This was a from a year ago, but it points to a close association with
PAC Bell. Does anyone know what is happening over at HollyNet???
Nortel sit on the ETC board as does PAC Bell.
As telcos and cable companies scale back digital video
plans, pity the poor vendor caught in the middle--pushed
to produce product for trial after trial, waiting for service
providers to decide on an architecture, yet left hanging
when it comes to larger-scale technology deployment.
"That's why we don't put all our eggs in one basket," says
John Glass, vice president of business development for
San Jose-based Nuko Information Systems.
Founded in 1991, Nuko began life supplying middleware
to Microsoft but entered the digital video networking field
at the urging of Pacific Bell. The company's current line of
MPEG codecs grew out of the RBOC's request for a
multichannel MPEG-2 solution (originally developed for
DS3 and now supporting ATM). "We started a crash
program on video compression," says Glass.
Since linking with PacBell, Nuko has been involved in the
first long-haul multichannel MPEG-2 transmission. The
company struck a deal with Nortel as an OEM supplier
of MPEG-2 and provided components for Richardson,
Texas-based SBC's video trial ("well before the merger"
with PacTel was announced, Glass adds).
These would seem heady times for the publicly traded
upstart, which recently received an $18 million cash
infusion, but excitement is tempered by reality. Telcos
"haven't moved as rapidly as we would have liked them
to move" in deploying switched digital video, admits
Glass. Cable companies' well-documented upgrade woes
have been frustrating as well.
HEDGING OUR BETS
"We hedge our bets in other areas," he says. That means
looking overseas, where PTTs are moving faster in the
video arena, according to Glass. It also means covering
every conceivable technology base and leveraging
experience gained in one field as entree into emerging
markets such as MMDS and the Internet.
"we are an open system solution," Glass
explains. "We have not ruled out any area." If service
providers want to compress and transmit video via
satellite, MMDS, FTTC or HFC, Nuko will build the
appropriate network interface into product, which "at the
board level is not that difficult" to accomplish, he says.
In addition to open architecture, Nuko promotes its
multiplexing capability, fully redundant channels and a
focus on compression not found with larger competitors
such as General Instrument or Scientific-Atlanta. While
Nuko wouldn't mind partnering with those giants, perhaps
serving as a component in an S-A-designed network, the
company hopes its newly announced Integrated Video
Services Network (IVSN) will win customers on its own
merit.
IVSN is Nuko's take on an "end-to-end" solution, which
Glass defines as providing encoding/decoding, access
interfaces and network management (SNMP) to ensure
the integrity of the video. A variety of interfaces and
display mechanisms are rolled into one solution and can
be used in a variety of network applications, he says.
SWITCHED VIDEO
In the future, Glass says he hopes more of those
applications involve switched video rather than one-way
broadcast. While the latter represents a healthy $200
billion market, Nuko is positioning itself to be on the
forefront of the transition to switched digital video.
Glass predicts a huge market for such services,
particularly switched video over LANs. High on
broadband conferencing, he says applications such as
telemedicine, distance learning and remote arrangements
will drive switched video to the business market sooner
than video-on-demand to residences.
The company also hopes to ride the Internet wave and
capitalize on the resurgence of ADSL. A recent
demonstration of an IVSN application transported
compressed video from California to a server, which was
accessed via ADSL using the Internet as a control
channel. "Instead of calling up a program guide, you call
up a home page on the Internet" to select a viewing
option, explains Glass. "We see the Internet as an access
structure, not just an adjunct to the broadband
infrastructure."
Nothing like covering all your bases to be ready with any
solution should service providers come calling. |
