Comcast announced Thursday that it has rolled out its DOCSIS 3.0 service to four more markets: Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The company now offers wideband services in 10 cities. Comcast claims it now reaches 20 percent of its customer base with the addition of those four markets and by the end of December, 10 million homes and businesses in each of the cities will be able to sign up for the service.
MapQuest was busy Thursday announcing the launch of two new widgets for Twitter and CareerBuilder users. According to the company, its Twitter widget on MapQuest Local will allow users to see what Twitter users are talking about in their city or town. For any city a user displays on the MapQuest site, a Twitter link will be displayed showing Twitter entries made by people in that area and a link to reply to or follow that person’s stream. MapQuest’s new Careers widget will store up to five different sets of search keywords and pull in job matches in an area the person is mapping. Both widgets are available now on MapQuest Local.
Online casual gaming service Outspark announced Thursday that it has officially launched a portal on its page that will allow its community of users to interact with each other by creating profiles and become friends to share user-generated videos. The company also announced that it’s now using the open application programming interface from YouTube to host and embed user-generated videos directly on its own site.
Blog publishing service Tumblr announced Thursday that it raised $4.5 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. The company’s executives said they will use the funding to bolster cash reserves over the next few years and deploy paid features to increase revenue.
Domain squatters acquired the domain name GeorgeWBushLibrary.com recently and sold it back to Yuma Solutions, the Web development company that forgot to renew it, for a profit of $34,990. Yuma originally purchased the domain name in 2007 for $3,000.
source: news.cnet.com
Charter is also moving ahead with a bandwidth management plan that will involve both switched digital video (SDV) and analog reclamation to make room for high-definition television (HDTV) and Docsis 3.0 services.
Today, Charter’s top-end 16 Mbit/s service is available to about 80 percent of its Docsis footprint. Docsis 3.0 uses channel bonding techniques to produce shared speeds in excess of 100 Mbit/s.
“We are rolling [Docsis 3.0] out in the second half of the year, [but] we haven’t yet announced which markets,” Smit said, noting that Charter has already rolled those dollars into its overall capex number for 2008, estimated to reach $1.2 billion.
Charter is already testing SDV in Los Angeles using the BigBand Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: BBND) platform and expects to begin broader deployments later this year. (See Charter Charts First SDV Course .)
Smit said Charter will use “low-cost set-tops” to aid its all-digital effort, but he did not specify whether it will use DTAs.
Smit said the MSO also expects to migrate to all-digital in markets with the highest digital penetration. Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), by way of example, expects to enlist its all-digital strategy in 20 percent of its markets by year’s end. Comcast is using simple digital terminal adapters (DTAs) to help with the strategy. (See DTAs on Parade .)
source: lightreading.com
To compete with Verizon’s FiOS service, the New York-based ISP intends on doubling the speed of its Wi-Fi wireless Internet service to 3Mbps, which will be free for Cablevision subscribers. As a comparison, the FiOS service runs about $140 per month, while other competing companies such as Comcast and Charter only offer a more costly 50Mbps.
Cablevision announced today a plan that will bring speeds of 101Mb/s downstream and 15Mbps upstream to its 3 million customers. To take advantage of the new service, subscribers will be given the option to upgrade their cable Internet to DOCSIS 3.0 for $99.95 per month. The high-speed Internet access is expected to deliver full-length high-definition movies in less than 10 minutes or upload 750 digital photos or 150 songs in one minute.
source: techspot.com
Cisco Systems is developing a cable modem that will use Broadcom’s recently announced DOCSIS 3.0 silicon to bond together eight downstream channels – letting cable providers, theoretically, pump Internet content down to subscribers at more than 300 Mbps.
The forthcoming unit would be among the first to use Broadcom’s BCM3380 DOCSIS 3.0 modem chip. Cisco also plans to incorporate Broadcom’s DOCSIS 3.0 physical layer (PHY) component in its next-generation cable modem termination system (CMTS).
Cisco has predicted that the annual bandwidth demand on the world’s Internet networks will nearly double every two years — reaching 522 Exabytes annually in 2012 (the equivalent of 250 million DVDs) — and that half of that will be video traffic.
He noted, however, that right now Cisco is not exactly sure how the cost of the DPC3212 cable modem would compare with current DOCSIS 3.0 models.
Cisco is currently shipping two DOCSIS 3.0 customer-premises products, the DPC3000 cable modem and DPC3202 eMTA, which both use Texas Instruments’ Puma 5 chip set.
The driving force in the future for higher-speed broadband will be video over DOCSIS — whether that’s managed video content or unmanaged content going over the top, Bekele said.
“That’s going to make it more likely that operators will push the tiers higher,” Bekele said. “That ability to leapfrog to eight channels definitely becomes an advantage.”
According to Bekele, the idea with the eight-downstream-channel devices is to let cable operators future-proof their installed base of DOCSIS modems. So while a cable operator wouldn’t necessarily introduce a 300-Mbps Internet tier initially, that latent capacity would be available down the line.“As long as the cost is comparable, you’ll see a lot of operators gravitate toward 8 by 4,” he said, referring to a cable modem that provides eight downstream and four upstream channels.
source: ciscozine.com
Telstra has been quick to respond to criticism of the capabilities of DOCSIS 3.0, and HFC networks in general, with a blog post on Nowwearetalking from its CTO, Hugh Bradlow.
Bradlow was particularly upset about accusations from Optus’ government relations chief, Maha Krishnapillai, who was reported to have described Telstra’s upgrade was a poor second choice because it was a ‘shared network’, and therefore slowed down as the number of users increased.
Well if this is so, given all that Telstra has said about the need for and benefits of widespread high speed broadband one has to ask why it is dipping its toe into the water with DOCSIS 3.0 announcing only a Melbourne rollout when, on a simple extrapolation of the $300m cost, it could have 2.5m households in major cities able to access the network for about $700 and probably finish the job my mid 2010.
You can read Bradlow’s full rap on the wonders of DOCSIS 3.0 on Nowwearetalking. According to Bradlow, it stacks up very favourably against FTTN. “When we say that Telstra’s upgraded cable network will deliver up to 100Mbps downstream speeds, we mean it. Even in peak periods, the cable network will deliver 70 – 100Mbps burst downstream speeds, – a higher peak speed, in fact, than FTTN would offer.”
Dermot Cox of C-COR Broadband – the main supplier of HFC gear to Telstra – made a submission to the Senate enquiry into the NBN. He had the hubris to claim that “The next wave of technology development will be driven by the world’s leading cable operators to meet customers’ increasing demand for more bandwidth and video-centric applications like IPTV, interactive video, distance education and video telephony. Not once did he mention that the capacity of DOCSIS 3.0 is shared between all users on a co-ax cable.
True, but it’s a fact that cable people seem particularly reluctant to discuss. I’d asked Telstra’s GMD Networks and Services, Michael Rocca the day of Telstra’s announcement how many users in Telstra’s Melbourne HFC network typically shared a single run of coax and if Telstra intended to reduce this number as part of the upgrade. I had great difficulty in getting him to answer the question, and he never did give me a number but did say that about 100 addition nodes would be rolled out as part of the DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade. According to Bradlow, the number of users per node in HFC networks is “typically 150″ (but he did not suggest that this applied to Telstra’s network).
source: itwire.com
It is not unusual for Microtune to announce new products of this kind, and the announcement of this product, or any other product, should not be viewed as an indicator of Microtune revenues for any current or future reporting period. The market for DOCSIS 3.0 solutions may develop more slowly than currently anticipated. There can be no assurance that Microtune’s DOCSIS 3.0 or other products will continue to be selected by manufacturers in the future to support their cable products. All statements regarding the performance of Microtune products in this release and their performance relative to other products reflect management’s belief as of the date of this release only.
source: corporate-ir.net
For DOCSIS 3.0 applications that require a combination of wideband and narrowband tuners, Microtune offers the MicroTuner(TM) MT2068. It is a low-power, high-performance narrowband tuner that supports multiple specifications (DOCSIS(R), EuroDOCSIS(TM) 2.0 and PacketCable). Drawing less than 900 mWatts of power consumption, the MT2068 is engineered to deliver superior performance and power efficiency for DOCSIS 3.0 voice, Internet and multimedia/video services in all-digital, 1-GHz expanded cable networks.
The MT2170 is a 1.1 GHz single-chip tuner that offers the equivalent functionality of at least four DOCSIS 2.0 narrowband tuners in a highly integrated miniature package. It supports DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding technology and can accept bonded channels within an IF bandwidth range of 96 MHz. The MT2170 is able to process wideband bonded channels in the presence of multiple interfering signals, while at the same time meeting stringent DOCSIS 3.0 sensitivity and adjacent channel interference requirements.
Last year, Microtune introduced the industry’s first wideband TV tuner (MicroTuner(TM) MT2170), and today it is the only cable tuner that has been deployed by OEM manufacturers in DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems and Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapters (E-MTAs) certified by CableLabs(R).
source: corporate-ir.net
The MT1570 is a highly linear RF amplifier chip for DOCSIS 3.0 upstream channel-bonded communications. (Channel bonding is a DOCSIS 3.0 bandwidth expansion technique that combines multiple channels to significantly increase data rates.) The MT1570 amplifies four data channels from the user device to the cable head-end. Specifically designed to meet the stringent transmit-noise and linearity requirements of the DOCSIS 3.0 specification, it quadruples upstream data rates to 120 Mbps.
The MT1570 also offers excellent distortion performance and output-noise performance. It provides for increased reliability, quality and integrity of bandwidth-intensive upstream data, whether formatted as video, voice or data.
For consumers, these technical parameters translate into decreased upload time, reduced latency in voice-over-IP calls and increased service reliability. Integrated into a very small 5mm x 5mm QFN 20-pin package, the MT1570 provides backward compatibility and coexistence with legacy DOCSIS equipment. It eliminates the requirement for new cable infrastructure investment, providing a cost-effective, low-power strategy to DOCSIS 3.0 and beyond. A MT1570 Product Brief is available on Microtune’s website.
“We pride ourselves in being the performance and market leader in silicon TV tuners, as evidenced by the fact that we have already shipped more than 112 million MicroTuner(TM) tuner chips,” said Mr. Fontaine. “Our upstream amplifier products are as industry-hardened as our silicon TV tuner technology. In fact, to date we have shipped more than 62 million broadband amplifier chips to our brand-leading OEM customers.”
source: corporate-ir.net
When integrated into cable subscriber equipment, the new MT1570 upstream amplifier can be matched with any combination of Microtune’s high-performance wideband and narrowband tuners for a flexible DOCSIS 3.0 RF silicon solution. They can be designed into single- or multi-tuner configurations to produce scalable data and IP video pipelines for four-by-four, eight-by-four and larger downstream/upstream solutions. This capability translates into triple-digit speeds from 160-Mbps to 320-Mbps downstream and 120-Mbps upstream. Additional channels can be added to permit cable operators to scale DOCSIS 3.0 services for unique business models and channel allocation plans, while at the same time, supporting legacy cable networks and services.
Microtune products are engineered to significantly reduce the required footprint, power consumption and RF bill of materials cost to achieve unprecedented DOCSIS 3.0 performance. As building-block, future-ready technology, they enable cost-effective implementation of DOCSIS 3.0 cable services, including ultra high-speed data, Internet-Protocol (IP) voice, fast high-definition video-on-demand downloads/uploads, interactive on-line gaming, Internet Protocol (IP) TV video and new commercial services for businesses.
“As DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts begin in the worldwide cable market, our customers are telling us that cable operators are looking for flexible DOCSIS 3.0 implementations,” said James A. Fontaine, Microtune’s President and CEO. “As a result, our customers are designing customer premises equipment that addresses varying DOCSIS 3.0 deployment and service scenarios. They require a broad portfolio of RF solutions to develop a family of DOCSIS 3.0 products, from ultra high-speed data modems to IPTV set-top boxes and high-end gateways. With our combination of wideband/narrowband technologies, we are uniquely positioned to provide them the most advanced, cost-effective and agile RF solutions available, no matter how they decide to implement DOCSIS 3.0.”
“Texas Instruments’ alliance with Microtune provides cable technology manufacturers with the flexibility to develop high-performance DOCSIS 3.0 products that meet the varied voice, video and data demands of consumer and enterprise markets,” said Ran Senderovitz, Texas Instruments’ Digital Connected Home business manager. “Combined with Microtune’s wideband and narrowband tuners and their new upstream amplifier, TI’s industry-leading Puma 5 family of hardware and software solutions support a wide-range of products from DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems to flexible multi-tuner data and video gateway solutions.”
source: corporate-ir.net