Cisco and General Instrument Team with AT&T - Company Business and Marketing

ENT, Feb 3, 1999

Cisco Systems Inc. and General Instrument Corp. (GI, www.gi.com) announced their intention to work with AT&T. On a non-exclusive basis the companies plan to develop an end-to-end Internet Protocol (IP) solution that will enable AT&T to offer data, voice and video services over the hybrid fiber-coax network AT&T is deploying with Tele- Communications Inc. (TCI, www. tci.com).

Specific agreements have not been inked, but the Cisco/GI IP telephony solution under development could allow AT&T customers to watch television, send and receive faxes, surf the Internet and talk on the telephone.

The proposed broadband network would combine advanced networking and Voice-over-IP technologies to make the whole solution cost-effective.

The IP backbone, which Cisco proposed, would contain the Cisco 1200 Gigabit Switch Router, a multigigabit carrier-class IP backbone router, and the universal Broadband router to provide the interface between subscriber cable modems and the backbone data network.

Cisco Systems, in conjunction with other partners, will provide management, call processing and provisioning/activation solutions used in the AT&T deployment.

The gateway to the network will be General Instrument's DCT-5000 consumer digital terminal. The product allows the voice and data services to be delivered simultaneously.