MSOs Moving to Open Plant for Vendor Field Tests, CableLabs Pres. Says
SAN FRANCISCO -- The cable industry expects to provide more systematic access to company facilities for testing new products, with hard news possible in 2 months, CableLabs Pres. Richard Green told Communications Daily Mon. He spoke after serving on an NCTA convention panel on industry standards in which he said individual it would be useful for MSOs to allowing such field testing, beyond the lab testing and product certification that CableLabs’ offers, to ensure that new gear works. Cable firms have allowed field testing ad hoc, but lately they and CableLabs have made progress toward a more formal program, Green said.
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Green singled out 4 “hot topics” as nearing readiness for standards. The new area is home networking, where cable operators want to provide customers “a seamless experience” and “connect that to the cable plant.” Others extend current benchmarks -- expansion of the OpenCable Applications Platform (OCAP) to cover PVRs and other developments, and the next generation DOCSIS and PacketCable standards.
Standards increasingly are important to the historically fractious and competitive cable industry, he said. It is crucial that cable companies boost participation beyond the industry’s Society of Cable Telecom Engineers (SCTE) and other industry and international groups from IEEE and ITU to ATSC and NESC affecting cable interests, panelists said. Moderator Stephen Oksala, SCTE standards vp, said: “We've come a long way”, but speakers indicated a long way remained before cable companies engage strongly enough to keep other interests from imposing standards contrary to their interests. Interoperability is “probably the most important strategic element of cable technology,” Green said. With cable’s strategic role at the hub of content, manufacturing and IT, the industry has “a leadership opportunity here,” he said.
Ultra wideband is a prime negative example of standards’ importance, said William Check, NCTA science & technology senior vp: No end is in sight for a long-term deadlock between the UWB Forum and OFDM Alliance, putting vendors at risk of releasing products eventually deemed noncompliant with the winning standard. A glowing example is DOCSIS, responsible for cable modems’ big early lead over standards-challenged DSL, Check said. DOCSIS gets credit for the arrival at retail of cable modems priced below $100, said Comcast digital engineering Vp Charlie Kennamer. Agreement on standards isn’t possible or even desirable in some areas, such as secrecy-dependent security, but these are increasing the “rare exception,” he said.
The trick is generating standards quickly enough to hasten interoperability, new products and services and the cost benefits of scale production, without stifling innovation, speakers said. International Packet Communications Consortium Michael Khalilian recalled that service providers such as AT&T and Vonage abandoned interindustry collaboration on VoIP standards to go their own ways; he warned against a repetition in seeking IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standards.
Green indicated listeners shouldn’t hold their breath for the 2-way CableCARD agreement the industry is “very anxious” to reach with the CE industry. He compared the development curve with that of HDTV. “It takes some time to get the kinks worked out in what is the very complicated area of interactive TV,” Green said. Beyond the industry politics, consumer education will be a major challenge, he said.