King of the hill ... again. (switched digital video expected to dominate Supercomm 1997)(includes related article on electronic commerce) Shira Levine.

Abstract: Switched digital video is expected to dominate Supercomm 1997. Vendors are eager to display their second generation products and announce new contracts. Controversies such as patent and antitrust lawsuits being hurdled by BroadBand Technologies and General Instruments (GI) and a trade secret misappropriation case won by DSC Communications against GI are expected to bring tension to the event.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 Intertec Publishing Corporation

For the second year in a row, SDV will dominate Supercomm's new media offerings

Switched digital video is likely to steal the show in Supercomm's broadband arena once again, as vendors showcase their second generation products and prepare to announce a new wave of contracts.

With BroadBand Technologies, General Instrument's NextLevel Communications and DSC Communications all maintaining a major SDV presence, keeping the peace on the show floor may prove difficult. BBT and GI currently are embroiled in a slew of patent and antitrust lawsuits over their respective technologies, while DSC recently was awarded $138 million in a case against GI involving the misappropriation of trade secrets.

BBT will display the second generation of its SDV product, the FLX-2500 platform. Over the last year, the vendor has partnered with Lucent Technologies to provide a number of telephone companies, including Bell Atlantic and SBC Communications, with an integrated fiber-to-the-curb SDV network that can carry telephony, high-speed data and digital video. BBT is also supplying its systems to Samsung Electronics in Korea, Groupe Sagem in France, and Telus Corp. in Canada.

BBT will demonstrate telephony, video and data services over its FLX-2500 system, which can support data speeds of up to 52 Mb/s downstream and 3 Mb/s upstream, says Salim Bhatia, president and chief executive officer of BBT. "By demonstrating real services being delivered off of our platform, we'll show how operators are able to make money with this system," Bhatia says.

GI's NextLevel Communications division will exhibit its NLeve13 fiber-to-the-curb SDV system, which Nynex is currently deploying in Boston and the New York area.

Over the last year, GI has seen a surge of interest in its system and in switched digital broadband in general, says Bill Weeks, senior director of technology.

"The trick with fiber-to-the-curb is to get the price points down to where a carrier can deploy it as a telephony-first vehicle for the same cost it would otherwise pay for a next generation digital loop carrier system," Weeks says. "I think we've demonstrated to Nynex and to other carriers we're talking to that it's a good investment."

GI also will debut its new DLC product, a universal services access multiplexer that supports POTS as well as ADSL and VDSL services. The product can also be used as a central office terminal, making it appealing to competitive local exchange carriers that want to over-build the incumbent Bell company in the business market, Weeks says.

DSC plans to unveil its Litespan Broadband platform, an expansion of its existing Litespan access platform. The Litespan Broadband standards-compliant, asynchronous transfer mode-based platform lets carriers deliver multiple service classes and traffic types over a single network.

The advantage of the Litespan Broadband platform is that it allows carriers to start small and scale up when needed, says Ron Fangio, senior product manager for Litespan Broadband.

"Our customer today wants to know he can have a platform that he can deploy for today's existing narrowband and data services without the risk of not being able to support advanced capabilities in the future," Fangio says. "With this product, the carrier can begin building its broadband infrastructure today and easily upgrade for more sophisticated services with only card plug-ins."

Switched digital broadband appeals to carriers because of the wide range of services that a single system can carry, Fangio says, adding that customer interest has risen as infrastructure cost has decreased.

"The industry as a whole has been going through a re-verification in recent months, questioning whether the technology is still valid and economical," he says. "A number of customers are driving us hard because they know that the technology is a practical way to deliver all capabilities from one integrated platform."

BBT's Bhatia believes that a new mindset regarding SDV technology will emerge, one that he calls more pragmatic.

"A few years ago, there was a lot of hype, with operators talking about rewiring all their networks - millions of lines - in just five years," he says. "Today you find them saying that they will deploy this broadband infrastructure for telephony first, wherever they have new growth situations and where copper needs to be replaced. Then they will begin putting it in where they have high-density environments with high demand for either data or video. They're only installing where it makes sense."

Elsewhere on the show floor, ADC Telecommunications will be demonstrating its standards-based CDV3000 multichannel transport system, developed in conjunction with Nuko Information Systems. The CDV3000 platform enables encoding, multiplexing and transport of up to eight video channels on a single DS-3 circuit and features adjustable bandwidth for each channel, which allows carriers to get the most use out of their networks.

Once the CDV3000 system encodes and multiplexes the video channels, the digital signal then can be transported over any standard DS-3 backbone network, including Sonet, ATM and synchronous digital hierarchy.

One multimedia vendor is taking advantage of the Federal Communications Commissions recent order regarding local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) technology. Canada broadband radio systems manufacturer Broadband Networks Inc. is prepared for the anticipated surge of interest in the technology.

BNI's booth will feature a full service, bidirectional LMDS network interfacing with ATM wireline switching equipment from Newbridge Networks. The network will transmit MPEG 2- and ATM-based services - including voice, video and data - between the BNI booth and the Newbridge booth. The demonstration may incorporate up to two additional booths, depending on the line of sight, a BNI spokeswoman says.

Newbridge, which owns 15% of BNI, announced earlier this year that it would adapt its MainStreet 36190 ATM switch to work as a wireless base station in conjunction with BNI's RF gear, which includes headend equipment, transmission products and the network interface units and set-top boxes for the customer premises.

BNI opted to demonstrate both MPEG 2 and ATM transport over an LMDS network because the first LMDS operators are likely to reserve ATM for business customers and deliver MPEG 2 to the home, a BNI spokeswoman says. "We're going to show potential LMDS operators how to capture both the commercial and the residential markets," she says.

Another Newbridge affiliate, StarVison Multimedia, will demonstrate its multimedia family of products that carriers can deploy over their ATM networks to provide value-added services for their customers. StarVision's product line includes telemedicine and distance education solutions. Both combine PC software and network-based services such as multimedia conferencing, remote site setup and application sharing, all of which the carrier can provision from its central office.