CABLELABS CERTIFIES TWO DOCSIS VENDORS
Only Thomson and Toshiba Earn Seal of Approval
Cable Television Laboratories Inc. today announced that only
two cable modem vendors have received certification for their
standardized Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification
(DOCSIS) 1.0 products: Thomson Consumer Electronics and Toshiba
Corp.
These vendors have earned the right to affix a seal marked
"CableLabs Certified" to their DOCSIS cable modems, informing
buyers that the product is guaranteed to interoperate with other
certified DOCSIS modems.
A total of nine vendors applied for certification in the latest
application wave and seven were rejected: 3Com Corp., Cisco
Systems Inc., Com21 Inc., General Instrument Corp., Nortel
Networks, Samsung Telecommunications America, and Zenith
Electronics Corp. These vendors must reapply during CableLabs
next DOCSIS certification wave scheduled to begin on March 15,
but will not be eligible to obtain certification until the end
of April.
While the certification of any DOCSIS vendor is a major milestone,
the failure to certify key networking players, including 3Com,
Cisco and Nortel, is a disappointment for these vendors and poses
yet another challenge for the nascent DOCSIS market.
Importantly, with the certification of Toshiba and Thomson,
CableLabs has verified interoperability among DOCSIS manufacturers
using chipsets from multiple suppliers. Toshiba is using
physical-layer (PHY) silicon from Libit Signal Processing, while
Thomson is using PHY chips from Broadcom Corp.
While certification will ultimately enable retail distribution of
DOCSIS cable modems, the products will not be widely available on
store shelves until MSOs upgrade their networks with DOCSIS
headend equipment and more modem vendors are certified. A number
of retail trials are underway, but large-scale retail rollouts
are not likely to occur for at least six months.
CableLabs is not formally certifying DOCSIS headend cable modem
termination system (CMTS) products, however it is working to
"qualify" headend equipment submitted by four vendors: 3Com,
Cisco, Motorola, and Nortel. The first CMTS products are slated
to be qualified in the coming weeks.
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