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Tracking americast's Programming Plans BellSouth, SBC say they're on schedule thanks to Zenith's digital boxes
By Jim Barthold
The americast programming venture, bolstered by digital product from Zenith Electronics Corp., is moving along on a pace that will let at least two backers - BellSouth Corp. and SBC Communications - serve digital video customers in 1997.
"The Zenith box is going along as planned and I don't think anything has changed on that," says Robert Rene, the chief marketing officer at americast, which has committed to buy up to 3 million digital boxes from Zenith.
He notes that BellSouth is accepting boxes for deployment in systems in New Orleans and Atlanta: "We're getting a lot of stuff done. We're real busy, so obviously things are still rolling."
Zenith executives say production of the DiviCom Inc.-designed boxes is proceeding on schedule.
"We have delivered alpha [product] to americast," says Jon Schumacher, the VP-new business development in Zenith's digital media group. "We're on schedule with it, and we are in the process of testing to make any product changes for the beta production.
"We're very pleased with what we've done, because the perception was we said we were going to deliver and a lot of people didn't expect us to deliver. But we've delivered on time. Ninety days to the date after signing the agreement, the first box rolled off the production line in Chihuahua, Mexico. And it's a brand new, state-of-the-art production line."
The americast box was designed by DiviCom based on specifications that give it the most flexibility of any product available on the market, according to industry observers. In addition to receiving MMDS wireless signals, the box can be configured for switched digital video (SDV), hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) or DBS.
"The way we do that is by developing the base analog and digital decoding and then we have an interface to a network interface module (NIM), that's a separate module that's plugged inside the board," says Daniel McDonald, the program manager for digital set-tops at DiviCom. "It's not a user-removable or replaceable item. It needs to be done in the factory or at a service facility."
DiviCom has only limited manufacturing capabilities, which it's now using to supply SDV boxes to Bell Atlantic Corp.'s open video system in Toms River, N.J. DiviCom's main purpose, though, is to "provide complete software and hardware technology to volume manufacturers as a licensable product," McDonald says.
Although Zenith is the most obvious licensee of DiviCom's technology, the company, which is owned by C-Cube Microsystems Inc., has been talking to consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia and has announced an alliance with JVC.
"C-Cube has a close relationship with a number of consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia, so we're able to have some good entree there as well," McDonald says.
Zenith is also manufacturing an SDV box for SBC's Richardson, Texas, system. The Richardson network was designed by a Lucent Technologies-Broadband Technologies Inc. partnership.
"That's 42,000 homes to be built out in '96, '97, '98," says Don McCullough, the director of product line management at Broadband Technologies. "We turned up service there in the first quarter of last year. Just like with Bell Atlantic, we have an agreement with them to deliver our joint product with Lucent. It's in the evaluation lab of Southwestern Bell and it's done well there."
Zenith's modularly equipped boxes decode and display the digital signals.
"SDV is obviously a lot more complicated than the wireless version, but both of those platforms are in the works and then we are scheduled later this year to deliver HFC," says Schumacher, who adds that he's expecting to do brisk business.
"The bottom line is [that] if you look at our contract and you look at the partners we have within that contract, there's no telling the number of boxes that are actually going to end up being deployed for MMDS," he says.
Another digital manufacturer also working with DiviCom is Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., which had been contracted to supply wireless boxes to the TeleTV consortium of Bell Atlantic Corp., Nynex Corp. and Pacific Telesis. Although TeleTV's future is up in the air after several recent cutbacks, Thomson is continuing to supply boxes to PacTel, according to James Harper, a Thomson spokesman.
"Right now, PacTel is the one," he says. "They've announced a rollout plan [in Southern California]. They conducted tests. They're in the process of making those boxes available to their customers."
Harper says Thomson's TeleTV deal calls for supplying 3 million boxes over three years, "but I don't know what the status of that contract is. That actually is dictated by the telcos."
Bell Atlantic spokesman Larry Plumb says his company and Nynex have suspended their wireless plans for 1997, but that TeleTV is still a working organization.
"As we reevaluate video strategies, there's a ripple effect in everything," he says. "For instance, all three partners are involved in mergers [Bell Atlantic with Nynex and PacTel with SBC]. Any one of those events would be reason to take a look at the shape and structure of TeleTV and those discussions are under way."
Plumb says that although Thomson is supplying wireless boxes to Pactel, MMDS was "always a complementary and interim on the road to interactivity. TeleTV was never just wireless digital television. It's a video thing. It's original purpose was interactive television."
To that end, Plumb says Bell Atlantic is proceeding with plans to deliver video services even as TeleTV's structure changes.
"It [TeleTV] is intact and its shape and structure, going forward is under discussion and I can't speculate or predict how that's going to turn out," he concludes.
(January 27, 1997) |
