Broadband Bob Report


11/16/01


1. Access Market Stabilizing
2. Juniper Acquires PBC
3. S-A Acquires BarcoNet
4. Aastra Acquires Ericsson's Cable Modem Business
5. InfoSpace Acquires Excite Portal from @Home
6. AOL & EarthLink Launch in Hawaii & Kansas City
7. Core Introduces System Enhancements; New Distributor
8. Cadant Introduces Availability of C4 CMTS
9. Analog Devices Introduces Mixed Signal Front End
10. Hanaro Ends October with 922,655 Cable Modem Subs

1. Access Market Stabilizing
According to a collection of new broadband and access market studies, the access market is stabilizing. Telecommunications Reports International (TR), reports 67.9 million access customers in the U.S. at the end of Q3, down from 70.7 million the previous quarter. The decline was primarily due to sharp subscriber drops among free ISP services and Internet TV services. Other access service types showed little or moderate quarterly growth. The slowed growth may not be purely a result of a weakening economy, but instead an indication the residential access market is reaching maturity. According to a Parks Associates' survey of 2,500 U.S. households last July, 75% of dial-up consumers are satisfied with their Internet service.

Cable and DSL services continue to grow, representing 13% of the online market, up from 7.5% a year ago says TR. The NCTA reports 6.4 million U.S. cable modem subs at the end of September, a 15% increase over the quarter. TR reports 5,314,909 cable modem subs, with a 7.7% increase for the same period. TR finds DSL subs at the end of Q3 to be 3,524,000, up 13.1%.

The Dell'Oro Group has reported that the CMTS market was up 10% over the quarter, but down 43% from Q3 2000.

TR's Online Census is a quarterly report providing subscription and growth data for the different access sectors. Annual subscriptions are available for $149.

The Parks Associates study is entitled "Bundled Services and Residential Gateways." The quarterly Dell'Oro study is dubbed the Access Report, a part of the firm's Router, Access, and Voice line of research. The Access Report provides analysis of cable and DSL market size, market share, port/unit shipments and average selling prices.

from TRI:
---------
Service Category    No. of Subs        Q3 Growth

Cable Modems         5,314,909           7.7%
DSL                  3,524,000          13.1%
Dialup (Paid)       53,294,752           2.1%
Dialup (Free)        4,850,000         (46.7%)
Internet TV            812,000         (33.6%)
Satellite              114,000         unknown

from TRI:
---------
Select Providers     No. of Subs        Q3 Growth

AOL                  31,300,000          3.9%
MSN                   6,500,000         18.0%


from NCTA:
----------
Service Category    No. of Subs        Q3 Growth

Cable Modems          6,400,000          15.0%
Digital Video        13,700,000          11.0%
Cable Telephony       1,450,000           9.0%

from NCTA:
----------
Select Providers     No. of Subs

@Home                 4,162,000
AT&T (@Home)          1,400,000
AOL/TW (RR)           1,700,000
Cablevision             423,100
SBC                   1,200,000


from Dell'Oro
------------------------------
        CMTS Vendors                     Q3 Growth
(in order of market leadership)   

Cisco                                      33%
Terayon                                    11%
ADC                                       (18%)
Motorola                                    4%


NCTA
http://www.ncta.com

TR
http://www.tr.com

Parks Associates
http://www.parksassociates.com

Dell'Oro
http://www.delloro.com


2. Juniper Acquires PBC
Juniper Networks has announced that it will acquire Pacific Broadband Communications in a stock deal valued at $200 million. Pacific peddles a DOCSIS CMTS based on its own silicon.

Juniper Networks
http://www.juniper.net

Pacific Broadband Communications
http://www.pbc.com


3. S-A Acquires BarcoNet
Scientific Atlanta has said that it will acquire BarcoNet NV (formerly The Industree), a Belgium-based supplier of headends for integrated multimedia services, optical backbones, network management, digital TV distribution, and up until last September, cable modems. S-A will launch a public tender offer for all of the outstanding common stock of BarcoNet at a price of 5.70 euro per share in cash, together with all outstanding options, warrants and convertible securities, for an aggregate value of $154 million. The acquisition is expected to close next month.

Scientific Atlanta
http://www.scientific-atlanta.com

BarcoNet
http://www.barconet.com


4. Aastra Acquires Ericsson's Cable Modem Business
Aastra Technologies Limited has announced that it will acquire the cable modem business of Ericsson. Terms were not disclosed. Aastra has been involved in multiple opportunity buys recently including the acquistion of Lucent's vido compression unit in September. Ericsson dumps its cable modem line admist an effort to reorganize its operations which has included cutting 26,000 jobs, outsourcing manufacturing, and spinning off its handset unit.

Ericsson markets a certifed cable modem known as PipeRider.

Aastra is an Ontario based supplier of telephony networking equipment, digital video encoders, decoders, and gateways.

Ericsson
http://www.ericsson.com

Aastra Technologies
http://www.aastra.ca


5. InfoSpace Acquires Excite Portal from @Home
@Home has announced that it will sell the Excite.com domain, trademarks and user traffic to InfoSpace for $10 million, pending approval from bankruptcy court. Equipment, employees, and the broadband specific areas of the portal would not be included in the acquisition.
Excite
http://www.excite.com

@Home
http://www.home.net

InfoSpace
http://www.infospace.com


6. AOL & EarthLink Launch in Hawaii & Kansas City
AOL and EarthLink have launched their respective services over Time Warner systems in Kansas City (545,000 HHP) and in Honolulu, Maui and surrounding areas.

EarthLink has said that it will offer its cable modem subscribers a free version of ZoneAlarm's firewall software and a discount on a premium version of the software.

EarthLink
http://www.earthlink.net

AOL
http://www.aol.com

Time Warner
http://www.timewarner.com


7. Core Introduces System Enhancements; New Distributor
Core Networks has announced a series of enhancements to its CoreOS subscriber management and provisioning solution. The upgrade includes a simplified migration to 1.1, streamlined network load balancing, and bandwidth management capabilities.

In a separate announcement, Core has said that TVC Latin America (formerly AmTech), a Miami-based supplier of enterprise networking systems, will distribute the company's CoreOS system in South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Core Networks
http://www.corenetworks.com


8. Cadant Introduces Availability of C4 CMTS
Cadant has introduced the availability of its DOCSIS 1.1 qualified C4 CMTS and accompanying management system. The CMTS supports up to 16 CAMs, and up to 32 downstream and 128 upstream channels in a single chassis. The technology features flexible CAM sparing, allowing operators to configure and deploy multiple RF sparing groups in a single chassis with RF redundancy levels ranging from 1+1 to 15+1 redundant.

Cadant
http://www.cadant.com


9. Analog Devices Introduces Mixed Signal Front End
Analog Devices has introduced AD9877, a mixed signal, single chip front end consisting of a 232 MHz quadrature digital transmitter, a D/A converter, a 12-bit direct IF A/D converter in the receive path, and two 8-bit converters. The technology features receiver IF sampling to 75 MHz and fine gain control in the transmit path (.5 db steps from 0-7.5 db). It also features dual auxiliary 12-bit sigma-delta D/A converters and programmable sampling clock rates.

The front end's development is based on the company's "smart partitioning" methodology, a design technique that partitions the signal path according to performance metrics rather than A/D boundaries.

The AD9877 is priced at $4.53 per unit in quantities of 100,000.

Analog Devices
http://www.analog.com


10. Hanaro Ends October with 922,655 Cable Modem Subs
Hanaro Telecom, a broadband provider serving South Korea, has ended October with 922,655 cable modem subs.

Hanaro Teleocm
http://www.hanaro.com




© Copyright 2000 Gecko Research & Publishing

The Broadband Bob Report is a weekly take of the latest news regarding data over cable, 2-way HFC networks and related applications and services. Subscribers to Broadband Bob’s Cable Modem Mailing List receive the Broadband Bob Report via E-Mail each Monday. For info on joining the mailing list, visit http://www.hfc.net/mailinglist

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