Editor's Note: Many of this issue's product announcements sprang from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's National Show, which happened earlier this month in Atlanta. Watch for more product news from the confab in the next issue of "BGR."

Spotlight

Cedar Point Gets to the IMS Point

Cedar Point demonstrated advanced SIP-based telephony features and provided a first look at its IMS strategy at this month's National Show in Atlanta.

The company showed off the ability of its SAFARI C³ media switching system to support apps that can be delivered today with both PacketCable NCS and SIP, simultaneously on the same platform. Additionally, Cedar Point demonstrated how SAFARI C³, as IMS core elements, supports the industry's anticipated migration to IP Multimedia Subsystem architecture.

NETGEAR First to Ship 802.11n Products

NETGEAR began shipping RangeMax NEXT, the first draft 802.11n-compliant wireless networking products. Delivering wireless speeds up to 300 Mbps associated with the draft 802.11n spec, the family of products also maintains compatibility with all legacy 802.11b/g wireless products.

RangeMax NEXT wireless routers use an advanced internal antenna design for optimal performance and are manufactured and tested with NETGEAR's first-in-the-industry "11n-True Test" testing and tuning process to ensure maximum draft-11n performance.

Engineering, Management and Training Services

Jones/NCTI Hails New IP Voice Course

Jones/NCTI released IP Voice, an e-learning course that provides installation and troubleshooting training for VoIP. The course uses full-motion video and animation to provide a virtual hands-on learning environment, including actual demos of voice service installation.

Modules cover prep, installation in single-family residences and multi-unit buildings, installation in homes with security systems, troubleshooting and safety. The course also outlines the concepts, theory and history behind the delivery of voice services by the cable industry, with a discussion of the transition of technology from analog to digital and its impact on VoIP.

Mediacom and Cable One CEOs to Headline ACA Summit

The American Cable Association (ACA) announced its 13th Annual Washington Summit will include a session on May 8 featuring Rocco Commisso, founder, chairman and CEO of Mediacom, Tom Might, president and CEO of Cable One and Paul Maxwell, industry consultant and columnist. During the session, "Perspectives on the Industry," the trio will discuss competition, legislative and regulatory issues and other critical topics currently shaping the cable industry.

Best SCTE Chapters Shine

SCTE announced the winners of its Chapter Awards during its Chapter Leadership Conference (CLC) 2006, which took place earlier this month near Phoenix.

Distribution

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

Trilithic and RGB Prove Compatibility

Trilithic's Emergency Alert Division announced that its EASyPLUS encoder/decoder passed interoperability testing with RGB Networks' Simulcast Edge Processor (SEP), which confirms that Trilithic's digital Emergency Alert System (EAS) is ready for deployment in digital simulcast apps.

The testing demonstrated that the Digital EAS crawls and override capabilities (based on the SCTE 18 standard) from the EASyPLUS work smoothly with RGB Networks' SEP, and that cable ops planning digital simulcast have a proven digital EAS solution, simplifying simulcast deployment plans.

WiFi/WiMax

Fixating on Fixed Mobile Convergence

ARRIS entered into agreements with UTStarcom to enable the fourth leg of the quadruple-play for MSOs. The joint solution will allow subs with a Wi-Fi-enabled dual-mode handset to seamlessly roam between their cellular and Wi-Fi connections — a service commonly referred to as fixed mobile convergence (FMC).

ARRIS will license FMC software from UTStarcom. The latter's Continuity FMC solution is designed to increase network efficiency and coverage through either wireline or wireless networks and enables end users to access a richer set of services and features.

Transport Platforms and Solutions

Over 1 Million Served: C-COR's 1GHZ Segmentable Node

C-COR says that its Opti Max4100 1GHz segmentable node reached a milestone of 1 million homes passed during the product's first year on the market, based on a 500 home per node minimum serving area. In March 2005, C-COR was the cable industry's first-to-market with a fully segmentable node providing 1GHz capability that significantly increases forward capacity for HDTV and other advanced services.

The Opti Max4100 node is part of C-COR's broadband HFC access portfolio that includes an integrated headend optical platform, optical nodes and RF amps.

Cox Stamps Ciena CN 4220 "Certified"

Cox certified Ciena's CN 4200 FlexSelect advanced services platform for deployment in its metro and regional networks to support residential voice, video and data, as well as business services.

Ciena's CN 4200 is a multiservice transport and aggregation platform capable of on-demand support for any transport protocol, including SONET/SDH, Ethernet/GbE/10GbE, storage (Fibre Channel, FICON, ESCON) or video, at any speed on any available port using the industry's first universal line card with individual user-programmable ports.

Next-Gen Voice

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

Comcast to Buy 1.2 Million EMTAs from ARRIS

Comcast signed a purchase agreement for a minimum of 1.2 million ARRIS Touchstone EMTAs over the next two years. The CPEs covered under this new agreement consists of the ARRIS Touchstone telephony modem TM402 and the next-gen Touchstone telephony modem TM502 product line. ARRIS will equip the Comcast E-MTAs with battery backup in case of a power failure in the home.

Feature: Bandwidth on the Run: Part 2

by Laura Hamilton, Editor, Broadband Gear Report

When it comes to the bandwidth utilization vs. service quality battle, you might just be able to have your cake and eat it too. "With appropriate planning [cable operators] can better utilize their existing bandwidth to deliver more bandwidth-hungry services — without impacting quality," Kanaiya Vasani, Terayon VP of marketing, says.

As an example, he points to ops that have deployed his company's Network CherryPicker digital video processing platform for bandwidth optimization in their core networks and at the edge. "Using our statistical remultiplexing solution, operators have attained significant gains in bandwidth efficiency by optimizing the number of digital channels delivered per 6 MHZ QAM channel," Vasani says. "Without our statistical remultiplexing, operators would have delivered 10 digital channels, but with our technology they can deliver 12, 13 or even more channels, depending on the type of content, without any noticeable difference in quality."

Advertising and Bandwidth Management

As for developing bandwidth concerns, Vasani believes that if cable ops want to retain eyeballs and stem the flow of ad dollars away from broadcast TV, they must make content more relevant, more localized and more personalized. Advertising needs to become more targeted, as well.

"From an architecture perspective, one option for doing this is to stream multiple versions of the content and advertisements through the network, but this consumes a lot of bandwidth," he explains. "Another option is to stream one copy of the content and ad and customize it right at the edge, just-in-time, before it hits the last mile."

Terayon's answer in this arena is its "localization on demand" architecture that offers a scalable, bandwidth-efficient approach to making TV content and advertising more targeted. "Terayon's ability to localize programming, advertising and information through applications like grooming channel lineups, local digital ad insertion and all-digital graphical overlays means our customers can customize services tailored to the needs of regions and locales," Vasani says.

Flipping the Switch on Bandwidth Management

BigBand Networks highlighted the potential for cable ops to precisely target advertising and other content at the NCTA's National Show earlier this month in Atlanta. The company's capabilities are based on technologies designed to switch digital video in order to assure that groups of subs or even specific subs view the content most relevant to their interests. BigBand also presented relevant papers at the show, including "Individually Targeted Advertising In A Switched Services Environment" and "Switched Unicast: It's Not Just About Capacity."

With targeting, different subs within the same zone watching the same program could receive different ads based on their demographics or other relevant factors. This would be achieved by individually directed streams with switched broadcast, or techniques in which subs' set-tops dynamically tune to different digital streams or frequency channels at moments of ad insertion. Switched broadcast may also play an important role in the latter case by freeing sufficient capacity to accommodate the inserted ads.

"Our unveiling of targeted advertising capabilities that leverage switched digital video technologies could empower cable operators with new benefits such as broader 'Long Tail' participation in targeted advertising," Ran Oz, CTO of BigBand, says.

New Switched Broadcast Release

BigBand also used the National Show to launch its Release 4.5 of BigBand Switched Broadcast. It's designed to leverage open standards and protocols in order to provide ops with greater choice among interoperable components from multiple vendors when deploying the solution.

This is also the first iteration to switch HDTV programming and to comply with emerging protocols being developed with major cable ops for functions like channel change and mini carousel. Release 4.5 follows release 4.4, which is currently being used in multiple commercial launches of switched broadcast, and two earlier releases which were used in pilot deployments of the technology dating back to 2002.

The Digital Home

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

Cisco, S-A and Linksys Ask: Are You Experienced?

At the National Show, Cisco, Scientific-Atlanta and Linksys called for cable ops to become not just service providers, but "experience providers." The companies showed how they plan to help ops discover today's Holy Grail of networking — or as they call it, the "Connected Life." That is, a place where subs are accessing all types of content (voice, video, data, music) on PCs, cell phones, TVs and mobile devices.

Cisco's Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture was showcased, which offers a way for cable ops to migrate to IP-based networks. Additionally, S-A highlighted upcoming opportunities for cable ops, from managing set-top DVR settings via a mobile phone or laptop, to streaming stored music, photos, videos and games from a personal PC to a DVR set-top for TV listening, viewing and playing. Additionally, National Show attendees got to see S-A's latest DVR set-top with built-in DVD recorder/player, Multi-Room DVR set-top, NGNA solutions and high-speed data, voice and wireless gateways.

Network Management, OSS and Software

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

Camiant Touts "Unprecedented Control" for Distributed Content

Camiant unveiled its Content Delivery Application Manager that offers the ability to deliver HD video content over IP infrastructures with QoS. It also enables subs to download any form of media quickly, and integrates with the sub entitlement database to authorize content. The manager also delivers distributed content "reliably and with the ability to scale over time," according to the company. The product complements the existing Camiant PCMM product suite.

Avoid Flooding Your Call Center

SupportSoft announced the availability of the newest version of its Self-Service Suite, a Web-based software solution that enables subs to solve technical problems on their own using the new SupportSoft Automated Solutions Library.

When a problem occurs that may impact many subs, ops can use the suite to send proactive notifications to help avoid flood calls into the help desk or customer service. It also can help subs find personalized answers to their questions, or even an automated resolution to their technical issues online. Sample problems that the suite can help subs with range from repairing a faulty broadband connection to fixing corporate e-mail settings in Microsoft Outlook.

BendBroadband Taps Sigma for OSS

Oregon-based cable op, BendBroadband is using Sigma Systems' Service Management Platform (SMP) for its newly launched phone service offering. Sigma is providing the order management, service provisioning and billing system integration for BendBroadband's phone and high-speed data services. The solution interfaces with systems from Nortel, IP Unity, Primal and Cisco.