Mike and Ken, Cablevision Systems uses the LANcity cable modem.
Of course, LANcity was bought by Bay Networks, which was bought by Nortel Networks, which just recently sold the cable modem Broadband Technologies division to Arris Interactive (a joint venture of Nortel Networks and ANTEC Corp., got that?).
LANcity modems can support 10 Mb/s upstream and downstream (this is again absolute theoretical throughput, rarely achieved in real world networks, but it is capable of it). So it operates on fully upgraded two way HFC plant only, using QPSK modulation in both directions.
It is important to note that the Cablevision article only states that their network will be only CAPABLE of offering cable modem service to 714,000 homes by end of year, up from 370,000 in Sept. That is not the same as how many customers they have, but a casual reading could lead you to believe that. They have actually anywhere from 2 to 5 percent penetration (at 2 percent of 370,000 they only had about 7400 customers signed up by Sept. which is pretty poor).
Closer examination of these numbers reveals they anticipate upgrading about 344,000 homes to 2 way HFC service in 3 months. Or approx. 115,000 homes per month. At a normal density for urban construction of 120 homes per mile, this tells us they think they can upgrade and activate almost 960 miles per month, with Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays thrown in the schedule. Well guys, I hate to be the skeptic, but I really doubt it. The only way they could get that kind of production is if the network is ALREADY UPGRADED to HFC and all they are doing is activating the return path, which can be done relatively fast if the basic infrastructure is in place waiting.
I just love press releases like this where they throw around lots of big numbers to impress us, don't you? |
