Terayon has some unique capabilities in the world of cable modems that does enable them to operate on non-upgraded broadband cable plant. They are so robust that they can operate "down in the dirt" of the pure coaxial return plant and get through the pure coaxial downstream with no trouble at all. Let's look at it a little closer though.
First, many non-HFC cable plant has not been two-way activated. Telephone return modems severely limit the bandwidth available upstream. So to take advantage of true broadband modem abilities, many cable operators will still have to invest heavily in return activation.
Next, there is the issue of reliability. In addition to bandwidth, the primary reason cable operators don't put telephony on pure coax plant is that it is inherently not reliable. The failure of an amplifier anywhere near the headend takes out the majority of the plant for an extended period of time. Applied to data transmission, most people will not tolerate numerous outages of reasonably long periods -- would you, before you got totally frustrated with the service? (this was one of the original justifications for putting in HFC in the first place).
Then comes price. The sophistication of the S-CDMA based headend and modem system developed by Terayon costs more to build and is more expensive than competing HFC cable modem systems. And for that higher price, you get lower bandwidth and slower speeds than HFC based systems. The trade-off of course, is that it will work in just about any plant.
The lastest hitch in the Terayon story is that it is not DOCSIS compliant. A totally proprietary system as it stands, it is not compatible with the new breed of DOCSIS compliant headend CMTS (cable modem termination system) or standards based modems now being deployed by the major MSOs. In deference to Terayon, the standards body that sets compatibility standards will be incorporating S-CDMA protocols into the compatibility standards in an upcoming release. But that will not be established for quite a while yet. In the meantime, they are out on their own. First they have to wait for the new standard to be approved, then design it into their system, then go through a 6 month or longer certification process. How long for all that to occur is open to speculation, but it is not in the short term.
Do the advantages of being able to operate in any plant, even the dirtiest pure coaxial network, outweigh the disadvantages as described? I'm not sure. But already many cable operators will offer Terayon based service on non-upgraded plant when they offer HFC based high speed cable modems in an effort to provide ubiquitous coverage in their service areas. This prevents them from being seen as playing favorites and only offering service in areas that have been upgraded. So from at least a PR standpoint, Terayon provides a wonderful alternative to traditional HFC based modems.
But as can be seen, it is anything but a panacea to the non-upgraded cable plant operator. |
