Common cable modem platform gains

Electronic News, March 24, 1997 by Crista Hardie

New Orleans--A melange of semiconductor and communications equipment leaders last week pledged to support a common silicon platform for cable modems, perhaps giving the cable TV industry a push ahead in the race to bring high-speed interactive services to home subscribers.

Among the chip suppliers here at the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) trade show was Broadcom, which unveiled a pair of chipsets for subscriber-end and headend cable modems, based on the Multimedia Cable Network System (MCNS) specification backed by the top seven cable operators in the country. The chipsets are expected to sample this summer, with volume OEM rollouts slated by 1Q98. Broadcom also set an aggressive integration roadmap to a single-chip modem front-end by early next year.

VLSI Technology separately introduced the FireGard security processor chip designed to meet data security requirements of the MCNS spec. While details of the chip and pricing will not be released until spring, FireGard is said to provide data cryptography and key exchange services at 27 to 38-megabits-per-second (Mps). Samples are scheduled for 3Q97.

In company with such equipment pace-setters as Bay Networks, 3Com, Cisco Systems, Com21, Hewlett-Packard, Next Level Systems and Scientific Atlanta, chip vendors Broadcom and VLSI expect to be able to deliver data-over-cable to a mass audience by next year. Broadcom ventures that by 2005, 70 percent of broadband services to the home will be cable-based. For now, the MCNS group would just like to bring cable modems down to a consumer price of $250.

But even if user equipment is priced low enough to spark consumer interest--and edge out competing broadband services like the slowly emerging Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL)--some believe the current cable infrastructure is not capable of handling the high-frequency data traffic cable modems are expected to deliver. Meanwhile, at the NOTA show, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), the largest cable provider in the country, announced an ambitious and comprehensive upgrade to its own cable network.

"A lot of people ask whether cable operators can afford to do these massive upgrades but, the real question is, can they afford not to? They face competition from satellite operators and, they need to find new services for new streaming of revenue," said Jonathan Cassell, industry analyst with Dataquest.

While generally not bullish on the data-over-cable market, Dataquest estimates the market will grow swiftly starting in 1998--from a worldwide unit volume of 79,000 by mid-1996 to 1.75 million units by 2000. "There is potential out there for a great many companies to enter this market and compete. The MCNS spec gives them a target to develop toward," Mr. Cassell noted.

"The MCNS platform still provides the hooks to layer on value-added features, like LAN bridging and different qualities of service, which may ultimately become part of the standard," added Henry Nicholas, president and CEO of Broadcom.

Broadcom introduced six chips designed to provide an end-to-end cable modem system, operating at 40Mps downstream and 10Mps upstream.

Drawing heavily from Ethernet, according to Rich Nelson, director of Broadcom's cable-TV products, the BCM3116 64/256 QAMLink receiver with FEC, BCM3036 QAMLink burst modulator and BCM3220 MCNS subscriber media access controller (MAC) make up the subscriber-end of the solution. For headend equipment, the BCM3033 universal modulator, BCM3136 QAMLink burst demodulator and BCM3210 MCNS headend MAC comprise the chipset.