BigBand Networks said it has passed 39 million households with its switched digital video (SDV) offering.
BigBand Networks was an early pioneer of SDV, with its first deployment with Time Warner Cable in Austin, Texas, in 2004. Since then, BigBand has racked up SDV deployments with Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Charter Communications and Cox Communications.
Cable operators abroad that have launched BigBand’s SDV solution include Jiangsu Cable in China and LG U+ in Korea.
With switched digital video, cable operators are able to send just the digital signals that are being watched in a service group or node, instead of the entire lineup of channels. Cable operators can then use this reclaimed bandwidth for more high-definition channels or other services.
Thanks to the use of digital terminal adapters from cable operators such as Comcast, switched digital video deployments have slowed over the past few years, which has impacted BigBand’s bottom line. In April, BigBand reported first-quarter revenue of $18.4 million, down from $32.2 million in the first quarter of 2010, leading to a wider loss of $12.8 million, compared with a loss of $8.8 million in the same period a year ago.
BigBand is banking on other products to pick up its fortunes, and it recently introduced new releases of its Converged Video Exchange (CVEx) video control plane and Switched Video Analysis (SVA) software solutions.
“As service providers continue to expand services, CVEx remains an efficient way to rapidly expand network capacity, in addition to enabling the critical insight into the health of the network,” said Ludovic Milin, director of product line management at BigBand Networks. “Downtime and denial of service are not an option. This is why we’ve packed our SDV solution with so many ways to monitor and optimize network operations. Operators can more effectively plan their resources, delivering content wherever and whenever it’s requested.”
