The advent of broadband services over cable networks has created a huge new market for equipment makers that want to help operators manage two-way services.
Vendors that haven't traditionally been part of the clubby cable industry crammed the convention center in New Orleans this month for Cable 2000. Industry veterans said the only comparable time for such a plethora of new products was the advent of cable a generation ago.
Small start-ups aiming to fill the new niches will have to compete with giants scurrying to secure their space with new cable boxes.
New access router
Cisco Systems, for example, unveiled new products designed to allow cable operators to offer a variety of interactive digital services. Cisco's new interactive network adapter is designed to control two-way communications from a cable system head-end, managing both in-band and out-of-band data communications so operators can run both cable modems and set-top boxes. For customers' homes, Cisco introduced a new cable access router to allow customers to receive services such as audio and video streaming and interactive education and entertainment.
Those are only the beginning of what Cisco wants to sell the cable industry. "We think we're at the beginning of an explosion of IP [Internet Protocol] devices in the home,'' said Troy Wendt, director of marketing for cable products.
To demonstrate what may lay ahead, Cisco was showing prototype products that may exist in the home of the future, in conjunction with Whirlpool. A wireless home network, connected to a cable pipe, would let a cook turn down the temperature of a roast by punching buttons on a tablet in the living room, or follow along with a cooking program streaming from the Web to the refrigerator.
Dozens of much smaller vendors are offering to help operators manage the competing demands on their broadband networks with gear located in cable system nerve centers.
RiverDelta Networks, for example, just launched a broadband services router that it says will enable cable operators to offer multiple carrier-class services over their upgraded networks as it evaluates different streams of traffic and determines whether various types of data are moving in their prescribed bandwidths.
Besides building such specialised gear for new services, partnering is the name of the game. RiverDelta, for example, will use the Conexon product from Interactive Enterprise for easier provisioning of new broadband services. The mediation software allows operators to set up different levels of service and manage subscribers.
The challenge of managing all the new services is great. But so is the opportunity.
"The cable industry is in a very advantaged position,'' America Online exec Bob Pittman told the crowd. "You have a wire in the house and a relationship with the customer.''
