http://www.telecomweb.com TelecomWeb.com en-us 2008 Fri, 16 May 2008 5:50:18 EDT Over the last 10 years, cable operators have spent considerable time and revenue upgrading their systems to 750 MHz or 870 MHz. At those elevated upper bandwidth limits, the plan was to collapse the analog tier and create more space for digital channels to provide cable operators with all the bandwidth they... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19750.html Sun, 1 Oct 2006 0:00:00 EDT The U.S. business telephony market is huge. Estimated by Kagan Research at some $120 billion, it is nonetheless undergoing a fundamental transformation as the deployment of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and session initiation protocol (SIP) precipitates a convergence of the voice and data... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19751.html Sun, 1 Oct 2006 0:00:00 EDT Based on numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor, business services represent an $82.1 billion opportunity in the United States alone. Despite numerous efforts to get a larger piece of the pie, cable operators today have a market share of less than 3 percent in business services. But changing circumstances... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19752.html Sun, 1 Oct 2006 0:00:00 EDT If you have an analog TV channel whose visual carrier level is 0 dBmV and a 6 MHz wide 64-QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) signal whose digital channel power is 0 dBmV, which one has more power? Let’s look at this subject more closely and see what the numbers say. Grab a cup of coffee and your... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19753.html Sun, 1 Oct 2006 0:00:00 EDT Until a couple of months ago, I had been pretty much ignoring the increasing number of broadband telephony products. Then a press notice from Vonage inviting me to sample a new offering called V-phone caught my eye, mainly because it stated that the product was ideal for “customers surfing the Internet... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19754.html Sun, 1 Oct 2006 0:00:00 EDT Is budget season finally over? I’d hope so. Some engineers on the operator side of this industry seem to be spending about three months on the projections and spreadsheets needed to map out the next year. That tedious exercise happens alongside the regular duties of running technical operations. And to... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19755.html Sun, 1 Oct 2006 0:00:00 EDT Milestones First Donation: The SCTE Foundation received its first doanation, a check for more than $45,000 from the Tom Polis Foundation. Road Runner Turns 10: Time Warner Cable's Road Runner service officially launched on September 10, 1996. Happy birthday! People Arris Appoints Williams Arris TeleWire... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19756.html Sun, 1 Oct 2006 0:00:00 EDT Shout "Competition!" in a roomful of cable technology people and the thoughts that first jump to mind are likely to involve fiber to the home and satellites. It's doubtful that many will think first of power grids. But say "broadband over power line" (BPL) to those same people, especially if they're RF... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19749.html Tue, 19 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT The M-CMTS architecture could be the transport answer to burgeoning customer data capacity and throughput demands. As Internet protocol (IP) continues to proliferate at an increasing pace throughout cable operators' networks, it is clearly becoming the standard end-to-end transport mechanism to enable true... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19742.html Fri, 1 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT From disaster recovery to test beds to solid fundamentals and innovation, these three systems all hit the mark. Communications Technology's annual System of the Year and Top-Tier System awards lead to special recognition at Cable-Tec Expo and coverage in these pages. Sponsored by Scientific-Atlanta, these... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19743.html Fri, 1 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT Time Warner's Start Over service is generating some interesting results, some of which challenge the conventional VOD wisdom. Simply stated, Start Over is a success and predictably so. The launch of the Start Over service was born of direct customer feedback through Time Warner Cable's market research. When... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19744.html Fri, 1 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT A defective downstream laser transmitter that serves three nodes was found to be causing degraded bit error rate (BER) in the downstream digitally modulated signals. Two different quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) analyzers measured post-forward error correction (FEC) BER around 5.9E-05 on the QAM... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19745.html Fri, 1 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT A recent conference on Healthcare Unbound therefore attracted my attention as a source of information on what appears to be a growing need for communications to monitor and manage activities affecting quality of life issues. In particular, the conference announcement's emphasis on the digital home and home... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19746.html Fri, 1 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT In a previous life, long ago and several evil empires away, I edited a two-volume book on the U.S. and Soviet economies. Never a best seller, it's no longer even available, alas, so says Amazon. My subsequent proposal for a book on business conditions in the post-Communist world met with this objection from... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19747.html Fri, 1 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT Letters Fiber for Everyone CT's Pipeline asked readers how deep fiber needs to go. Here's one response (we'll forward to Santa Claus, or Jim Farmer): I'd like fiber to my house. I'd like a switched optical Ethernet at 1 Gbps. I'd take the handoff at the fiber and get my own Ethernet switch with a fiber... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19748.html Fri, 1 Sep 2006 0:00:00 EDT August 2006 Issue Backtalk Whether 'tis nobler in the headend to suffer the upstream limitations of a stopgap version of DOCSIS 2.0 (called 2.0b), or take up DOCSIS 3.0 arms against the telcos, and by opposing 2.0b, to end it? (OK, enough Shakespeare.) There's been some debate this summer on the prudence of... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19000.html Tue, 1 Aug 2006 0:00:00 EDT August 2006 Issue Broadband By Ron Hranac, Senior Technology Editor Cable-Tec Expo 2006 has come and gone, and what a show it was. This year's confab was held in the mile high city of Denver. A big tip of the hat to SCTE headquarters staff and the Expo Program Subcommittee for pulling off a successful event... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19001.html Tue, 1 Aug 2006 0:00:00 EDT August 2006 Issue Editor's Letter The search for a "System of the Year" is a nearly impossible task. Not only is our knowledge far from complete; the information about the wide range of systems that we acquire rarely lends itself to apples-to-apples comparisons. What we aspire to present, in the end, is a... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19002.html Tue, 1 Aug 2006 0:00:00 EDT August 2006 Issue Keep an eye on the mobility application server, multiple touchpoints of convergence, numbering systems and interoperability as the industry moves toward IMS/PacketCable 2.0-based fixed-mobile convergence. By Jay Bestermann, Arris, and Jack Fijolek, UTStarcom For many years, CableLabs and... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19003.html Tue, 1 Aug 2006 0:00:00 EDT August 2006 Issue SCTE Message Much has been written about the revenue potential in supplying the telecommunications needs of business customers. While the allure of a potentially profitable business opportunity is strong, there is the nagging issue of how to get started and what is required as you expand... http://www.telecomweb.com/news/ctmagazine/19004.html Tue, 1 Aug 2006 0:00:00 EDT