4/22/97
@Home Finds Investors
Time Warner Launches Telephony in Austin, Texas
IEEE 802.14 Announces Status of Standards Efforts
InterCable To Deploy Motorola Cable Modems in Monterrey, Mexico
Adelphia Commits to 50,000 GI Telco Return Cable Modems
Casema Chooses Kenan for Multi-Service Billing
CableVision TCI to Offer High Speed Internet Access in Argentina
@Home Finds Investors
@Home has announced the completion of a capital raising spree that included
a $48 million private placement of preferred stock, representing approximately 4.25% of the company. Investors included Motorola, Bay Networks, Rogers Cablesystems, Shaw Communications, and Sun Microsystems. While @Home has not announced a prublic offering, an IPO is expected from the company in the next couple of years.
Along with Motorola's investment, the company has placed @Home in it's CyberSeed Venture Program.
Investments from Motorola and Bay Networks suggest that the two vendors will be preferred by @Home. The acceptance of these vendors as investors may effect other modem vendors like Phasecom and Terayon from winning @Home's business.
The call for investors marks yet another unexpected move by @Home. Several months ago, @Home had declared that the company would only connect two way cable modems that met their specifications. However, after TCI and Time Warner announced that they would halt plans to aggressively deploy cable modems, @Home announced that they would be willing to connect telco return cable modems and allow access to their network from providers utilizing xDSL and technologies. In addition, in 1996, @Home representatives boasted that the company was extremely well funded and that capital was the least of concerns.
In addition of @Homes announcement of new investors, the company has also announced a partnership with Teleport Communications Group (TCG), a telco provider that owns many fiber optic lines and frequently provides telephony access to cable operators. The agreement calls for TCG to provide fiber connectivity to business using @Home's @Work service. In addition, TCG will work with BizTel to allow @Home access to business via wireless networks. Last, TCG has agreed to house some of @Home's regional servers at the company's switching centers.
@Home
http://www.home.net
Motorola
http://www.mot.com/multimedia
Bay Networks (formerly LANcity) [Bay Networks]
http://www.baynetworks.com
Teleport Communications Group
http://www.tcg.com
Time Warner Launches Telephony in Austin, Texas
Time Warner Communications has announced that the company launched
telephony services to Austin, Texas businesses on April 15. Time Warner is
offering the service via an all digital, fully redundant, fiber optical
SONET network featuring Lucent's 5ESS-2000 Switch and 250 miles of
dedicated fiber connecting over 60 office buildings.
In addition to telephony services, TW is leasing lines. The University of
Texas at Austin has become one of Time Warner's first significant
customers. TW is providing the university with a OC-12 [620Mbps] dial-up
connection for data. Of the 2,556 T-1 lines in Austin, Time Warner is
providing 1,392 of these pipes.
Currently, Time Warner has switches located in Manhattan and Rochester, New
York; and in Austin, Texas. TW has plans to install switches in 18 markets
within the next year including Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas;
Cincinanati, Columbus, and Lima, Ohio; Charlotte, Greensboro, and Raleigh,
North Carolina; Honolulu, Hawaii; Indianapolis, Indiana; New York City and
Rochester, New York; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Memphis, Tennessee; Orlando and
Tampa, Florida; and San Diego, California.
IEEE 802.14 Announces Status of Standards Efforts
The IEEE 802.14 has announced that they will release a draft of their
proposed cable modem standard specification in July. The final
specification is expected to be available in 1998.
The specification will provide support for ITU J.83 Annex A, C, and
enhancements for B. In addition, the spec will support and utilize ATM as
the transmission mode with support for variable length packets. The spec
also includes QPSK for the upstream, 16QAM for the downstream, multiple
symbol rates, and variable FEC. The committee is considering upstream PHY
specs based on techniques such as trellis coding, multi-carrier and spread
spectrum.
Currently, 19 vendors have announced they will build a IEEE 802.14
compliant cable modem. However, most of the vendors plan to also build to
the MCNS specification.
IEEE 802.14
http://walkingdog.com/catv/
InterCable Launches High Speed Internet Access Service in Monterrey, Mexico
On April 16, 1997, InterCable launched commercial high speed Internet access
service in Monterrey, Mexico. The service will use Motorola's CyberSURFR
cable modems.
InterCable has agreed to purchase 3,000 cable modems by the end of the
year.
InterCable
http://www.intercable.net
Motorola
http://www.mot.com/multimedia/
Adelphia Commits to 50,000 GI Telco Return Cable Modems
NextLevel has announced that Adelphia Communications has committed
to purchase 50,000 SURFboard telco return cable modems. Adelphia will
deploy
the units in 7 markets. Adelphia will purchase both the internal version
of the
modem and the soon to be released, external unit.
Currently, GI has a commitment for more than 120,000 cable modems.
NextLevel
http://www.gi.com
SURFboard
http://www.surfboard.com
Adelphia Communications
http://www.adelphia.net
Casema Chooses Kenan for Multi-Service Billing
Casema, the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, has chosen Kenan
Systems to provide multi-service billing solutions via its unix based
system known as
Arbor/BP.
Arbor/BP is a billing, customer care, and customer analysis system that is
provided
with integration, training and maintenance services.
In addition to Arbor/BP, Casema will also use Jones Cyber Solutions'
Intelligent Customer
Support System [ICSS]. ICSS features a user interface that provides
intelligent device control,
inventory management and data collection.
Casema
http://www.casema.nl
Kenan Systems
http://www.kenan.com
Jones Cyber Solutions
http://www.jonescyber.com
CableVision TCI to Offer High Speed Internet Access in Argentina
CableVision TCI of Argentina has announced that they will launch commercial
high speed Internet access service known as Interactiva in July through
their subsidiary FiberTel TCI.
According to earlier reports, CableVision will import Motorola CyberSURFR
cable modems through Datanet and Microsoft.
FiberTel
http://www.fibertel.com
© Copyright 2000 Gecko Research & Publishing
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