Thanks for your response, Dan, but I am still not clear on the HFC v. all co-axial plant issue.
Many of the larger MSOs in the larger metropolitan areas of the US are laying fiber-optic loops emanating from their headend locations. Installed along these fiber loops are nodes that feed co-axial lines that make their way into individual neighborhoods & past subscriber homes. HFC plant appears to be the way many MSOs are going today, not just to provide broadcast services & Internet connectivity, but to provide a whole myriad of services to the home at some point in the future. As you probably know, its called convergence.
My understanding is that the applicability of TERN's technology & its dramatic effectiveness is limited to plants consisting entirely of co-axial copper. If this is not the case, someone please correct me & advise me how TERN's S-CDMA technology offers superior connectivity over HFC, & why it should be included as part of the Open Cable platform.
If my hypothesis is correct, that S-CDMA offers no particular benefits over HFC, then sooner or later the market for TERN's technology will shrink as smaller MSOs in the more rural areas of the US & Canada upgrade to an HFC platform. If I am wrong on this issue, & smaller MSOs do intend to maintain their all co-axial plant forever, then I would argue that the market for S-CDMA technology is limited & not necessarily high growth.
The literature from the newswires, as well as your post, seem to imply that the effort exists to deliver S-CDMA technology to HFC systems. Why? To claim superior performance over non-S-CDMA modems? If so, can this be demonstrated? Is such technology necessary to the "Open Cable" platform? I dunno the answers to these questions, but like you, I remain unconvinced that S-CDMA offers anything other than an opportunity for TERN to exploit a proprietary technology that may in-fact be of little value when deployed over more-advanced HFC systems.
As a side note, I couldn't help but notice that you list TERN as one of your favorite stocks in your profile yet you make it a point in your post to state that you don't own TERN (as well as CMTO.) Have you ever owned either one of these stocks?
Obviously you don't have to answer the question. I just find it curious that you felt it necessary to disclose your lack of position in either stock. If you hold TERN, its OK with me. I would just like to understand what so great about S-CDMA technology that's gonna carry TERN into a "CableLabs" future. I have yet to hear a clear answer. |
