From the Yahoo board. No source given, but interesting still and making more sense after the Media One purchase (Divi/Phillips).
AT&T Outlines Set-Top, IP Strategies
By BILL MENEZES November 15, 1999 Englewood, Colo. -- AT&T Broadband & Internet Services will soon pick a second supplier of advanced digital set-top boxes as it aims for retail availability of the devices by next Christmas.
At a Veterans Day briefing to reporters in AT&T Broadband's headquarters here, the MSO also disclosed a midcourse change
in the technology it is deploying to provide telephony over cable, which could yield significant cost savings and possibly speed its timetable for migrating from circuit-switched to packet-switched service.
The news came from acting CEO Dan Somers and key executives leading AT&T Broadband's rollout of advanced broadband services, which will eventually complement digital video with Internet access over TV, cable telephony and a variety of interactive functions such as chat, gaming and electronic commerce.
AT&T Broadband already has a commitment -- made by Tele-Communications Inc. before it merged with AT&T Corp. earlier this year -- to buy 5 million "DCT-5000" advanced digital set-tops from General Instrument Corp.
Those set-tops will eventually replace the roughly 2 million "DCT-1000" and "DCT-2000" digital boxes AT&T Broadband has already deployed -- as well as those being issued to the roughly 2,500 new digital subscribers it is adding
daily -- using the DCT-5000's PC-like architecture to support the new advanced services.
AT&T Broadband expects to ramp up commercial deployment of the DCT-5000 in the second quarter -- with 500,000 units
to be deployed next year and more than 1 million annually after that -- as the MSO aims for 70 percent digital penetration of its existing subscriber base in the next three to five years, according to Dave Rudnick, vice president of content and acquisition management at AT&T's
National Digital Television Center.
The DCT-1000s and DCT-2000s swapped out for DCT-5000s will count toward the 5 million quota with GI, creating more leeway for AT&T Broadband to offer set-tops from another vendor.
Somers and others said the company is examining boxes from a variety of other undisclosed vendors that responded to a request for proposals in order to create a secondary source of advanced set-tops intended primarily to create a ignificant retail presence targeted for next Christmas.
Somers said only that AT&T Broadband would decide on a vendor soon. |
