Scientific-Atlanta Inc. this week unveiled a new line of
products and network technology that will allow cable operators to
cost-effectively increase their network bandwidth to support high-speed
Internet, video-on demand and Internet telephony services.
The first product announced at this week’s Western Cable Show in Anaheim,
Calif., was the GainMaker broadband amplifier platform, which allows cable
operators to expand their network bandwith to as much as 870 megahertz. The
company said the amplifier will cost the same as equipment designed for
750-megahertz service, which many systems are upgrading to now.
In many cases, the uprade from 750 to 870 megahertz can be done without
respacing the network, the company said.
“The GainMaker platform will help operators overcome the biggest obstacle
to interactive services–the cost of additional bandwidth,” said Mark
Palazzo, Scientific-Atlanta’s general manager of RF electronics.
“When you consider the tremendous revenue-generating potential of these new
services, the decision to upgrade now becomes a much easier one to make,”
he said.
Scientific-Atlanta also announced new network technology that it says will
allow operators to upgrade their bandwidth by up to 16 fold over a single
fiber optic cable.
The company said its Prisma Dense Wave Division Multiplexing transport
system reduces the cost of deploying new services because the system’s
headend handles all the network services instead of redistributing the load
throughout various hubs. This lowers equipment and maintenance costs while
still allowing cable companies to serve a wide area from a single point.
“Scientific-Atlanta’s new Prisma DWDM Transport System enables cable
operators to match investments with new revenue opportunities from video,
data and voice services,” said John Clark, vice president of the company’s
optoelectronics business unit.
“The system also gives operators simpler, more cost-effective control over
targeted programming, while increasing transmission speeds to much larger
areas over a single fiber,” he said.