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interactive.wsj.com
Motorola Licenses Technology to Make Installation of Cable Modems Simpler
QUENTIN HARDY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Motorola Inc. has licensed technology from Intel Corp. that should ease the installation of Motorola's cable modems with most newer personal computers, and is cutting the price of its cable-modem routers by about 50%.
Also, Motorola, Arlington Heights, Ill., will announce Wednesday its first combination cable modem and Internet telephony device.
By licensing Intel's Universal Serial Bus reference design technology, Motorola's modems will plug directly into PCs, without having to first open up the computer and install a network interface card, said Dick Day, corporate vice president and general manager of Motorola's multimedia markets division.
"It's a big selling point," he said. "Even with the cable operators doing the work for their customers, it's a complex process. Consumers are very worried about people opening their computers."
Cheaper for Operators
"This will make the newer systems a lot more friendly," said Mr. Day, who estimated that "somewhere north of two-thirds of computers now ship with USB systems." Modems will cost between $300 and $450, Mr. Day said.
The price cuts in routers, which cable operators use to run high-speed data traffic inside their networks, should take the average price "to under $25 per subscriber served," compared with $50 per subscriber before, Mr. Day said. "This will be more encouragement for big cable operators to migrate to two-way capability," which allows them to offer Internet access to the home.
The price reductions were possible, the executive said, by creating more density and integration on the router's electronics.
In addition, Motorola is providing its customers with teams that will help operators bring their systems to the DOCSIS cable standard, which is the industry's interoperability standard. This will enable customers to quickly deploy new standards-based cable modems, Mr. Day said.
Phone Calls and Speedy Surfing
Meanwhile, Motorola's combination modem-telephony product, called a multimedia termination adapter, "will give high speed data access, and good quality Internet protocol phone calls," said Mr. Day. If a cable operator has a so-called gateway to the public telephone network, he said, the Internet phones will also be usable on conventional phone networks.
The product, he said, is the first of several Motorola plans that will combine Internet protocol communication, the basis of the Internet, with Motorola products. Future products may involve digital cellular systems, satellite communications, copper-wire networks, and paging.
"There are projects going on throughout the corporation," Mr. Day said. "We have several classes of devices that have potential for ip capability -- in the future, our pagers may have Internet addresses."
The cable-modem announcement, which Motorola is making in conjunction with the Western Cable Show in Anaheim, Calif., also uses technologies from NetSpeak Corp., a Boca Raton, Fla., maker of networking communications software.
The modem is an early product to adopt the Simple Gateway Control Protocol, or SGCP, that is an industry-proposed standard for systems for residential services. "We are working with all the standards bodies," Mr. Day said. |
