Broadcom in middle of Internet access fray

Electronic News, Sept 2, 1996 by Sarah Cohen

Irvine, Calif.--As Internet usage continues at a blistering pace, the emergence of competing access technologies has put Broadcom Corp. in an interesting position. This week Broadcom is rolling out a cable modem chipset for coaxial cable applications. Two weeks ago, however, Broadcom announced plans to develop an asymmetric digital subscriber line transceiver (ASDL) with Northern Telecom (Nortel) for competing twisted copper applications.

Regarding Broadcom's position as a company that sells technology to both ADLS and cable modem providers, Tim M. Lindenfelser, VP of marketing for Broadcom, said it's like "selling arms to combatants. It's unfortunate that the announcements came at the same time, but one of the reasons Northern Telecom wanted to move quickly is because of the cable modem threat." Although Broadcom stands to gain by the competition among its customers--which expands the scope of the market--Rich Nelson, Broadcom's director of marketing, cable-TV, said it's uncertain at this point which technology will reap the largest market share.

Mr. Nelson remarked: "It's not clear who will be the dominant data provider--cable operators (coaxial proponents) or regional Bell operators (ADSL proponents). Both technologies have advantages and disadvantages. Coaxial cables have a lot of bandwidth but it's shared. If cable companies provide a lot of channels, there's a lot of capacity; but if they skimp, you can't guarantee a certain level of bandwidth. Phone lines, including ADSL, on the other hand, offer a direct, dedicated connection but a thinner pipe."

Broadcom implements the same technology for the devices in both the cable modem chipset and the ADSL transceiver. Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is a public domain technology interoperable with carrierless amplitude-modulation, phase-modulation (CAP). Broadcom originally used QAM technology in its QAMLink line of devices for cable-TV set-top boxes but decided to implement QAM in cable modems and ADSL transceivers as Internet revenue increases and cable-TV revenue flattens, said Mr. Nelson.

Broadcom's QAMLink cable modem chipset provides a claimed 1,000 times the bandwidth currently available over POTS phone lines (28.8 kilobits-per-second currently). The chipset includes the BCM3115 or BCM3118 64/256 QAM downstream demodulator chips with forward error correction (FEC), the BCM3036 QPSK/16 QAM upstream modulator chip with an integrated digital-to-analog converter, and the BCM3220 media access controller (MAC).

The BCM3115 is priced at $70 in quantities of 1,000, and the BCM3118 is $65 in similar quantities. Both devices are available now. The BCM3036 will sample this month, priced at $40 in same quantities, and the BCM3220 is expected to be available 1Q97 at which time pricing will be announced.

Several OEMs have already lined up to support the chipset including General Instrument, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and Scientific Atlanta. The chipset is compliant with a broad variety of modem standards and Broadcom claims the chipset combats channel impairments caused by ingress, burst noise and micro reflections.

Broadcom BCM6010 QAMLink ADSL transceiver, to be developed in conjunction with Nortel, is said to integrate a QAM transmitter, QAM receiver, and analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. Supporting data rates of up to 52 megabits-per-second (about 200 times faster than today's modem speeds), it is expected to be priced at under $25 in consumer volumes.