一些消息，另一個好消息是，我們終於收到來自Cisco的訂單了，雖然不多啦，
不過，還是一個蠻令人鼓舞的消息。
Startup will commence trial phase of technology that promises to change the way TV is delivered.
February 1, 2007
BroadLogic said Thursday it’s getting set to test its technology with at least five major cable firms, potentially saving cable operators massive expenditures on network upgrades.
The privately held San Jose-based company declined to name the cable companies involved, but said it has commitments to conduct both lab and field trials to test whether digitizing cable transmission streams can indeed triple the cable firms’ available bandwidth.
| ‘The more choice consumers have, the more bandwidth is needed.’ -Thomas Ayres, BroadLogic
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One of the commitments certainly came from Time Warner, which is one of the two most recent investors in BroadLogic.
Time Warner, which owns Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable operator in the United States, and Rho Ventures plunked down $20 million in the company about two years ago (see BroadLogic Boosts Cable).
At that time BroadLogic estimated it would be in field trials by mid-2005. The degree of difficulty has ratcheted up since then because of the increased network demands of HDTV and video-on-demand.
Much to Prove
BroadLogic will have to prove its processor-based technology can hold up under the rigors of increasing consumer demand for high bandwidth-consuming services.
Another key factor will be determining whether the new technology will require expensive add-on devices, particularly at the customer end of the cable connection, where upgrades can be very costly.
BroadLogic’s processors promise to digitize traffic streams on the cable network. Digital transmission is far more efficient than analog transmission, which eats up huge amounts of bandwidth in the cable firms’ hybrid fiber-optic/coax networks.
But BroadLogic is not alone in offering the cable industry bandwidth-saving options. BigBand, a marketer of switched digital video technology, has just completed successful field tests with Cablevision.
Comcast has also confirmed that it is involved in testing switched video (see Comcast Makes the Switch).
No Competition
But BroadLogic does not see video switching as solely a competitive technology.
“Switched video has its strong point in infrequently viewed content such as video-on-demand,” said Thomas Ayres, BroadLogic’s vice president of engineering. “If you look at channels that are highly watched, switching does very little for you, so we are very complementary technologies.”
“We are in the age of consumer choice,” he added. “The more choice consumers have, the more bandwidth is needed, and that choice can be video or data. It’s about pleasing the consumer.”
The company will enter the market as a cable upgrade, but according to BroadLogic CEO Danial Faizullabhoy, it will not be limited to just cable operators.
“We bring efficiencies to any pipe that’s carrying analog traffic, whether it’s fiber-coax hybrid or fiber only,” Mr. Faizullabhoy said.
“As a matter of fact, fiber is very unfriendly to analog, so by pulling analog off of fiber, you relax some of the design constraints and you make the network that much more efficient,” he concluded.
