Motorola goes Incognito with cable modems

(Telephony) In an effort to cut into the costly and time-consuming chore of activating cable modems, Motorola has signed an exclusive agreement to use Incognito Software's Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) technology.

The software, Motorola hopes, will ease the often painful and frequently expensive chore of connecting subscribers to cable's high-speed Internet services and help cable operators speed up cable modem deployment. It is an especially important ingredient as consumers purchase cable modems at retail and bring them home for self-installation.

"Because it's DOCSIS-compliant and the software is DOCSIS-compliant, the modem can request an address using some DHCP options that are DOCSIS-compliant," explained Patricia Steadman, Incognito's CEO. "The cable provider can add them to their system and then, when the client is approved from a billing perspective, they can automatically get a new address from our software and put them on the routable network."

Steadman emphasized that Incognito's exclusivity with Motorola extends only to cable and frees the Canadian company to work out similar deals with DSL and wireless vendors or providers. Motorola, she claimed, was a better fit than trying to work deals with all the different cable MSOs and ISPs.

"Motorola already has an existing channel that it would take us a very long time to build," she noted. "In terms of speed to market, we decided to go with the largest player in that market."

The arrangement between the two companies is "an OEM agreement; it's almost a straight distributor agreement," Steadman concluded.