CABLE CHAMPING AT THE BIT FOR MONEYMAKING SERVICES

Having spent much of the '90s upgrading networks to 750/860 MHz bandwidth, cable is now ready to deliver moneymaking services like video-on-demand (VOD), high-speed data, high-definition television (HDTV) and eventually voice, engineers and managers said at last week's Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Cable Tec Expo in San Antonio.

Even Charter Communications, which was a little late to the game of rebuilds, sees great promise for the expanded bandwidth, said Dave Barford, executive vice president and chief operating officer, during a Cable Tec speech. “The amount of headroom is amazing.”

The giddiness of completing the massive project left some engineers sounding like corporate managers. “The time has come to capitalize on the investment,” said Steve Silva, Charter's chief technical officer. “We built the house; now it's time to go live in it.”

Unlike last month's National Cable Show in New Orleans, Cable Tec was littered with vendors hoping to encourage cable operators to rethink the finality of their network upgrades. Primary among these was Xtend Networks, which demonstrated a 3 GHz broadband cable system.

Xtend's network runs parallel to the coaxial cable plant, converting and moving bandwidth-consuming services like VOD and HDTV onto bands as high as 3 GHz. It then uses its own amplifiers and passive electronics to carry signals to subscriber homes, where they are re-converted for television viewing. Xtend is banking on the technology's $100-per-subscriber cost to entice cable operators, but the company may be forced to wait.

“The good times are just about to happen to us,” said Brad Dusto, Comcast's chief technology officer. “We are the network.”

Some are already casting doubt that the rebuilt network is as potent as operators want consumers and investors to believe.

“You can never have enough bandwidth,” said David Fellows, AT&T Broadband's chief technology officer. On the other hand, said Fellows, bandwidth is not free, and a number of other technologies, including improved compression schemes, should be studied before further upgrades.

“There is a limit to compression,” said Xtend CEO Hillel Weinstein. “Compression technology reached a plateau.”

Fellows, however, believes that such arguments are convenient for those in the bandwidth business. Consumers won't overload the networks because “you're only doing so many things in the home,” he said.

Most vendors also claim bandwidth is not an immediate concern and that other techniques such as serving smaller areas and even all-digital schemes are viable alternatives.

“You're not going to see operators say, ‘Holy moley, I'm going to go do another rebuild,’ because somebody has a neat product,” said Ken Wright, chief technology officer of equipment vendor C-Cor.net. “I can't think of the number of times we did a wave of rebuilds and said, ‘We're done,’ only to need more bandwidth.”

While not prophesying a need for more bandwidth, “you're never finished upgrading a network,” noted Paul Connolly, vice president of marketing and network architecture for Scientific-Atlanta's transmission networks systems.

But 860 MHz downstream is sufficient for the next decade of consumption, said Charles Dougherty, vice president and general manager of Motorola's Transmission Network Systems.

“Things have settled down now,” said Charter's Silva. “We have the capacity. We have the infrastructure.”