By Laura Hamilton, Editor-in-Chief 1. Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' (Trucks) — The good news is that cable's VoIP subs are generally darn satisfied with their service. The bad news is that you had to roll a whole lot of trucks because of IP telephony. According to a recently released SupportSoft survey that covered both specialized VoIP providers and cable companies, cable subs were the happiest, with 61% expressing satisfaction. But 34% of cable VoIP users said that a tech had to visit their home within 90 days of the initial service installation due to a problem. A full 16% had a technician visit their home two or more times. For more on the survey, check out this link. 2. CMTS Shopping Spree — Had an irresistible urge to purchase CMTSs lately? You're not the only one. Worldwide CMTS revenue jumped 30% to $257 million in 1Q 2006, and the annual revenue is forecast to reach $1.2 billion in 2009, according to Infonetics Research. "Cable operators are feeling the heat from Verizon's and AT&T's fiber and higher-bandwidth DSL offerings, so they're investing in more CMTS units and ports to increase bandwidth to their subscribers," Jeff Heynen, directing analyst at Infonetics, explains. Not complaining are Cisco, Arris and Motorola, which captured 95% of worldwide CMTS market revenue in the first quarter, according to Infonetics. 3. Chiddix Chat — You're probably used to hearing the OpenTV name around EchoStar's interactive moves. But now watch for OpenTV's moniker to pop up a lot around Time Warner Cable, which just agreed to multi-year license agreement to deploy its digital navigator on the Open TV platform using its Motorola set-tops. Jim Chiddix, the cable engineer's cable engineer who is widely credited with setting the standard for the industry's broadband network architecture, heads the interactive TV vendor. The TWC deal represents the first U.S. cable deployment of OpenTV's advanced digital solutions and applications. 4. HFC at One Mile High — If you haven't registered for SCTE's Cable-Tec Expo yet (why not?), remember that June 9 is your last day to sign up online, and full registration will cost you 100 bucks more on-site in Denver. The complete confab scoop is available at http://expo.scte.org. |
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Editor's note: Our condolences to the family and friends of longtime SCTE staffer Pat Zelenka who died unexpectedly at the end of May. Zelenka was the SCTE's VP of finance, and had been with the Society for close to 20 years. She was 59. Contributions may be made in her memory to the SPCA, 1212 Phoenixville Pike, West Chester, PA 19380.
ProductsNarad Says EtherNode Architecture Has Firepower and Flexibility
In cases where business fiber or metro fiber passes near the end of a coax trunk, Narad EtherNodes can switch optical Ethernet capacity onto coax trunks with minimal, perhaps even zero plant downtime, according to the company. Where fiber construction is expensive or problematic, MSOs can leverage existing coax to avoid new plant construction while at the same time reaching business customers with high performance Ethernet and high capacity voice applications. This is Narad's new "deep" fiber-to-the node (FTTN) architecture. Narad reports that it is a significant advance over the company's historical FTTN insofar as it no longer relies upon insertion of the Narad signal at the HFC node. With EtherNodes, the fiber in HFC can be found at any depth and in any location on the network.
WiMAX Calling: Live IP Voice Over WiMAX DemoedCableMatrix Technologies, Vcom, AudioCodes and Emergent Networks demonstrated a live IP voice over WiMAX call at Globalcomm 2006. According to the companies, the demonstration illustrated a completely deployable SIP-based voice solution. QoS is triggered and admitted in real-time by Emergent's Session Border Controller (SBC) and CableMatrix's Policy Decision Function (PDF) when a call is before initiated by the AudioCodes' Analog Terminal Adapter (ATA). VCom's VistaMAX base station allocates the necessary QoS based upon characteristics of the admitted IP voice call. Calls are then terminated off network by the AudioCodes' core media gateway.
Stratacache Softens Up Set-Top UpgradesStratacache rolled out OmniCast for STB software that facilitates delivery of set-top software updates, digital rights management (DRM) upgrades, channel guides, advertising, middleware and operating system updates. According to the company, OmniCast for STB dramatically reduces the time and network bandwidth required to push new or updated software to any number of STBs, and guarantees that all of a provider's STBs are up-to-date with the same versions of software. The software's patented transport protocols reportedly guarantee 100% content delivery with full reporting of completed transfers "in even the most difficult operating environments." Stratacache says that OmniCast's native scalability leverages existing network systems to minimize the cost of deployment, while advanced bandwidth controls eliminate any negative impact of pushing updates across the service provider.
Gain Perspective at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2006
Online registration ends this Friday (June 9). Get full show details and register today at http://expo.scte.org. SCTE Cable-Tec Expo is set for Tuesday through Friday, June 20-23 in Denver.
All's Fair in Love and Bandwidth ManagementC-COR announced its Bandwidth Quality of Service (QoS) Network Appliance, a bandwidth optimization and congestion control solution that combines the ability to pinpoint and prioritize bandwidth power users on the DOCSIS network with dynamic on-demand bandwidth management. The appliance marries the feature sets of C-COR's CableEdge and Policy Service Manager (PSM), and levels the distribution of bandwidth demands on the network while guaranteeing that bandwidth is distributed fairly across broadband subscribers. At the onset of rapid rises in traffic levels and network congestion, the application sends an alert to the PSM to implement a fairness policy, optimizing network performance to avoid slowdowns to high-speed data users and prioritizing applications such as VoIP.
OpVista Gets On the ROADM AgainOpVista announced enhancements to its OpVista2000 ROADM interface card (RIC). The RIC extends OpVista's single wavelength reconfigurability to existing DWDM systems. "Like OpVista's U-DWDM 'instant 10G upgrades,' the ROADM interface card allows us to provide additional functionality for our customers while preserving their existing network infrastructure investment," Dawn Hogh, OpVista VP of marketing, says. The card also can work with any existing third-party transponder to provide wavelength tunability with single wavelength granularity. The RIC can deliver a broadcast and select/drop and continue architecture to existing DWDM infrastructure, which is a key to cost effective video service delivery.
Can a Lightweight Drop Trimmer Be Heavy-Duty?
The LDT's one step cable preparation exposes the center conductor by 5/16-inch (7.93 mm) and removes the proper length of jacket at 1/4-inch (6.35 mm) for 59, 6 and N48 coax cable without any adjustment of the blade or cassette change-out. The built-in strip stop is said to ensure precise, repeatable preparation every time. Ripley says the LDT's steel blades will perform over 1,500 preparations under normal use before needing replacement. It is constructed of "high visibility", lightweight polymer and is impact resistant.
Ciena Flexes FlexSelect Muscle With Dynamic Wavelength RoutingCiena announced the addition of dynamic wavelength routing capabilities to its CN 4200 FlexSelect advanced services platform, creating what the company calls "the only solution that uses a hybrid electrical and optical ROADM design to combine whole and sub-wavelength switching in one platform." The CN 4200 ROADM reportedly uses up to 78% fewer wavelengths and brings the benefits of reconfigurable optical technology to any service rate down to 155 Mbps. Currently in early customer engagements, the CN 4200 multi-degree ROADM is an in-service upgrade to the existing CN 4200 platform through use of a universal line card that routes any wavelength or combination of wavelengths to any port on demand.
Feature: Which Products Will Shine at Expo '06?By Laura Hamilton SCTE's Cable-Tec Expo is, as everyone in broadband cable knows, the engineering community's biggest show of the year. Usually the only complaint you'll hear from your average engineer dashing through the halls is there isn't enough time to take in absolutely everything. Enter Broadband Gear Report's Second Annual Diamond Technology Reviews. Our stellar panel of top engineering execs has reviewed some of the hottest products you'll see at Expo '06, and they've dished out straightforward opinions about what they think is really worth checking out. Our panel included:
Broadband SurvivorsThe judges were sincere in their duty to leave only the best products duking it out on Expo Island. Some solutions were voted down with comments like "I cannot get excited about this product," or "a number of products can do this." The top survivors got nods like "best on the market" or "a wonderful step forward." Judges used the following scale to determine "Diamonds" scores:
We averaged each product's score, and what follows are the technologies that BGR's judges determined "must-sees."
Broadbus B-1 Video Server 
"Broadbus doesn't just impress, they amaze," one of our judges gushes. "Truly a forward-thinking on-demand platform, now with redundancy and hot swappable cards, the B-1 meets every need to grow our on demand services." This is Version 3.0 of the company's B-1 video server with Stream Commander. It offers enhancements in the areas of fault tolerance, application resiliency and reporting functions, with a significant number of manageability enhancements based on customer feedback. At the heart of the B-1 is the DRAM-based streaming server technology that scales to 80 Gbps of output, the highest density in the industry, according to Broadbus. Producing nearly 20,000 streams per chassis and offering virtually unlimited ingest capabilities, the B-1 can ingest hundreds of live and prerecorded programs simultaneously.
Cedar Point SAFARI C3
Always a popular demo on the Expo floor, the SAFARI C3 charmed our judges once again this year — this time upgraded. "Cedar Point continues to improve its C3 platform, a powerful switch in a small footprint. By now delivering SIP services, operators have tremendous flexibility in their service offerings," one judge says. Unlike a traditional softswitch that directs packet-based voice traffic among a variety of discrete components, this solution is a totally integrated voice and multimedia switch through which all voice traffic passes, providing ops with less complex VoIP alternatives. The SAFARI C3 incorporates, at no additional cost, all the components that make up the PacketCable voice switching infrastructure, eliminating the need to purchase, maintain, upgrade and regression test separate call management servers, media gateways, recordkeeping servers, announcement servers signaling gateways, Ethernet switches and CALEA servers.
Ciena CN 4200 FlexSelect
The CN 4200 FlexSelect advanced services platform is a multiservice transport and aggregation solution capable of on-demand support for any transport protocol — including SONET/SDH, Ethernet, storage or digital video — at any speed on any available port. Ciena says it is the first product to offer a universal line card with user programmable ports. It offers point-and-click ease by provisioning, upgrading (i.e., from 100baseT to GigE) or even changing (i.e., from SONET/SDH to GbE) services at any time — without introducing new modules or platforms. One judge calls it "a needed product as operators face increasing traffic inside the network," while another says it is "very smart" and "probably the most flexible optical transport platform so far. It removes cost by supporting multiple transport protocols on a single card."
Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 7500
The Diamonds judges were huge fans of Fujitsu's pgraded FLASHWAVE 7500 ROADM. "The best of the class, the switch fabric is a must in a product with these capabilities. No major metro market should be without this product," one judge stresses. The FLASHWAVE 7500 includes a wavelength selective switch- (WSS) based optical switch fabric, full 40-channel C-band tunable narrowband optics, small form-factor pluggable interfaces, multiport and multirate SONET Flexponder interface cards and an intelligent control plane. The new WSS-based optical core delivers the most advanced wavelength routing and topology migration capabilities available today, according to Fujitsu. "It provides DWDM wavelength switch capability placing it at the forefront of the ROADM deployments. It moves past transponder technology by significantly reducing transponder requirements while raising the flexibility of the transport system," a judge adds.
Harmonic DiviTrackIP
This statistical multiplexing solution truly captured our judges' imaginations. One of them called it out especially for its ability to improve bandwidth efficiency, and said it was well-placed for FTTH designs. Another liked its ability to allow ops to pull (and push) content from and to multiple locations, from multiple, disparate sources, at the same time reducing the amount of headend equipment otherwise required. The Harmonic DiviTrackIP closed-loop statistical multiplexing system streamlines the digital video infrastructure and provides greater flexibility in delivering standard- and high-def broadcast TV. The platform also supports encoders using MPEG-2, MPEG-4/AVC (H.264) and SMPTE VC-1. JDSU NetComplete
This JDSU system manages VoIP services over a PacketCable-based network. Through passive monitoring data collection, consolidation and correlation, NetComplete facilitates VoIP service turn-up verification, problem isolation and troubleshooting, and network and service performance management. "This could be very useful for operators looking to leverage their existing Pathtrak and RSAM investments while moving to a better application for monitoring VoIP quality," one judge says. "For those looking for a more integrated approach that have not yet heavily committed to an HFC monitoring system, this integrated approach of software, hub-based hardware, reverse path monitoring and remote signal analysis capability could be just the thing." Minacom PowerProbe 30
A darling of the judging panel, the Minacom PowerProbe 30 service level test responder and PocketDQ Web Client was hailed as "a wonderful step in VoIP test equipment that should go a long way toward reducing repeat service calls." One judge was impressed that it provided so many individual parametric and quality checks in one package. "This gear also provides all the quality testing needed to confirm good quality at the time of connection," he says. Said to be the world's smallest VoIP tester, the pocket-sized PowerProbe 30 VoIP responder performs complete phone service validation in less than a minute by measuring over 60 service level measurements when plugged into any standard two-wire phone jack. PocketDQ provides pass/fail indication as well as complete test results using a drilldown interface by communicating with a DirectQuality R7 test automation server that logs test data and evaluates measurements against centralized service quality thresholds defined by the op. Caspian Media Controller
"The ability to enforce network based policies is coming as more operators begin to market 'premium' services inside the network," a judge notes. "This could be a very useful tool to ensure the 'premium' services are in fact premium." The Caspian A120 media controller with Flow-State QoS identifies specific traffic types (video, voice, data), enforces assigned QoS parameters, and maintains state data about every traffic flow as it enters and transits the network. It then routes them through the network using the same path, enabling ops to directly associate a flow with a service, guarantee QoS across the network and prove it. EXFO FTB-8120/8130 Modules
The EXFO FTB-8120/8130 Transport Blazer next-gen SONET/SDH test module series appealed to one of our judges in particular because it "allows network testing of multiple protocols with minimal or no network disruption — a must for complex networks." The modules feature SmartMode troublescan, which automatically discovers the signal structure of an OC-n/STM-n line under test, including mixed mappings and Ethernet-over-SONET virtual concatenation paths. The modules provide optional next-gen Ethernet-over-SONET test functions such as generic framing procedure (GFP), virtual concantenation (VCAT) and link capacity adjustment scheme (LCAS). Additionally, the FTB-8120/8130 modules share a unique architecture that allows them to be supported and interchangeable on both the FTB-400 universal test system and the FTB-200 compact platform. Harmonic Narrowcast Services Gateway
"Narrowcast services will drive the industry's next set of revenue-producing applications," a judge notes. "The Harmonic gateway appears to facilitate much greater edge control over content streams. It's a product that should return additional plant capacity to the op." The NSG provides real-time content encryption using privacy-mode conditional access technology from Motorola. With this capability, the NSG's real-time encryption capability provides greater flexibility than the common practice of pre-encrypting content as well as reduces the overall complexity of implementing and managing an on-demand service. The highly scalable system protects all streams delivered through the NSG, and privacy-mode encryption is certified to work with all Motorola set-tops. Harmonic ProStream 8000
Harmonic's ProStream 8000 digital mosaic solution enables the generation of a navigation screen with multiple SD thumbnails and a still image or video elementary screen as a background. It provides an IP-based architecture for national/local channel navigation, on-demand promotions, sports/news split-screens and more. By receiving and producing content through GigE I/O interfaces, mosaic video output can be generated without additional decoders or encoders. The Diamonds judges were impressed with its wide range of programmable options for display "looks," its ability to customize metadata associated with each displayed service in the mosaic, and its space-efficiency. Whaleback SMB 1500 IP PBX
Judges called this solution from Whaleback Systems "well-timed," "comprehensive" and "solid." The SMB 1500 IP PBX transports voice signals over cable connections via native SIP trunks to drive down recurring bandwidth charges. Unlike IP Centrex and alternative PBX solutions, the SMB 1500 is premises-based and software-driven to simplify system management, enhance call quality and optimize network performance. It is deployed at a small and medium business location and connected to the SMB's Ethernet network. The SMB 1500 offers linear, pay-as-you-grow scalability so SMBs can support up to 1,500 phone stations. Look for more Diamonds winners in the next issue of "BGR," or see our "@the Show" print issue that you can pick up at Cable-Tec Expo. Deployments
Playing Field
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It's "All Engineering. All the Time" at the industry's engineering show. Hosting 400+ exhibitors, more than 10,000 attendees, 21+ technical workshops, Annual Awards Luncheon, Supplier Diversity Connection and numerous networking opportunities, 
Chinese cable operator Shekou CATV will launch the first commercially available VOD service in China using 
ntl:Telewest, the UK's largest cable operator, selected 
George Kassas, founder and EVP, business development at 
Sonia Khademi was named
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