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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4101)	6/15/1999 5:24:00 PM
From: Geof Hollingsworth	Respond to of 12823

Hi Frank, Sorry for the delay-I have been patronizing my favorite link (on my profile) and as a result haven't been checking here. What I was referring to in the post you questioned was a several-day meeting at CableLabs at the beginning of the month to discuss and approve the detailed implementation specs for DOCSIS 1.2 (the HI_PHY upgrade designed to fix the return channel problem caused by using TDM-based QPSK modulation). If you recall, this process was begun in the IEEE 802.14 committee, which chose the Broadcom proposal last November but to do so had to make the Terayon S-CDMA an option. Cablelabs then took over the process and announced that S-CDMA was going to be part of the standard itself, not just an optional feature, and set out the process to approve the detailed specs which should have concluded on June 3rd. My understanding from someone at the meetings (with no axe to grind that I know of) is that they have backtracked from the previous decision and are now considering a new less ambitious incremental approach presented for the first time at these meetings by Broadcom. I'm not sure what all this means. Since I have not seen any announcements (not that I've been looking, however), maybe my source just misinterpreted the results of what went on and in fact things are still on track for the joint S-CDMA/Broadcom single-tone approach. If her interpretation is correct, however, it may just be another example of politics as usual in the Cablelabs/MSO arena. Broadcom partners with Terayon to get rid of the third contender, then turns their guns on them when they are no longer useful. Or maybe the Cablelabs people are gaining some appreciation for the value of the collaborative process followed by the IEEE standard setting process. It takes longer, but there is less likelihood of winding up with a design which either doesn't do what the customer wants or has features that are useless to the customer (but helpful to the vendor proposing them). Anyone else out there who was at the meetings who can shed some light?