As the wireless industry gets ready to descend on New Orleans for the annual CTIA convention May 8-10, attendees will bear witness not only to the transformation the city went through, but also to the transition the trade show went through itself. Many show-goers haven’t been to the Big Easy since 2005, the last time CTIA […]
Telecommunications
Falcone resignation rumors circle on debt talks
The manager of the hedge fund backing LightSquared may give up his board seat to help the struggling mobile broadband company avoid bankruptcy, according to news reports. Philip Falcone, who staked his Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund on LightSquared, took a seat on the company’s board just two months ago and is now being asked […]
CED’s 2012 CTO Roundtable
Charting an evolutionary course. Twenty years ago, the cable industry underwent a profound transformation by transitioning to hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) technology. Operators were confident that HFC would remain a robust and flexible network architecture, but it’s unlikely that even the most optimistic of cable engineers could have predicted the incredibly dynamic environment that HFC is […]
Ciciora’s Corner – Fast history: Part I
HDTV/DTV technology didn’t just advance; it accelerated! I have just finished reading “High Definition Television: The Creation, Development and Implementation of HDTV Technology” by Philip J. Cianci. The title describes the book well. It is a book about how it all happened. It’s not a book that teaches how the technology works; instead, the history […]
CCAP: More than just box replacement
Early lessons from Comcast’s operational readiness trial. Many people have by now heard of the CCAP, so here is a quick summary of what CCAP is and does: CCAP stands for Converged Cable Access Platform. It combines the functions of the CMTS and edge QAM into a single platform. It eventually implements all narrowcast and […]
Capital Currents – High-risk spectrum plays
Risky business. In light of recent legislation allowing the FCC to auction off TV broadcast spectrum, it might be instructive to review some ill-fated radio spectrum plays. Prior to the 1970s, the radio spectrum was largely used for either broadcasting or private communications, like taxicab dispatching and point-to-point microwave links. But starting in the 1970s, […]
Social TV is in your future
On deck: A trove of second and third screen apps. TV is already in the process of transforming from one-way broadcast to a community platform where viewers can interact not only with each other, but also with the content owners and the brands that advertise on TV. It is not necessary to wait for consumers […]
Orchestrating the gateway of the future
Silicon developers are looking at beefing up Wi-Fi capabilities and making networking more intelligent. Many of the most important features of any electronics product are implemented directly in the silicon processors that orchestrate everything those products do. To get a glimpse of what set-tops, gateways and other customer premises equipment might be like in six […]
TWC, Verizon Wireless could have joint products this year
The cable operators that formed the innovation technology joint venture with Verizon Wireless late last year have been tight-lipped to date on the timeframe and type of products they’re working on, but Time Warner Cable did at least somewhat address the former question during yesterday’s first-quarter earnings call. “This is something that will evolve over […]
Cox adds Readable Voice Mail for phone subscribers
Cox digital phone subscribers can check their home voicemail messages with its new, free Readable Voice Mail feature. Readable Voice Mail lets Cox phone customers read their home voice messages from any device with email access. Cox noted that the service is particularly useful to hearing-impaired customers. “We’ve listened to our customers and are continuing […]