A surprising array of vendors, including makers of routers and packet shapers and voice gateways (oh my), showed up at December's BroadbandPlus show in Anaheim, Calif. Equipment and software specialists with an Internet Protocol bent were ubiquitous enough to almost drown out the new vertical-niche cable content specialists making their debuts (though once you've promoted The Puppy Channel, what is left to exploit in content provision?).
Indeed, the cable TV multisystem operators, often derided as "those MSO yahoos" by the telcos, are beginning to get the hang of this fancy IP transport stuff. The ease with which MSOs greet IP traffic of all types is testimony to how IP networks are living up to their reputation of running on virtual autopilot.
In the late 1990s, many MSOs wagered that if they could get full hybrid fiber-coax networks in place before running out of money, they'd be better positioned to survive an inevitable crash than the incumbent and local-exchange carriers. Not only was that a good bet against telephony traditionalists, but the fringe benefits appear to be dribbling over into the direct-satellite competition as well.
When it still looked like the EchoStar-DirecTV merger was going to happen, the satellite TV juggernaut seemed unstoppable. Of course, satellite systems had such high latencies in the return path that their bid for true interactive broadband service always was pretty lame. But the typical, passive TV viewer was favoring satellite over HFC-provided digital cable. Then the U.S. government nixed the EchoStar merger, and MSOs began promoting special cable modem/digital cable subscription packages. To add insult to injury, EchoStar suffered from inexplicable outages in the month of November. A month later in Anaheim, the MSOs suddenly looked pretty good.
Sure, many MSOs are operating in either Chapter 11 reorganization or a condition of losses requiring staff cutbacks. But if the HFC network is in place, that may not matter. In my neck of the woods in Colorado, where Adelphia is supplier, its PowerLink broadband IP service has operated flawlessly since Adelphia declared bankruptcy—so flawlessly, in fact, that I'd like to see them to move into voice-over-IP telephony. I'd sooner entrust a bankrupt MSO with my phone service than the troubled Qwest. Similarly, Comcast's acquisition of AT&T Broadband may lead to thousands of layoffs in the Denver area, but it looks as though Comcast will be able to provide a range of IP services with far fewer field technicians than were anticipated from the older days of analog cable.
As the packet-shaper and soft-switch specialists were showing their wares to MSOs in Anaheim, I couldn't help but think that advanced IP quality-of-service enhancements will make a "triple-play" cable TV network of voice, data and video reliable enough for more than 90 percent of homes and businesses passed by HFC. If consumers are willing to make digital cellular their primary phone service, they're probably be more than willing to consider digital cable.
Loring Wirbel is editorial director of Communication Systems Design and the editorial director for CMP Media's Communications Initiative. He can be reached at lwirbel@cmp.com.
