigBand

Cox Communications signed a five-year agreement with BigBand Networks extending its use of the vendor's FastFlow BPM (Broadband Provisioning Manager) to provision Cox High Speed Internet (CHSI) and VoIP-based Cox Digital Telephone services and features. FastFlow BPM is designed to support both voice and Internet access over a single server. Its distributed framework is reportedly highly scalable, allowing FastFlow BPM to avoid performance issues often associated with centralized provisioning systems while reducing the impact on the cost of network operations created by the rollout of new services and subs.

Newfound to Snap Up C-COR's DV6000 Line

C-COR has agreed to sell its DV6000 product line to Newfound Technology. "Combining the DV6000 technology with the DigiLink and MegaWav video transport products under our Artel Video Systems division gives us one of the largest video-over-fiber transport portfolios in the world," Richard Dellacanonica, president of Newfound, says.

Next-Gen Voice

VoIP, wireless voice, media gateways, multimedia terminal adapters, call management servers, PacketCable, SIP...

Sigma Takes Aim at VoIP-Related CSR Calls

Sigma Systems announced the availability of the Sigma Voice Client Services Centre (CSC), which provides VoIP users with an online alternative to speaking on the phone with CSRs. Targeted at ops offering NCS- or SIP-based telephony, Voice CSC is a Sigma Service Management Application that serves as a self-service Web portal. With its application program interface (API), Voice CSC can also be configured to integrate with an op's Web portal environment.

Subs can view their account and service information online, select new service features and feature bundles and make changes to features and personal parameters. In combination with the Sigma VoIP Service Package, the Sigma Voice CSC provides preconfigured support for voice telephony service, voice mail, call feature management, rate centre, calling name (CNAM) and LNP support along with long distance carrier choice.

Feature: Commercial Services Aim to Fill Cable's Dance Card: Part 2

By Laura Hamilton, Editor, Broadband Gear Report

For Part 1 of this story, scroll down to the "Feature" section of last week's issue of BGR.

It's reasonable that the more that telcos encroach on cable's traditional turf — the video market — the more cable will look to milk the telcos' time-honored cash cow — the business market. But one of the major commercial services issues that has given cable engineers pause is the fact that biz subs have more rigorous expectations than your average home subscriber.

"These include higher data rates, nearly symmetrical services and a guaranteed minimum data rate," Ron Shani, VP of marketing at Xtend Networks, explains. "Furthermore, the operating hours of commercial customers usually overlap, forcing the operator to allocate the required resources."

Bandwidth, Bandwidth, Bandwidth

Servicing commercial customers requires offering data rates up to 100 Mbps and as close to symmetrical as possible, Shani continues. "DOCSIS 2.0 made the first step by offering close to symmetrical bandwidth, and the forthcoming DOCSIS 3.0 will further enable services in the range of 100 Mbps. Yet, these services require spectrum."

Shani presented a paper in September at SCTE's Commercial Services Symposium, "DOCSIS 3.0: Bandwidth, Bonding and Business" that looked into the requirements for commercial services and described the options available for providing capacity expansion techniques. He also considered the effectiveness of each option in enabling the delivery of high data rate DOCSIS 3.0-based services. The paper is available to SCTE members by clicking on the SCTE InfoScope link at www.scte.org.

Another vendor looking to solve problems in the commercial services over HFC space is C-COR. The company offers a wide variety of platforms that have been deployed in several divisions of Time Warner Cable and also at Comcast.

In an interview with BGR, David Boymel, who heads up C-COR's Business Development Commercial Services, points out that the company's wide variety of commercial platforms provide high bandwidth connectivity (1 Gbps CPE and access, and 10 Gbps optical Ethernet transport). In addition, they support any-to-any, basic and advanced Ethernet/IP services as well as SLAs with QoS for business-grade services.

Learning from Previous Rollouts

Boymel also shares some of the technical lessons learned by C-COR and its MSO partners. "You need thorough analysis of the cable plant to understand the capabilities and limitations to provision high bandwidth to business customers," he says. "You need careful planning of the end-to-end solution, and you must understand the customer's data (Ethernet/IP) and voice services applications and what capabilities are required to support them."

Solutions must be flexible because customer requirements and service mix are changing, Boymel adds. Solutions need to be end-to-end manageable (i.e., from CWDM level to packet level)."Pay close attention to network and service management and OSS systems (service assurance and service fulfillment). The business customer expects fast provisioning, high MTTR and low MTTR," he says.

When the commercial services traffic is combined on the same fiber as the video, care must be taken to choose the right wavelengths and the right powers to ensure that there is no interference between the various signals, he concludes.

Going Wireless

On the wireless plant extension (WPE) front is Arcwave's ARCXtend product, which has been deployed by 14 of the top 15 cable ops in more than 100 regions of the country serving over 400 business customers. "In a recent panel discussion involving Arcwave, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Comcast, all three MSOs endorsed WPE over WiFi and WiMAX as the preferred method of reaching the commercial market," Chris Martin, VP of marketing at Arcwave, reports.

In order to ensure WPE effectiveness, plant engineers need to be properly trained in both wireless link planning and WPE equipment and a well thought out planning and deployment process must be followed to ensure trouble-free operation," Martin says. "If a cable operator does those two things, they can rapidly and cost-effectively use WPE equipment to penetrate the lucrative and underserved commercial services market."

As competition heats up between cable and the telcos, Martin sees strong demand in 2006 and beyond for WPE services that help cable ops extend their existing plant infrastructure to reach commercial customers that have been within several hundred yards of their plant, but were "unreachable" because of cost, regulatory or physical barriers.

Advanced Video and Interactivity

Gemstar-TV Guide Bulks Up Digital Product Plans

Gemstar-TV Guide International announced the formation of its new, cross-platform Product Development and Technology group. The group will aim enhance existing product plans at the company and to develop new ones with a particular focus on product innovation for digital platforms and integrating the company's technology resources across businesses.

The Digital Home

Set-tops, DVRs, home networking,CPEs, CableHome, integrated cable modem gateways...

Sunflower Picks ICTV for Its Digital Subs

Sunflower Broadband deployed ICTV's HeadendWare-based active programming services to its digital subscribers. Sunflower will use the HeadendWare platform for the delivery of interactive games, local entertainment, breaking news, customer care and account information.

Network Management, OSS and Software

Bandwidth management, tiering, service control switches, provisioning and support

All Time Warner Systems to Get C-COR's NSM

Time Warner Cable will integrate C-COR's Network Service Manager (NSM) solution into all of its systems. Time Warner is expanding its current installations of C-COR's network health and service management solution through a master enterprise-wide agreement with C-COR and will begin deploying NSM system-wide starting this year.

C-COR's NSM enables ops to monitor the entire service delivery infrastructure. System personnel are able to use root cause analysis to immediately understand the impact of system failure on customers. NSM can locate failed components graphically in the operator's network and track customer complaints to actual specific failures. The NSM also provides a wide range of service management usage and bandwidth management tools. Time Warner Cable's Oceanic and San Diego divisions currently use C-COR's NSM to identify and prioritize potential problems that could impact the delivery of video, voice and data services.

TI Aims to Boost IP Services Quality

Texas Instruments announced PIQUA, a new system of IP quality management elements. Working initially with industry partners, including Motive and Viola Networks, TI will make available critical information necessary to manage emerging services from its IP communications technology offerings with PIQUA.

PIQUA, based on TI's digital signal processor (DSP) technology and embedded software solutions, provides a real-time distributed system of complete quality management elements designed to monitor and improve the quality of IP-based services, such as voice, data and video. PIQUA utilizes sophisticated real-time calculations to assess quality parameters related to the user's experience, allowing both equipment manufacturers and ops to dynamically adapt to changing conditions and make adjustments that are either impossible or done manually today. These quality management tools enable the discovery, monitoring and repair of services, devices and networks, allowing ops to proactively manage factors like echo, dropped-packets and line-delay.

Buckeye Rolls Out Camiant PCMM Solution

Buckeye CableSystem is deploying Camiant's PCMM policy solution. "Camiant's PCMM policy solution enables us to significantly evolve our offerings to include better quality of service, greater flexibility and enhanced subscriber control," Joe Jensen, CTO at Buckeye, says. "Now, subscribers can experience the power of broadband by trialing the incremental speeds associated with our high-speed data tiers to determine what package best fits their needs."

Massillon Cable Taps iGLASS for Status Monitoring

Massillon Cable TV selected the iGLASS status monitoring suite for managing its service delivery infrastructure. The suite allows the op insight into the real-time status of everything from the digital headend to CPE devices in the home. iGLASS provides outsourced status monitoring services and is Internet-based with all administration, maintenance and monitoring handled from a central NOC. This eliminates the need for ops to hire dedicated programmers, administrators and NOC personnel.

Spotlight

Huge VOD Storage and Ingest Rates Promised by New MediaHawk