Charter Communications said it will be using equipment from Motorola for its switched digital video deployments and set a slightly more aggressive 2010 goal for SDV coverage.
Charter previously announced during its first-quarter earnings call in May that it would be rolling out SDV to about 50 percent of its footprint. With the recent announcement, the company bumped that up.
“Charter plans to have launched SDV in more than 60 percent of our footprint by the end of 2010,” said Marwan Fawaz, Charter’s executive vice president of operations and chief technology officer.
Charter said it has already deployed Motorola’s SDV services in North Carolina, Missouri and Nevada, with more launches planned this year.
The key aim in moving to SDV is to free enough bandwidth to expand the number of high-definition channels it can make available, as well as to continue to enhance its Internet service.
The company first announced its intention to deploy SDV in 2007. Its Chapter 11 proceedings certainly slowed some investment, but there were other reasons for the delay.
According to the company’s blog, the entire cable industry began to favor the use of digital terminal adapters (DTAs) to help reclaim bandwidth but said interest has swung back toward the deployment of SDV. The blog said Charter may rely on both methods as the situation calls for.
