I guess what I'm trying to get at is whether pricing pressure is especially acute for first-time customers (cable companies) and less so for repeat ones.
DOCSIS certification means your systems interoperate with all head-ends that have passed the tests. Sort of like Dr. Seuss's Star-belly Sneetches. If you have stars on your belly you can socialize with everyone else with stars on their bellies. In the case of cable systems, providers don't have to install the same company's modems as head-ends. In other words, everyone who's passed DOCSIS has stars but each company has a different color. For example, if a head-end has blue stars, the provider doesn't have to use blue-starred modems but can choose yellow, red, or green. This marks a radical change in the industry. Before standardization, starless head-ends could only work with starless modems from the same manufacturer.
Having said all this, I believe providers will still choose modems based on the best technology and not change venders without good reason. That's why it's critical to establish a footprint at the beginning --- and this is the beginning. Right now the industry is moving from old cable modems made for TV to new digital modems made for data and CMTO's an early leader.
In addition, in the 10-K, Com21 touts that it offers cable operators a tiered pricing structure based on performance. Is this service offered by CMTO only or other rival systems have such capabilities as well?
I don't know of any other company offering tiered services. Nor do I know of anyone else as far along with VoIP as CMTO. They're testing their advanced Broadcom 3300 chip right now because this is what TCI and others want. DOCSIS hasn't even established a standard for voice, but when they do, this chip will be software upgradeable.
Hope this helps.
Pat
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