Cable Moves Center Stage

The real stars of last week's Western Cable Show in Anaheim, Calif., were not the celebrities brought in to tout cable channels. Instead, stars were defined as anyone who could confidently say they knew how to combine Internet protocol telephony and cable technology.

Vendors including Lucent Technologies, Motorola and Bellcore demonstrated packetized connections using cable modems, IP telephony gateways and various headend devices that allow voice to travel over cable networks.

"Cable companies have the local loop, which makes them unique," said Dan MacDonald, vice president of marketing for Vienna Systems.

Vienna was one of several vendors that participated in interoperability demonstrations at CableLabs' CableNet arena. It also worked with 3Com Corp. to demonstrate Vienna's IPShuttle 2, which allows users to attach multiple analog phones to a cable system.

IP telephony should be attractive to cable companies because it gives them an impressive market entry, MacDonald said.

IP voice over cable could become a first line replacement, said Kenneth Colby, director of applications engineering for Hybrid Networks. "Obviously, AT&T and [Tele-Communications Inc.] know it's a good way of bypassing the local carrier," he said.

Also under the CableLabs' umbrella, Bellcore demonstrated a new call agent that manages all calls from other vendor-supplied IP gateways, extracts billing information and connects the calls, explained Scott Davidson, executive director at Bellcore.

NetSpeak demonstrated a similar product, which acts as a call manager in the center of the network and offers customer-friendly features such as Web configuration and call forwarding, said Rahul Chopra, product marketing manager of IP networks for NetSpeak.

Also demonstrated were the Lucent PacketStar IP services platform and Nortel Networks' Packet Phone Adapter, which both reside in the cable headend and have been adapted to receive voice calls from cable modems.

Motorola was unique in demonstrating a box that integrates a cable modem and a voice-over-IP gateway. Called the Multimedia Terminal Adapter, the product connects to a telephone through an RJ-11 jack.

ADC Telecommunications announced a licensing agreement under which Cisco Systems will design IP capability into ADC's Homeworx DualTech residential networking products. Cisco will use ADC's technology to integrate lifeline capability into its universal broadband router product line.

Arris Interactive debuted a four-line voice port for cable telephony with remote battery monitoring, allowing the unit to support lifeline phone service.

Newbridge Networks signalled its entry into the cable market with a set of broadband multiservice solutions for cable companies, including voice over IP.The solutions also allow operators to offer businesses premium-quality IP telephony on a virtual private network. "It just made sense to take that learning into broadband and offer seamless, end-to-end solutions," said Tony Jenkins, access product marketing director for Newbridge.

Vendors would not name cable companies interested in their products but agreed the response from the industry was enormous.

"Operators are eager to add services like cable telephony, but they don't want to jump before the market is ready," said Charles Kline, head of the technology catalyst group at Cisco. "They know they only have one shot to get people to leave their phone companies, and they don't want to blow it."