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Technology Stocks : COM21 (CMTO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jay Fisk who wrote (1441)	12/18/1999 1:57:00 AM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2347

eet.com Com21 gains Docsis cable-modem certification By Loring Wirbel EE Times (12/17/99, 2:39 p.m. EDT) MILPITAS, Calif. ? Com21 Inc. had planned all along to come to this week's Western Show with prototypes of a cable-modem termination system (CMTS), a head-end concentrator that complies with the data over cable system interface spec (Docsis) 1.1. But on the eve of the show, Com21 learned that two of its subscriber-end cable modems had gained Docsis certification from CableLabs after failing in several previous attempts. As a result, the company can claim support for Docsis on both ends of cable-modem nodes. "It was a big advance, as much for industry and user perception as anything," said Buck Gee, vice president of marketing for Com21. Users often forget that the company has shipped nearly 275,000 cable modems through the third quarter of this year. "Here we are, in the midst of very healthy shipments of modems to MSOs [multisystem operators], and someone called us after the last failure to gain certification and asked if we were really going bankrupt," Gee said. "The CableLabs action makes us all feel a lot better." Since the head-end DOXcontroller CMTS system meets Docsis 1.1, including voice prioritization, Com21 is going after a bigger market than simple Internet access. Multimedia streaming and voice quality-of-service capabilities allow the termination system to handle multiservices networks, including cable MSOs who are moving directly into telephony. "Think about the goals of Com21 since its founding," Gee said. "It was never just about cable modems; it was about enabling the cable industry to become a multiservice telecommunications industry." Frank Kuipers, director of international marketing at Com21, said the mid-2000 availability of both Docsis-certified DOXport modems and the Docsis 1.1 DOXcontroller CMTS will spur trials by European MSOs in those nations, like the Benelux countries, where cable penetration is significant. The newly privatized public telephone and telegraph operators in Europe have been slow to reduce the cost of voice calls, Kuipers said. As a result, MSOs are seizing any chance to take on the telephony traditionalists, actions well-received by both the MSO marketing staffs and the companies' customer base. The ATM angle Com21 is continuing its support of ATM-based interfaces for system operators that prefer ATM virtual circuits. At the same time, the DOXcontroller CMTS supports protocols outside of transport-only IP and ATM, including PPP Over Ethernet, IPX, AppleTalk, and NetBeui. The critical nature of including routing support in cable head-ends is underscored by security concerns that have led Com21 to specifically block Layer 2 bridging-forwarding. That keeps customers from having visibility of each other's cable modem traffic in a tree-and-branch topology. To boost Com21's move to add voice services to its modems and head-end equipment, the company signed a deal last week with Tdsoft Inc. (Herzlia, Israel), to develop interfaces between the cable TV systems and the public switched-telephone network, based on the international V5.2 standard for circuit-switch interfaces