Cube that the second half would show the growth...
Nobody believe them and the stock was punished. They specifically asked what gave Cube the confidence in the second half and Cube didn't really give a good answer.
Dots....
Fall '01 Timetable for Advanced Set-Tops
kagan.com
Two sources who should know said yesterday that long-awaited, advanced cable set-top boxes should be moving in volume in the second half of this year.
Cablevision Systems CEO Jim Dolan told Salomon Smith Barney media/telecom conference delegates in Scottsdale, AZ that a pilot of CV’s new Sony set-top will run from last month through May, with a rollout beginning June 1. "We expect to put 500,000 boxes in the homes of 325,000 subscribers by year-end," Dolan said, and changeout 3 mil. subs by mid 2005.
Broadcom CEO Henry Nicholas, speaking at a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter internet/software/networking conference in Phoenix, said his company’s chips will be in next-generation set-tops "to be rolled out in volume in the second half of this year."
The cable industry has had a love affair the last year with first-generation digital boxes, like the Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta 2000 series, installing them widely to get a headstart on other media in providing interactive services.
The more advanced units have been hung up sorting out the space for Microsoft’s complex TV operating system and the porting requirements of interactive suppliers like Liberate, Gemstar-TV Guide, Canal+, OpenTV and others.
The task was underlined by Nicholas, who refers to the next box as "an access device, video engine, recording engine and high-speed processor."
"The end of the 2nd quarter will begin the transition from the broadcast to the interactive box," Nicholas said, "with the rollout beginning in October." He’s pleased that "there is 3x the silicon content in the new devices. That’s a growth cycle ahead for our company." Cablevision has its own growth agenda. The MSO intends to give an advanced box to every subscriber, becoming the first cable company to eliminate analog converters. It sees an install rate of nearly 20,000 per week by the end of this year.
After three years of planning and system redesign, "our network is ready to go," said EVP Technology Wilt Hildenbrand. All 3 mil. of CV’s metro New York-New Jersey-Connecticut subs will be fully digital, 2-way by the end of this year. The plant will feature 500-home nodes that can be split ad hoc to 125 homes.
"We don’t want to have to rebuild the system to accommodate new applications," Hildenbrand said. "It’s a new version of the Field of Dreams. If you split it, they will come." |
