• Sounding Off on VoIP Quality New studies are challenging the old idea that the public switched telephone network is "just better" than VoIP services when it comes to voice quality.

Products

NGB Makes Trial-Size High-Speed Data Possible

Next Generation Broadband, which develops device control software that operates on a centralized network basis, allowing cable ops to automate management of individual IP devices and subs, has added a self-managed Free Trial Feature to its Auto Install automated subscriber activation system. This will enable MSOs to allow subs to try out high-speed data service for any specific period of time.

NGB's Auto Install system enables high-speed data subs to auto install cable modems and activate their broadband service without any operator intervention. The system is self-contained and communicates and functions cooperatively with an op's core backend systems. The Free Trial feature is enabled through built-in session management.

Sling Media Releases Trio of New Models

Sling Media announced the availability of three new Slingbox models that are said to "significantly increase performance, provide the customer with choice depending on their home TV setup and start at as low as $179.99." The Slingbox PRO, Slingbox AV, and Slingbox TUNER transform PCs, laptops and Windows-based mobile phones and handheld computers into personal portable TVs. "Slingbox owners can now watch and control their home cable, satellite or digital video recorder anywhere they can access the Internet, from their backyard to Beijing and everywhere in between," according to the company.

The Slingbox PRO is designed for the consumer who has multiple A/V devices or has made an investment in HDTV. The Slingbox PRO features four sets of audio/video inputs and outputs including the optional HD component connection for HD set-top box customers making for seamless integration into current A/V systems. Other features include widescreen (16:9) support, programmable video compression, easy connection to set-tops (e.g., digital cable, satellite, DVR) and remote control of A/V devices.

The Slingbox AV gives consumers who watch TV using a standard definition cable set-top, satellite receiver or DVR, the ability to connect their Slingbox AV seamlessly to their set-top box. Slingbox AV features the ability to watch and control TV from any Internet connected PC/Mac/laptop or Windows-based mobile device, widescreen (16:9) support and high quality programmable video compression.

The Slingbox TUNER is for customers with cable who want to view their lineup of TV channels and do not require access to a set-top box, satellite receiver, DVR or other AV device. The Slingbox TUNER connects adjacent to a cable modem or basic coaxial connection even without a TV present. This allows the Slingbox TUNER customer to view their cable channels without impacting another family member watching TV anywhere else in the home.

Motorola Snaps Up Vertasent

Motorola acquired Vertasent LLC, a privately held developer of software applications that enables services such as content-on-demand or IPTV to share resources and be delivered over a common infrastructure. Vertasent's applications manage the elements in a switched digital video network.

Motorola's acquisition of Vertasent, coupled with its purchase of Broadbus Technologies earlier this year, allows the company to provide ops with an end-to-end, open standards hardware and software portfolio that supports advanced video services and improves bandwidth management.

Jones/NCTI Speaks Up on Digital Voice

Jones/NCTI launched an online video course, "Digital Voice Customer Care: Overview," targeted to cable CSRs, but valuable for employees enterprisewide, according to the company.

The four-hour-long training program can be completed in increments as small as 15 minutes, and at the agent's desk. Students learn to communicate the features and benefits of digital voice to customers, avoiding unnecessary mistakes that drive up call volume and lead to service calls. Jones/NCTI says that when completed, "Digital Voice Customer Care" students will understand the differences between digital voice and wireline telephone service and be equipped to compare the voice services offered by a variety of companies. They will also be able to explain general installation practices in both single-residence and multiple-dwelling units, and the impact of digital voice service on devices in a customer's home, and how to mitigate them.

A free demo of the course is available at http://www.jonesncti.com/prod/voice_customer_care_demo.htm.

Register Now for ET '07

Registration is now open for SCTE's Emerging Technologies Conference '07. Technical sessions will focus on what cable engineers will be facing in the next three to five years, and include:

• Shiftier and Shiftier: Expanding Choice from Whenever to Wherever and Whatever Device
• Service Velocity & Next Generation Architectures: How Do We Get There?
• My Videos, Your Videos, Our Videos: The Future of TV Services is Personal, Customizable, and Shareable
• Forward Advertising to the Lean-Back Screen: Opportunities to Replicate Internet Advertising Success in Television
• Look Ma, No Wires! Cable and Wireless Integration for Seamless Application Delivery
• Crossing the Lines: Service Assurance in a Seamless, Inter-Woven World

For more details and registration info, visit http://et.scte.org.

Completed a Jones/NCTI Course? You're Eligible for Tuition Scholarship

More than 82,000 cable workers who have successfully completed a course over the past 38 years from Jones/NCTI will now be eligible for a tuition scholarship of up to 20% with Jones International University. In addition, Jones/NCTI graduates who have earned an associates degree through the company's partnership with Arapahoe Community College will be admitted to Jones International University (JIU) with full recognition of credits, saving prospective students the process of having to have each credit scrutinized for transfer.

Correction: Narad FTTxSWITCH

In the Sept. 19 issue of Broadband Gear Report's "Who's Who in Wireless," the wrong photo ran of Narad's FTTxSWITCH. The correct picture of the 10-port outdoor Ethernet switch that enables a variety of deep-fiber architectures is shown here.

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Feature: New Studies Sound Off on VoIP Vs. PSTN Quality

VoIP service quality can't compare to good old PSTN quality -- right? That idea has lost much of its luster as new studies have appeared with data that assaults the basic premise that the public switched telephone network is "just better."

As reported in the Sept. 7 issue of Broadband Gear Report, VoIP phone service now sounds better and connects faster than the standard PSTN, according to information collected over the last year by Minacom's standards-based, single-ended service quality test system. (If you haven't seen Minacom's data yet, check it out at www.minacom.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=36.)

Now, another study is talking up VoIP quality as it compares to the PSTN. Keynote Systems, which offers competitive analysis and operational metrics from the customer perspective, reports that VoIP quality has improved across the board since the company's last study in December 2005, and that leading VoIP providers have actually surpassed the PSTN in overall audio quality.

Twelve VoIP providers were part of the benchmark study including Comcast and Time Warner Cable as well as AT&T, Lingo, Packet8, Skype, SunRocket, TrueVoice, Verizon, Vonage, Vonics and Windows Live Messenger. In order to benchmark and rank the quality of consumer VoIP services, Keynote measured the relative performance of the leading VoIP providers in the New York and San Francisco markets, including digital cable, adapter-based VoIP (hard phone) and PC-based software (soft phone) services, as well as the performance of leading VoIP providers against PSTN service in those cities.

Keynote then rated the VoIP service providers on critical performance factors that influence the end-user experience using Keynote Voice Perspective, which is the company's VoIP quality test and measurement product.

Cable Leads the Pack

Keynote found that overall reliability among the competing VoIP providers had improved across the board, and that the "digital cable providers had in fact outperformed PSTN in overall reliability." Overall reliability is a computed index score based on performance measurements in three performance factors: service availability, average number of dial attempts and dropped calls.

"Leading digital cable VoIP providers were also found to deliver better audio quality than the competition... achieving excellent audio responsiveness (a measure of audio delay) and audio clarity (measured by mean opinion score, or MOS), two key contributors to overall audio quality," Keynote says.

"However, there was still room for improvement among the rest of the pack, with 10 of 12 VoIP service providers studied achieving less than a 4.0 MOS, which is considered to be 'toll quality,' that is, comparable to the audio quality of a toll call over PSTN," the company adds.

For more on Keynote's study, visit http://keynote.com/news_events/releases_2006/06sep14.html.

Deployments

• Pace Micro Technology received approval from Comcast to commence shipments of its standard-definition digital cable set-top box with digital video recording capabilities. Pace began shipping its standard definition DVR set-top box, the Vegas TDC575, to selected Comcast cable systems in September. The box supports electronic program guides and VOD apps.
• German operator NetCologne deployed the BigBand BMR (Broadband Multimedia-Service Router). The op is using the platform to control channel line-up, bandwidth efficiency and video quality for all digital cable subs it serves in the Cologne and Bonn areas.

• RGB Networks announced that three Latin American operators -- Columbus Communications Trinidad Ltd. in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad; Megacable in Guadalajara, Mexico; and VTR in Santiago, Chile deployed RGB's Simulcast Edge Processor (SEP) in digital simulcast cable architectures within their networks. The SEP provides the capability to simultaneously receive multiple MPEG-2 digital video streams over IP, decode the video streams, modulate and upconvert them, and deliver the streams directly to subs as NTSC analog video at the edge of the network.
• TV Cabo, Portugal's largest pay TV operator, selected C-COR's CableEdge network resource and bandwidth management software for IP data and voice services. Also, Unity Media, parent company of cable operators ish and iesy, is expanding the deployment of C-COR's CableEdge into the Hessen region of Germany.
  
  CableEdge is a network management and planning software that collects and analyzes network traffic and performance data from cable modems, CMTSs and other DOCSIS-compliant devices (such as HDTV and set-tops) to derive benchmarks for network service quality and provide recommendations to improve service levels.
• Canadian cable op Vidéotron signed a multi-year agreement with Nortel as its primary VoIP technology and professional services provider to expand full-featured telephony services to its 1.5 million subs.

The Playing Field

• Andy Paff, president and CEO of Cedar Point Communications, was elected to the Massachusetts Network Communications Council Board of Directors. MassNetComms is an industry association of network communications companies. Paff, who earlier this year was named co-CEO of the Year by MassNetComms, was elected at the organization's annual meeting.
  
  At the same meeting, E.Y. Snowden, president and CEO of BCGI, and Kevin Casey, president of New England, Comcast, began their terms as chairman and vice chair and secretary, respectively. Also elected to the MassNetComms board were: Bill Styslinger, CEO, SeaChange International; Ashraf Dahod, president and CEO, Starent Networks; and Andy Ory, president and CEO, Acme Packet.
• Fujitsu Network Communications announced that Satoshi Ikeuchi has been appointed president and CEO. In this role, he will oversee all product planning, product development, sales, marketing, manufacturing and customer support organizations at the company's headquarters in Richardson, TX. He succeeds Takanobu Yoden, who has retired from Fujitsu.
  
  Fujitsu also announced that Joe Massery, former VP of hardware and physical design, has been promoted to SVP of development. He is replacing Takashi Wakabayashi, who will return to Japan in October to serve as group SVP of the Photonics group at Fujitsu Ltd.
• Infinera appointed Simon Naylor as VP for Asia Pacific. From 2000 until recently, Naylor was VP of Asia Pacific/Japan for Sonus Networks. Prior to that, he served as VP Asia Pacific for security and encryption software company RSA Security, which was recently acquired by EMC.
• Quintech named Jim Herbstritt as domestic account executive for the U.S. broadcast market. Prior to joining Quintech, he spent 13 years with Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh and its predecessor, KBL Sports Network and Fox Cable Networks, in sales and marketing.
• The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers hired Kimberly Maki to serve as its new executive director. She joins the SMPTE from SCTE, where she served as VP, marketing, membership and business development.
• TVC Communications promoted Luis Felipe Ulloa to the position of director of sales, Caribbean and South America. Most recently, he held the position of regional sales manager covering Central America, Caribbean and the Andean Pact.

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