505-867-2668 - Broadband Properties

M A R K 

C A L E N D A R S 

April 26 – 28, 2011 

(Tuesday – Thursday) 

Y O U R 

InterContinental Dallas 

www.bbpmag.com 

email: 2011@broadbandproperties.com 

twitter.com/bbpmag 

TO SPONSOR OR EXHIBIT: 

email Irene@broadbandproperties.com or call 

505-867-2668

Get ConneCted at the Summit 

a Can’t-miSS event 

for the fiber Community 

“Broadband Properties Magazine’s annual summit has 

become a can’t-miss event for the fiber community. 

It’s packed with good speakers, good information, and 

good opportunities for networking.” 

– Jim Baller, President 

Baller Herbst Law Group 

Executives from 

mutifamily technology 

leader Mac-Gray display 

Cornerstone Award 

for helping owners 

increase profits. 

LeaderShip roLe in the 

broadband poLiCy arena 

“I’m very appreciative of the leadership role that Broadband 

Properties is playing in the broadband policy arena, particularly 

as it relates to the production of the annual Broadband 

Properties Summit—which is one of the largest gatherings 

of broadband leaders from across the country each year. The 

summit provides a rare opportunity to hear a wide range of 

perspectives concerning the deployment and adoption of 

broadband services—and a unique opportunity for participants 

to discuss and collaborate, as well as establish synergies and 

partnerships that might not otherwise be formed.” 

Hilda Legg, Broadband Properties vice chair, with 

Jonathan Adelstein, RUS administrator, and Galen 

Updike, Arizona’s telecom development manager. 

– Brent Legg, VP 

State Development Connected Nation 

Dynamic keynoter 

Lev Gonick, CIO, Case 

Western Reserve, 

expands on bringing 1 

Gbps fiber connections 

to the inner city. 

Cheryl Barraco, 

Director of 

Telecommunications, 

Avalon Bay 

Communities Inc. 

Monroe Keedo, Navajo 

Tribal Utility Authority, 

tells how tribes are overcoming 

challenges 

to obtaining 

broadband. 

Kevin Meagher, CEO, 

Intamac and Daniel Chui, 

director of emerging 

technology and media, 

Alcatel-Lucent, discuss 

how the market for smart 

home apps over fiber 

will explode in the 

coming years. 

powerfuL 

KeynoteS . . . 

“The keynotes were 

powerful, timely and 

informative.” 

– Jon Onley, 

Community Network Manager 

Pend Oreille PUD 

Jane Patterson, executive director 

of the e-NC Authority, highlights the 

fundamentals of organizing to deliver 

high bandwidth to rural areas. 

Federal Perspectives on 

Broadband Infrastructure: 

David Villano, RUS. Anne 

Neville, National Broadband 

Mapping Program. Mark 

DeFalco, Appalachian 

Regional Commission. 

ContaCtS and ideaS that 

wiLL enhanCe my effortS 

“The world of high speed broadband has opened a whole new door 

for libraries to serve their communities. Having the opportunity to 

listen to speakers and network with service providers, project 

managers, government officials, and the like at the Summit was 

incredibly stimulating and gave me contacts and ideas that will 

greatly enhance my efforts to help libraries make progress in 

deploying advanced telecommunications services. This librarian 

felt right at home among the techies! I commend Summit staff for 

making success look so easy!” 

– Peggy D. Rudd, Director and Librarian 

Texas State Library and Archives Commission 

here’s what attendees are saying about the 2010 Summit! make plans to attend the 2011 Summit now. 

april 26 – 28, 2011 • interContinental dallas • www.bbpmag.com • To sponsor or exhibit: email Irene@broadbandproperties.com or call 505-867-2668

GeT connecTed 

summIT wAs excellenT . . . conFerence And 

mAGAzIne GeT beTTer All The TIme 

I thought the conference was excellent and appreciated the opportunity 

to be there. The conference and the BBP magazine continue to get better 

all the time and that is saying something in this day and age. Reading the 

BBP magazine cover to cover is S.O.P., standard operating procedure!” 

– Terry Johnson, President 

Utility Communications Network 

Contributing editor 

Joe Bousquin 

moderates a 

general session 

event featuring 

fiber deployers 

from the 

magazine’s 

Property of 

the Month 

department. 

UTOPIA’s Chris Hogan, 

VP marketing and 

operations, explains 

the turnaround that 

won the organization 

a Cornerstone Award. 

Tanya Oberle and 

Gurpaul Singh, CEO, 

Asset Essentials, enjoy 

the Summit’s excellent 

food and ambience. 

leArn From ImPorTAnT GovernmenT oFFIcIAls 

And emPloyees 

“The Summit was a great place to hear from key people in the government.” 

– Sam Coleman, Senior Data Engineer 

Vermont Telephone Company

AT The summIT 

reAlly enjoyed IT . . . GreAT 

For new TechnoloGy And 

neTworkInG 

“I really enjoyed the 2010 Summit. I found the 

Exhibit Hall to be a great place to get up to 

speed on new technology and network with 

many other fiber professionals. Overall the 

Summit was very well done. Count me and 

my team in again next year!” 

– William Shreffler, President and CEO 

Pulse Broadband LLC 

Keynoter Jim Baller and 

Summit Master of Ceremonies 

Diane Kruse compare notes 

during a session. 

Vice Chairman Legg 

interviews the FCC’s 

Rob Curtis, director of 

deployment for the 

National Broadband 

Plan. 

Solomon Ketema, telecommunications 

manager, Southern 

Management Corp., holds 

the Cornerstone Award SMC 

received for transforming a 

200-year-old textile mill into a 

fiber-connected community. 

The AbsoluTe besT 

PlAce To leArn 

AbouT The FuTure 

oF broAdbAnd 

“The National Broadband Plan 

is going to turn our country 

and our industry upside 

down. Broadband Properties 

has the best, most authoritative 

and comprehensive 

coverage of broadband of 

any trade publication in the 

industry. I’ve attended the 

Summit for several years, and 

it’s the absolute best place to 

hear about the issues and see 

the products that will shape 

the future of broadband. If 

you can only go to one conference, 

make it the Broadband 

Properties Summit.” 

– Kermit L. Ross, Principal 

Millennium Marketing

co-hosT & sPonsors 

co-hosT 

GeT connecTed 

oFFIcIAl corPorATe hosT 

dIAmond sPonsor 

PlATInum sPonsor 

Gold sPonsor 

sIlver sPonsor 

FeATured sPonsors 

Wednesday Night 

Cocktail Reception 

WiFi Café Sponsor 

Tote Bag and Tuesday and 

Wednesday Networking Breaks 

secure your seat today by calling 877-588-1649, 

or visit our website at www.bbpmag.com

AT The summIT 

exhIbITors 

R 

To exhibit or sponsor, contact: Irene Prescott at 

irene@broadbandproperties.com, or call 505-867-2668

Expanded Multi-Housing Program 

An Agenda developed by Industry leaders 

mdu co-chairmen: 

GeT connecTed 

chris Acker 

Director, Velocity Advisory Services 

RealPage, Inc. 

henry Pye 

Vice President, Resident Technology Solutions, 


steve sadler 

Vice President, Ancillary Services, 

Post Apartment Homes, L.P. 

The 2011 Advisory Panel of Property owners Includes: 

brian mcIntire 

Director of Information Technology – Buckingham Companies 

cheryl barraco 

Director of Telecommunications – Avalon Bay Communities, Inc 

michael halbrook 

Ancillary Business Manager – Mid-America Apartment Communities 

jeffrey bond 

Vice President, Ancillary Services – Related 

jorge de cardenas 

Sr. Vice President Information Technology – American Campus Communities 

karen seemann 

Director Ancillary Income – Essex Property Trust 

kent mcdonald 

Director of Communications Services – AIMCO 

mark bershenyi 

Director of Contracts – Archstone Smith 

michael burnette 

Vice President, IT – Place Properties 

robert bishop 

Vice President – Riverstone Residential Group 

steve merchant 

Vice President of Revenue Strategy – Equity Residential 

Terry Fulbright 

Vice President, Director of Ancillary Services – UDR, Inc. 

woodrow stone 

Sr. Director, PMO – Pinnacle 

secure your seat today by calling 877-588-1649, 

or visit our website at www.bbpmag.com

AT The summIT 

The summIT Is The leAdInG evenT For neTwork buIlders And dePloyers. 

The Broadband Properties Summit is the leading venue for information on digital and broadband technologies 

for buildings and communities. With a focus on residential properties, developments and municipalities, 

the Summit has become a must-attend event for network builders and large-scale 

and wholesale buyers and users of broadband technologies, equipment, and services. 

A reGulAr venue For IndusTry leAders 

Developers and property owners are strongly represented, 

including recently from the property field alone organizations such as: 

• Essex Property Trust • Fairfield Residential • Holiday Retirement • Choice Property Resources • Tonti Properties 

• American Campus Communities • The Trump Organization • Inland American Communities • Archstone-Smith 

• Trimarchi Property Management • Related Companies • Forest City • Avalon Bay Communities • Equity Residential 

• Camden Property Trust • Post Properties • United Dominion Realty Trust • AIMCO • AMLI Residential 

• Capstone Real Estate Management • Colonial Properties Trust • Waterton Residential • Michelson Realty 

• BRE Properties • Edward Rose Companies • Mastec, Inc. • Riverstone Residential Group • Verde Apartment Communities 

• Atticus Real Estate • BH Management • Buckingham Companies • E & S Ring Management Corporation 

• Flournoy Properties • JMG Realty • Pulte Homes • The Michelson Organization 

• The Roberts Companies • Westdale Asset Management and many others. 

The numerous providers included private cable operators and independent telcos plus all the 

major incumbents. Municipal officials and economic development professionals 

make up an important segment of participants that grows with each event. 

sTArT PlAnnInG now For summIT 2011 

This year’s event will once again be hosted 

at the InterContinental Hotel – 

an excellent hotel in a vibrant neighborhood 

full of superb dining and other attractions. 

The InterContinental is convenient to the two main 

airports in Dallas – DFW and Love Field – and adjacent to 

Addison Airport, ideal for private aircraft. 

It’s the leading event for 

network builders and deployers. 

The Summit is widely recognized as the number one 

venue for information on digital and broadband 

technologies for buildings and communities. 

Activities and Sessions Include: 

• Newest Case Studies on How Broadband 

Spurs Economic Development • Applications to Generate 

Profits for Network Operators • Awards for Today’s Leading 

Broadband Communities • World-Class Keynoters 

• Evening Receptions and Networking Events 

Programs now being planned involve: 

• The latest broadband strategies of cities and 

communities • Lessons learned from others – 

what to emulate and what to avoid • Sessions on 

getting your customers and constituents on board 

with your plans. • Panels on increasing the ROI 

of your buildings. • Roundtables on improving 

the appeal of your properties. 

Who Should Attend: 

Attendees include all those involved in the design 

and development of communities, including: 

• Real Estate Developers • Property Owners • Independent 

Telcos • Municipal Officials • Private Cable Operators 

• Town Planners • Economic Development Professionals 

• Architects and Builders • System Operators • Investors 

• Utility Organizations • System Integrators 

Register Early to Receive Major Discounts 

Special Reduced Rates Now in Effect 

April 26 – 28, 2011 - dallas 

online registration starts nov. 1 * Prior to nov. 1 call 877-588-1649 

To exhibit or sponsor, contact: Irene Prescott at 

irene@broadbandproperties.com, or call 505-867-2668

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR 

Scott DeGarmo 

PUBLISHER 

Nancy McCain 

nancym@broadbandproperties.com 

Corporate Editor, BBP LLC 

Steven S. Ross 

steve@broadbandproperties.com 

Editor 

Masha Zager 

masha@broadbandproperties.com 

ADVERTISING SALES 

Irene G. Prescott 

irene@broadbandproperties.com 

Marketing Specialist 

Meredith Terrall 

meredith@broadbandproperties.com 

DESIGN & PRODUCTION 

Karry Thomas 

Contributors 

Joe Bousquin 

David Daugherty, Korcett Holdings Inc. 

Richard Holtz, InfiniSys 

W. James MacNaughton, Esq. 

Henry Pye, RealPage 

Bryan Rader, Bandwidth Consulting LLC 

Robert L. Vogelsang, Broadband Properties Magazine 

Broadband Properties LLC 

PRESIDENT & CEO 

Scott DeGarmo 

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT 

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER 

Himi Kittner 

VICE PRESIDENT, 

BUSINESS & OPERATIONS 

Nancy McCain 

Audience Development/Digital Strategies 

Norman E. Dolph 

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD 

Robert L. Vogelsang 

VICE CHAIRMAN 

The Hon. Hilda Gay Legg 

BUSINESS & EDITORIAL OFFICE 

Broadband Properties LLC 

1909 Avenue G 

Rosenberg, Tx 77471 

281.342.9655, Fax 281.342.1158 

WWW.BROADBANDPROPERTIES.COM 

Broadband Properties (ISSN 0745-8711) (USPS 679-050) 

(Publication Mail Agreement #1271091) is published 8 times 

a year at a rate of $24 per year by Broadband Properties LLC, 

1909 Avenue G, Rosenberg, TX 77471. Periodical postage 

paid at Rosenberg, TX, and additional mailing offices. 

POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Broadband 

Properties, PO Box 303, Congers, NY 10920-9852. 

CANADA POST: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. 

Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, PO Box 

25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. 

Copyright © 2010 Broadband Properties LLC. All rights 

reserved. 

Editor’s Note 

Covering All 

The Bases 

The future of pay TV may be murky, but any new 

services will require solid infrastructure. 

About the future of video services, 

confusion reigns supreme. In this 

issue of Broadband Properties, we 

do our level best to add to the confusion. 

Will over-the-top video erode pay-TV 

profits In Making the Third Way for 

Broadband Work, James Salter of Atlantic 

Engineering Group says yes: “Sell 

your CATV stock now! If video remains 

the cornerstone of their business, they are 

in trouble.” 

Kurt Scherf of Parks Associates disagrees; 

in Searching for Success, he says 

pay-TV services such as FiOS TV outperform 

over-the-top services today and will 

maintain their edge: “That huge scale is 

an advantage for the pay-TV operators. 

What are the online services going to offer 

that’s any better” 

Bryan Rader, in the Provider Perspective 

column, has a different take altogether 

on OTT video. He says, “Yes, it’s 

the next challenge in our business. But it 

is also our next big opportunity.” 

Analyst Clifford Holliday, in FiOS 

vs. U-verse, describes the massive efforts 

Verizon and AT&T have made to enter 

and succeed in the pay-TV market; the 

Leading Broadband Application Providers 

feature profiles many companies that 

have placed large bets on OTT video. 

In this issue, you will also find divergent 

opinions about whether IPTV is the 

video technology of the future, whether 

Google TV will succeed in making deals 

with service providers (or succeed at all), 

whether consumers really want “apps” on 

their TV sets and other questions. 

Forthcoming issues of BBP will offer 

still more conflicting opinions, all (we 

hope) well informed and persuasively argued. 

When technology and consumer 

behavior are shifting rapidly, no one can 

be too certain about the future. All we 

can do is present the evidence and a variety 

of thoughtful opinions. 

For service providers, property developers, 

municipalities and other network 

owners, these are confusing times. However, 

one issue is perfectly clear: As programming 

goes to higher-definition and 

3-D formats and as more video streams 

are added for each household, more robust 

network infrastructure is required. 

That’s true whether the programming 

originates on the Web or with a managed 

video service; whether customers watch 

programs on their televisions, PCs, iPads 

or smart phones (or all of them); whether 

they use interactive widgets; and whether 

they pay by the movie or by the month. 

In any plausible scenario, bandwidth 

needs will keep rising, and network stability 

and reliability will become increasingly 

critical. As Henry Pye and Chris 

Acker point out in the Owners Corner 

column, “Where the infrastructure is antiquated 

or installed poorly, owners will 

find themselves falling even further behind 

the communities across the street.” 

Network owners will have to make 

educated guesses about the services and 

features that will appeal to their customers. 

But they won’t have to guess about the 

need for reliable, future-proof networks. 

Whether network owners offer double-play, 

triple-play or home-run services 

(see page 33), they can cover all their bases 

by keeping their networks up to date. 

Masha@broadbandproperties.com 

8 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | August/September 2010

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Table of Contents 

DEPARTMENTS 

Editor’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 

The Bandwidth Hawk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 

BBP Marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 

Advertiser Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 

Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 

Cover Story 

The 2010 FTTH Conference in Las Vegas 

It’s All About the Bandwidth: Welcome From 

FTTH Council President Joe Savage | 62 

Q&A With the FTTH Council’s 

Incoming President, Daniel O’Connell | 64 

Guide to the Exhibit Floor | 66 

Agenda at a Glance | 67 

Featured Exhibitors | 70 

News Releases | 73 

TECHNOLOGY 

A New Fiber Deployment Technique 

for Brown field Conversions | 53 

By Michael K. Hebbard ■ Kabel-X USA 

Old cable never dies … it just becomes conduit for new fiber cable. 

Find out how Buckeye CableSystem converted a neighborhood 

from HFC to FTTH quickly and inexpensively. 

– Digital edition bonus section: additional photos – 

Broadband Apps 

Leading Broadband Application Providers | 78 

A BBP Staff Report 

Profiles of companies whose products and services are driving the 

buildout of fiber to the home and other ultra-broadband networks. 

Google TV: The Greatest or Just the Latest 

What Google TV Means for 

Service Providers | 108 

Should video service providers work with Google TV, compete 

with it, discourage its use or just hope it goes away 

Why Google TV Can Succeed In Spite 

of the Cable Companies | 110 

By Bill Niemeyer ■ The Diffusion Group 

Google TV apps may be enticing enough to draw consumers – and 

possibly cable TV companies as well. 

Searching for Success | 112 

By Kurt Scherf ■ Parks Associates 

Pay-TV providers don’t need Google’s help to offer easy search, 

diverse content or interactive services. 

New and Noteworthy 

Application News in Brief | 115 

A roundup of recent news stories about broadband applications. 

IN THIS ISSUE 

Provider Perspective 

Let’s Get on Top of Over-the-Top Video | 14 

By Bryan J. Rader ■ Bandwidth Consulting LLC 

Residents in communities served by private cable operators are 

early adopters of over-the-top video. PCOs should be early to offer 

customized online packages. 

Owners Corner 

The Future of Cable TV: Part 2 | 16 

By Chris Acker and Henry Pye ■ RealPage 

IPTV solves many of the problems of delivering video in multifamily 

communities. However, it requires up-to-date and well-maintained 

infrastructure. 

Metrics 

Proposal and Bill of Materials | 18 

By David Lippke ■ Korcett Holdings 

What to expect from a proposal and bill of materials for a data 

access network. 

Why We Need More Fiber 

Why Do People Care About Bandwidth | 20 

By Peter Cochrane ■ Cochrane Associates 

An international telecom consultant shares his wish list for highbandwidth 

applications. 

Fiber Deployment Roundup 

Fiber to the Home at an In flection Point | 22 

By Masha Zager ■ Broadband Properties 

RUS funds a new batch of FTTH projects, Canadian incumbent 

telcos accelerate their fiber deployments and much, much more. 

– Digital edition bonus section: International Deployments – 

Property of the Month 

Alexan Midtown, Sacramento | 40 

By Joe Bousquin ■ Contributing Editor, Broadband Properties 

Developers of a new apartment community in Sacramento were 

pleasantly surprised to find that SureWest’s fiber ran right past the 

front door. Bringing fiber to the unit helped the new development 

command high rents in a depressed market. 

Community Broadband 

Making the Third Way for Broadband Work | 45 

By James Salter ■ Atlantic Engineering Group 

Open-access networks can bring broadband services to underserved 

areas. Here are three ways to make the “third way” work. 

Industry Analysis 

FiOS vs. U-verse | 48 

By Clifford R. Holliday ■ B & C Consulting Services 

The battle of the giants: Verizon and AT&T took different approaches 

to building their next-generation networks. Which of 

them was right, and why 

BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE! 

The Digital Edition of Broadband Properties now includes free onlineonly 

bonus material. International news, extra photographs and 

other features are now available to supplement the print edition. Visit 

www.bbpmag.com/bbponline.php to see this month’s Digital Issue. 


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1101010010_THE_BANDWIDTH_HAWK_0101101011 

India: Where US Vendors 

Can Find New Business 

FTTH is becoming part of the Indian broadband mix 

by piggybacking on mobile services. 

By Steven S. Ross ■ Broadband Properties 

India may be the only place on the 

planet where the information highway 

has spawned an actual highway: 

Chennai’s IT Expressway, an eightlane 

toll road built so that workers can 

easily commute to the city’s booming 

software and call-center district. An 

elevated commuter railway runs alongside 

it. Trains go by, bulging with passengers 

– easy to see because they speed 

by with their doors open. The Chennai 

campus of the famed Indian Institute of 

Technology is at the northern end of the 

road, along with two dozen other colleges 

and universities. 

The country has just auctioned off 

3G and 4G spectrum and expects to have 

75 million subscribers by 2015. Most 

families now have at least one 2.5G cell 

phone; there are about 400 million cellular 

subscribers, with 10 million added 

each month. 

“The India telecom market will 

transform from a voice-centric industry 

to a data economy,” says Adlane Fellah, 

research director at Canadian research 

firm Maravedis. 

This cellular strategy is key to fiber 

to the home. With twice as many cellular 

customers as the United States has in 

one-thirteenth the land area, the country 

is densely packed with cell sites. Between 

the fiber-fed cell sites and the fiber-fed 

nodes of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s 

(BSNL’s) nearly completed, 700-city 

ADSL2+ build, fiber trunk is just about 

everywhere. BSNL intends to become India’s 

first major FTTH provider by turning 

cell sites into local POPs and configuring 

hookups as self-healing loops from 

site to site. But although BSNL (which is 

government-owned but no longer a state 

monopoly) is the nation’s largest landline 

operator, with 50 million households, it 

lags in cellular. Eventually, it will have to 

lease access to many of those sites from 

other operators. 

On a recent visit to the United States, 

Kuldeep Goyal, chairman and managing 

director of BSNL, said that by 2011, 

up to 5 percent of all Indian households 

would be passed by FTTH. That would 

be more than 20 million homes and is 

plainly ridiculous. But even the actuality 

is amazing. 

BSNL is offering FTTH on a takeor-pay 

basis to greenfield and fairly new 

apartment blocks and gated communities 

with at least 50 dwelling units. Developers 

and homeowner associations 

are scrambling to get onto the build list. 

One such community in Chennai has 

6,000 dwelling units. The first builds 

were announced in Hyderabad (85 sites) 

in February, Jaipur in March and Chennai 

in August. BSNL plans to build 

FTTH networks in 25 cities across India 

by 2012, with 2 million subscribers. 

Subscribers will get GPON services up 

to 100 Mbps (maybe more; the official 

tariff offers up to 2 Gbps). BSNL sees 

IPTV as the revenue driver but expects 

to implement other consumer services as 

well, such as smart-grid energy conservation 

schemes. 

Rajeev Agrawal, general manager 

of BSNL’s Hyderabad telecom operation, 

says, “Instead of installing copper 

lines for new apartments, we can install 

FTTH wherever it is feasible. If there 

is a demand for FTTH in the existing 

buildings, we will definitely replace 

the existing copper wire network with 

FTTH.” BSNL will also serve businesses 

– Agrawal says BSNL has demonstrated 

fiber to scores of large enterprises 

in Hyderabad alone and has received an 

enthusiastic response. 

Contracts for the first phase of the 

25-city build, to 500,000 subscribers, 

are already being awarded. Sterlite 

Technologies snagged the first big one, 

for $77 million. For security reasons, 

BSNL wants to avoid Chinese equipment 

providers. BBP 

About the Author 

Contact the Hawk at steve@broadbandproperties.com. See his latest post, on math 

errors in the National Broadband Plan, at the Editor’s Blog, www.bbpmag.com 


Come see us 

at the 

2010 FTTH 

ConFerenCe 

& expo 

booTH 

220

Provider Perspective 

Let’s Get on Top of 

Over-the-Top Video 

Repeat after me: It’s an opportunity, not a threat. Our customers want OTT 

video, and some of them even want to pay for it. 

By Bryan Rader ■ Bandwidth Consulting LLC 

There’s a lot of over-the-top hype 

about over-the-top video. This 

new market category threatens to 

have a seismic impact on all multichannel 

providers’ businesses, according to 

many cable TV experts. 

As with any new, hyped-up trend – 

Facebook, Frappucinos, anything new 

from Apple – we must slow down and 

understand its impact on our market 

before we assume the worst. New trends 

often present initial challenges, but they 

can lead to great opportunities. 

The online video market has developed 

quickly. According to comScore, 

Hulu had 40 million unique viewers in 

February. The Pew Research Center says 

more than half the adults in the United 

States have watched or downloaded online 

video, and 10 percent of viewers actually 

pay for premium content. And the 

percentage of adults who stream movies 

has doubled since 2007, to 32 percent. 

Wow. 

This is not a fad or a recession-driven 

way to save money by watching free content 

online. This is a major change in the 

way our audience wants content: accessible 

anytime, on any device. 

Don’t be Left Behind 

A college professor of mine once said, 

“When consumer behavior shifts dramatically, 

you’d better shift, too, or 

you’ll be left behind.” 

Even if you’re not seeing big changes 

in cable subscriber counts, consider this: 

Our customer base in the MDU market 

skews toward younger, more valuefocused 

subscribers and includes many 

early adopters of new technologies. This 

is exactly who is watching the most 

online video. 

According to media research company 

Nielsen, 25-year-old males are the 

cohort most likely to watch video over 

broadband. Twenty-somethings who are 

establishing their careers and who grew 

up on broadband are the heaviest users 

of over-the-top video. This means that 

as this trend goes mainstream – and I 

think it already has – our customer is 

leading the charge. Yikes! 

Many fear that this shift in viewing 

habits, by transforming couch-potato 

remote-control clickers into watchers 

on iPads in Starbucks, will lead to cordcutting. 

This is cable operators’ biggest 

fear – that the average subscriber will 

drop his or her basic cable service to save 

$60 a month. 

Look at the way our competition 

is responding. Comcast created On 

Demand Online, which makes cable 

programming accessible online only 

to paying subscribers, and is heavily 

marketing this new feature under the 

Xfinity brand. Time Warner Cable is 

pushing its TV Everywhere initiative in 

much the same way. Other large MSOs 

are following this same game plan. 

Should private cable operators (PCOs) 

do the same thing 

It’s easy to see this trend as an oncoming 

freight train that requires us to 

think differently about our business. Yes, 

it’s the next challenge in our business. 

But it is also our next big opportunity. 

For years, PCOs have been effective 

at identifying the types of consumers 

living in the apartment communities 

they serve – young professionals; active 

retirees; families; speakers of Spanish, 

Russian or Indian languages; and 

so forth. We have customized channel 

lineups – particularly for bulk properties 

– to meet the needs of each MDU’s resident 

profile. Why not do it again, this 

time customizing our online offerings 

Imagine a customer in a predominantly 

Spanish community going to a PCO’s 

Web portal to watch a telenovela, see the 

local news from Mexico or view a soccer 

match – wouldn’t that be the best way 

to join this consumer behavioral shift 

rather than be crushed by it 

We can customize content for all 

kinds of customer profiles. Much of this 

content is becoming available to us now; 

in fact, middleware companies are popping 

up everywhere to help cable operators 

meet this growing need. And if the 

Pew Research Center is right, roughly 

10 percent of these viewers will actually 

pay more for this content. 

Let’s embrace this trend and prepare 

for it. Our customer might be 

early to use online video; let’s be early to 

offer it. BBP 


Bryan Rader is CEO of Bandwidth Consulting LLC, which he founded in 2007 to 

assist providers with their performance in the multifamily market. Prior to starting 

Bandwidth Consulting, he founded and ran private cable operator MediaWorks for 

10 years. You can reach Bryan at bryanjrader@yahoo.com or at 636-536-0011. 

Learn more at www.bandwidthconsultingllc.com. 


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Owners Corner 

The Future of Cable TV: Part 2 

IPTV isn’t just for telcos. It’s the future direction for all video service providers. 

By Chris Acker and Henry Pye ■ RealPage 

Multifamily service providers 

are trying to squeeze more 

and more data through finite 

pipes as residents demand more highdefinition 

TV, Internet access and other 

bandwidth-hungry services. Fortunately, 

a solution is available. It’s called IPTV. 

Internet Protocol television (IPTV) 

is the delivery of video programming via 

the underlying language of the Internet. 

An IPTV solution encompasses every 

component of video distribution, from 

services to end-connected devices. Essentially, 

it means sending the full array 

of today’s digital television services, and 

more, over a broadband Internet connection 

such as cable modem or xDSL. For 

the purposes of this article, we exclude 

over-the-top video, aka Internet video, 

and focus on the managed delivery of 

IPTV services. 

Almost every provider already delivers 

most, if not all, of its service via digital 

signals. However, these digital services 

are predominantly delivered over 

radio frequencies (RF). IPTV promises 

to be more efficient, flexible and featurerich, 

as well as cheaper in the long run, 

than traditional digital RF television. 

IPTV is more efficient at all levels. 

Traditional transport methods broadcast 

every channel to the end user, so 

making more channels available requires 

more bandwidth. However, IPTV delivers 

only those channels the viewer requests. 

As a result, six to eight channelbonded 

6 MHz channels can reproduce 

most cable companies’ current linear 

and video-on-demand programming. 

In other words, IPTV can reproduce in 

36–48 MHz what currently takes nearly 

800 MHz. 

There is one caveat. IPTV enables 

service providers to get far more out of 

twisted-copper and coaxial cables only 

in buildings with fairly modern wiring 

that was installed correctly. Where 

the infrastructure is antiquated or was 

installed poorly, owners will find themselves 

falling even further behind the 

communities across the street. 

In theory, IP should also be cheaper 

for both the provider and the consumer. 

In addition to requiring far less bandwidth 

than traditional cable TV, it also 

uses the same network as high-speed Internet 

access. Thus, a provider can use 

the same equipment, tools and processes 

to provide IPTV instead of supporting 

multiple technologies. In the long run, 

even set-top boxes should be cheaper, 

as many of their components are common 

to today’s high-speed Internet 

access solutions. 

The future of cable is on-demand 

services over multiple platforms. Instead 

of watching “True Blood” at 9 p.m. EST 

on Sunday, consumers want to watch it 

whenever it fits their schedules, on their 

televisions, personal computers or smart 

phones – and naturally, they would prefer 

to purchase the programming only 

once for all platforms. Content creators 

also need to protect their investments 

from piracy, which requires TV Anywhere 

and authentication solutions. 

Many video providers offer some of 

this service today by combining digital 

cable television, switched digital, video 

on demand and online content. However, 

the efforts are cumbersome and 

difficult to scale. As a result, IP is probably 

the only way to cost-effectively allow 

a single purchase of content rights across 

multiple platforms and also provide protection 

for the content creators. 

IPTV also promises to deliver, or at 

least simplify, interactive television and 

other services. For more than a decade, 

technologists have hyped the promise 

of interactive TV. Consumers have repeatedly 

been told that they will be able 

to click to purchase the outfits their favorite 

television characters are wearing. 

Sports fans have been promised the ability 

to change camera angles. Although 

these promises have not yet been fully 

realized, interactive TV is beginning to 

take baby steps. 

For example, many interactive features 

are being rolled out this fall for 

National Football League games. The 

Verizon FiOS NFL RedZone widget 

alerts subscribers when their teams are 

inside the 20-yard line so they can tune 

in to the RedZone channel. DIRECTV 

allows fantasy football fans to select and 

track up to 18 players on their television 

screens, customize game updates and 

participate in interactive trivia contests. 

Although IPTV still has further 

to go, its flexibility and efficiency will 

transform the way we look at cable TV. 

Owners should make sure their infrastructure 

is installed and maintained 

properly so their residents can enjoy the 

benefits of IPTV as it evolves to meet its 

potential. BBP 

About the Authors 

Owners Corner is written by Henry Pye and industry peers. Henry is vice president 

of Velocity Advisory Services for RealPage (www.realpage.com). He can be reached 

at henry.pye@realpage.com. Chris Acker is director of Velocity Advisory Services and 

can be reached at Chris.Acker@realpage.com. 


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Proposal and Bill of Materials 

Once the review of a network design is complete, project partners submit a 

proposal and bill of materials to the property owner. Here’s what to look for. 

By David Lippke ■ Korcett Holdings Inc. 

After a design review 

establishes expectations, 

a proposal and 

a bill of materials (BOM) 

summarize those expectations 

in a document for review. 

If the proposal is a response 

to a specific RFP, the 

submission should mirror 

the RFP to make it as easy to 

understand as possible. Even 

if you as a developer did not 

issue a formal RFP, proposers 

should follow a template 

that encompasses all the 

necessary points in a typical 

RFP response: a description 

of the proposed solution, an overview of 

the project (property details and pricing), 

a general design outline and a brief 

description of how the network will operate 

after installation. 

The proposal should be thorough 

enough to address any concerns and to 

answer any questions, but brief enough 

that the involved parties will take the 

time to look through it. You will undoubtedly 

have questions, but your 

partners should have tried to cover as 

much ground as they could during 

the proposal phase to make sure that 

completion of the project is feasible and 

economical. (In a still later phase, the 

Master Services Agreement will cover 

specific service-level agreements and answer 

any outstanding questions before 

the final implementation.) 

The BOM should reflect the results 

of the site survey and network design 

phases. Requiring a group site visit may 

be beneficial to insure that all potential 

partners are on the same page with regard 

to expectations for the project. Without 

solid information, a solid BOM cannot 

be created for any project. Something as 

simple as the type of fiber can throw the 

BOM off by thousands of dollars. This 

could cause a delay in the planning and 

rollout of the project, which would delay 

the actual turn-up date at the property. 

The BOM should be very specific 

and should include every piece of equipment 

and all the materials needed for the 

installation and the property turn-up. 

However, even though the BOM should 

be as accurate as possible, it does need 

to be flexible enough to accommodate 

a change in equipment brands. Though 

some RFP responses require the submission 

of a BOM based on two different 

equipment types, usually you already 

will have settled on the design standards 

that you want to stay with. If you are 

comfortable with a specific product line, 

the proposers should have taken this into 

account when creating the 

BOM. Specifying the wrong 

equipment will make the 

pricing of the materials on the 

BOM completely incorrect. 

In most cases, the BOM 

is submitted as a separate 

document so you can pass it 

along to the engineering or 

IT group for further review 

and discussion. When your 

engineers or IT specialists 

review the BOM and the 

proposal, they need to keep 

in mind the overall goal of 

the project in addition to the 

total cost. As we’re all aware, 

the least expensive option is not always 

the best long-term solution. You may 

need to perform a cost analysis based 

on the submissions you have received, 

just as service providers do. Generally, 

a conference call can be scheduled between 

your potential partners and your 

engineering group to iron out any lastminute 

questions that come up after the 

material has been reviewed. This allows 

you and your potential partners to obtain 

additional information before the 

review of the proposal. 

In the next issue, we will discuss the 

proposal review and acceptance, answering 

questions about the service levels, 

the installation itself, and the materials 

that were outlined in the BOM. This 

stage can also include project authorization 

from the service provider or the 

owner. BBP 


David Lippke is the senior project manager for Korcett Holdings. He can be reached 

at david.lippke@korcett.com. Korcett Holdings is dedicated to the development and 

deployment of next-generation service solutions. 


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Why Do People Care 

About Bandwidth 

An international broadband consultant lists his top 10 reasons why this is a 

stupid question – and throws in a few more reasons for good measure. 

By Peter Cochrane ■ Cochrane Associates 

Yesterday, someone asked me a 

variation on that same old question 

I have heard with increasing 

incredulity these past 40-plus years: 

“Why do people want 9.6, 56, 256 Kbps 

or 2, 10, 100 or 1,000 Mbps” 

Soon it will be 10 Gbps, and these 

people still won’t get it! My reply has been 

fairly consistent but has progressively expanded 

with the advance of technology. 

I always start from recollections of 

having to wait for days for the output 

from early mainframe machines, with 

hours wasted waiting for batch processing 

and print runs, uploads and downloads. 

Life was soo very slooow, and productivity 

was low in those early days! 

Then there was the online world 

lurching forward with dial-up modems 

at 2.4 Kbps, 9.6 Kbps and so on, with 

the cost of international connectivity often 

overtaking the cost of a hotel room. 

So here is my personal short list of 

the benefits of bandwidth, in an attempt 

to head off at least some of the folks 

who keep asking me that same dumb 

question: 

1. Delay kills all forms of human interaction 

and creativity. Less delay 

results in more effective interaction, 

innovation and output. Because the 

relationship is highly nonlinear, less 

delay translates into far more output. 

2. Ubiquitous and symmetrical videoconferencing 

that actually works 

can dramatically reduce our need to 

travel. 

3. Real-time, multiuser, collaborative 

environments can further accelerate 

global creativity and productivity by 

Delay kills all forms of human interaction and 

creativity. Because the relationship is nonlinear, 

less delay means far more output. 

making virtual teaming a working 

reality. 

4. Imagine instantaneous access to information 

sources and resources in 

all kinds of forms and formats – uploads 

and downloads. 

5. Cloud computing with all applications 

and data online would dramatically 

reduce hardware and software 

costs, improve security markedly 

and spawn new communities, business 

opportunities and industries. 

6. Virtual and augmented reality would 

come alive and change absolutely everything 

from working to entertainment, 

education, training and health 

care – we can’t even hazard a guess 

at the scale of improvement. 

7. All forms of modeling and prediction 

– scientific, industrial, social 

and so on – would be revolutionized 

by instant access to distributed resources 

worldwide. 

8. 3-D prototyping and distributed 

production would become real and a 

part of the mainstream, and would 

ultimately be the new mainstream 

industry. 

9. Real-time access to global radio, TV, 

movies and other forms of entertainment 

at our convenience. 

10. Vast tracts of radio spectrum for 

high-speed wireless apps would become 

available as services delivered 

by fiber reduce the need for services 

delivered by radio. 

There you have it: my very specific, 

personal top 10. I can imagine everyone 

has his or her own subsets and definitions, 

and if I were to extend the list, then 

number 11 would be multiplayer gaming, 

followed by distributed sensor networks, 

networked robotics and cybernetics, plus 

of course new interactive industries reliant 

on distributed creativity, production 

and delivery and much, much more. 

If you get a spare moment, it is worth 

musing: Just what would you do with 

1 Gbps symmetrical broadband BBP 


Peter Cochrane directed research for British incumbent telco BT, cofounded a technology 

startup and now runs a virtualized global consulting firm, Cochrane Associates, 

that exploits the new business freedoms and opportunities afforded by the 

latest technologies. This article is reprinted from his blog, which appears regularly on 

silicon.com. You can reach Peter at peter@ca-global.org. 


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Fiber to the Home 

At an Inflection Point 

What happens when the first big fiber deployments are completed 

Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning 

By Masha Zager ■ Broadband Properties 

At the FTTH Conference this month, the industry 

is contemplating life after FiOS. Of course, Verizon 

isn’t done with FiOS – it still has another million 

or more homes to pass with fiber, as well as 3 million 

homes already passed (3.5 million for TV) that are waiting 

to be marketed – not to mention 9 million more potential 

customers to woo in existing FiOS markets (or perhaps 8 

million, after the spinoff to Frontier). Somewhere along the 

line, it will probably also upgrade the network, or portions 

of it, to 10GPON and add new services. 

Still, the actual rollout of FiOS is largely complete, and 

nothing else on the horizon looks quite as big. Some other 

large fiber deployments, including SureWest’s, are also coming 

to an end. The impressive charts that we’ve published 

for the last several years showing the dramatic expansion of 

FTTH will now begin to flatten out. 

However, as Joe Savage, president of the Fiber-to-the- 

Home Council, points out in this issue, the underlying 

drivers for FTTH haven’t gone away; if anything, they’re 

stronger than ever. As this very long deployment roundup 

demonstrates, many telcos, cable companies, municipalities, 

property owners and others are convinced that fiber is 

the key to meeting the bandwidth demands of consumers, 

businesses, cellular providers and utilities. All these reports 

of new projects, expansions, upgrades and improved service 

offerings suggest that the appeal of fiber is wider than ever. 

(There’s more, too – we didn’t have room in the print edition 

for international news.) 

Passing the baton to smaller providers may have benefits 

in terms of bridging the digital divide. Some of these organizations 

have the luxury of being able to consider the longterm 

profits and the community benefits that fiber enables; 

answering to a city council, a cooperative board or an owning 

family is very different from having to meet analysts’ 

quarterly earnings targets. Municipalities, cooperatives and 

privately owned companies can build fiber networks in areas 

that Verizon and other public companies can’t touch. In still 

other areas, grants and subsidized loans are making it possible 

to build out fiber. 

In addition, as new services are introduced, the economics 

of FTTH will shift. Elsewhere in this issue, James Salter 

of Atlantic Engineering Group calls smart-grid applications 

a “revolutionary opportunity” for FTTH networks, and this 

roundup includes several deployments in which the smart grid 

was a primary instigator – including Opelika, Ala., which just 

held a successful referendum on community broadband. So 

there are many reasons to believe that the 2010 inflection 

point is only the end of the beginning. 

– MZ 

New Broadband Stimulus Awards 

The Departments of Agriculture and 

Commerce must award the entire broadband 

stimulus appropriation (now down 

to $6.9 billion) by the end of September. 

Although both agencies have consistently 

been behind schedule, on August 

4, they announced an ambitious timeline 

for getting all the remaining funds 

allocated by the statutory deadline. On 

the same date, the USDA Rural Utilities 

Service announced awards to 126 

last-mile projects totaling $1.2 billion 

in grant and loan funding. This batch 

of awards included far more DSL and 

wireless projects than previous batches 

and included a few wireless projects that 

did not even appear to meet the weak 

National Broadband Plan goals of 4 

Mbps downstream/1 Mbps upstream. 

However, nearly two-thirds of the 

$1.2 billion went to fund projects that 

were based entirely or primarily on fiberto-the-home 

technology. These included 

several very large awards: $124 million 


to West Kentucky Rural Telephone Cooperative, $66 million 

to Highland Telephone Cooperative and $64 million to Montana 

Opticom. In addition, VTel Wireless will deploy some 

FTTH in its primarily 4G wireless project. 

Recipients are mainly independent telephone companies 

but also include an electric co-op, a public utilities district and 

tribal authorities. More than half had prior experience with 

deploying FTTH. See the list below for details. 

RUS Broadband Initiatives Program Awards for FTTH Projects 

Loans and Grants Announced August 4, 2010 

Applicant State Award Amount Potential Subscribers Previous 

(Millions; may be 

FTTH 

supplemented by 

non-RUS funds) 

Allband Communications Cooperative MI $8.6 3,800 people, 95 businesses, x 

www.allband.org 

9 community institutions 

Allband Communications Cooperative MI $1.1 500 people, 20 businesses x 

www.allband.org 

Atlantic Telephone Membership Corporation NC $16 8,700 people, 270 businesses, x 

www.atmc.net 


AtLink OK $8.5 4,000 people, 1,400 businesses, 

www.atlinkwifi.com 


Baldwin Telecom WI $9.1 3,600 people, 30 businesses, x 

www.baldwin-telecom.net 


Calaveras Telephone CA $4.1 1,000 people, several businesses x 

www.calaverastelephone.com 

Cascade Networks WA, OR $3.7 3,100 people, 200 businesses, x 

www.cascadenetworks.net 


Castle Cable TV NY $7.2 5,500 people, 217 businesses, 

www.castlecabletv.com 


Chequamegon Communications Cooperative WI $31.1 10,400 people, 959 businesses, 

www.cheqtel.com 


Cimarron Telephone Company* OK $42.4 21,500 people, 933 local x 

www.cimtel.net 

businesses, 35 community 

institutions 

Clear Lake Independent Telephone IA $7.9 2000 people, 20 businesses x 

www.cltel.com 

Climax Telephone Company MI $3.2 1,800 people, 50 businesses, 

www.ctstelecom.com 


Farmers Mutual Telephone Company MN $9.7 3,700 people, 165 businesses, x 

www.farmerstel.net 


Farmers’ Mutual Telephone Company IA $8.6 3,700 people, 70 businesses, 

www.omnitel.biz 


Federated Telephone Cooperative MN $3.0 950 people, 20 businesses x 

www.fedtel.net 

Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative KY $21 6,000 people, 800 businesses, x 

www.foothills.net 


Grand River Mutual Telephone MO $12.4 2,800 people, 750 businesses, x 

www.grm.net 


Grand River Mutual Telephone MO $9.0 1,500 people, 350 businesses, x 

www.grm.net 


Griggs County Telephone Company ND $22.1 4,000 people, 400 businesses, 

www.mlgc.com 


Highland Telephone Cooperative TN, KY $66.5 52,000 people, 1,800 businesses, x 

www.highlandtel.net 


Home Communications KS $2 500 people, 24 businesses, 

www.hometelco.net 


Home Telephone Company SC $4 2,700 people, x 

www.hometelco.com 


August/September 2010 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 23

Applicant State Award Amount Potential Subscribers Previous 

(Millions; may be 

FTTH 

supplemented by 

non-RUS funds) 

Hospers Telephone Exchange IA $8.3 2,000 people, 150 businesses, 

www.hosperstel.com 


Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska KS $.8 150 people, 12 businesses, 

http://ioway.nativeweb.org/iowayksne.htm 


Litestream Holdings FL $5.1 1,300 people, 375 businesses, x 

www.litestream.net 


Lumbee River Electric Membership Corp. NC $19.9 27,000 people, 1,600 businesses, 

www.lumbeeriver.com 


Mid-Plains Rural Telephone Cooperative TX $2.8 670 people, 14 businesses x 

www.midplains.coop 

Monroe Telephone Company OR $5.7 2,300 people, 29 businesses, 

www.monroetel.com 


Montana Opticom MT $64.1 18,500 people, 4,100 businesses, x 

www.mt-opticom.com 


Myakka Communications FL $7.9 5,000 people, 2,000 businesses, 

www.myakka.com 


Nemont Telephone Cooperative MT $26.0 7,250 people, 200 businesses, x 

www.nemont.net 


Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative KY $25 11,000 people, 100 businesses, x 

www.prtcnet.org 


People’s Telecommunications KS $7.8 1,800 people, 50 businesses, 

www.peoplestelecom.net 


Public Utility District 1 of Chelan County WA $25 16,000 people, 135 businesses, x 

www.chelanpud.org 


Slic Network Solutions NY $27.8 14,000 people, 112 businesses, x 

www.slic.com 


Socket Telecom MO $23.7 6,500 people, 260 businesses, 

www.socket.net 


South Central Utah Telephone Association* UT $9.2 7,200 people, 212 businesses, x 

www.southcentralcommunications.com 


Southeast Nebraska Communications NE $11.3 3,000 people, 50 businesses, x 

www.sentco.net 


Sycamore Telephone Company OH $4.1 4,200 people, 450 businesses, 

www.sycamoretelephone.net 


Tohono O’Odham Utility Authority* AZ $10.3 6,500 people, 1,300 businesses, x 

www.toua.net 


VTel Wireless* – VT, NY, $116.8 130,000 people, 3,750 businesses, x 

www.vermontel.com NH 700 community institutions 

Warm Springs Telecommunications* OR $5.4 1,800 people, 18 businesses, 


West Kentucky Rural Telephone Cooperative – KY, TN $123.8 41,000 people, 3,500 businesses, 

www.wktelecom.coop 


Wikstrom Telephone Company* MN $7.4 12,000 people, 1,500 businesses, 

www.wiktel.com 


Wilkes Telecommunications NC $21.6 8,500 people, 3,300 businesses, x 

www.wilkes.net 


Winnebago Cooperative Telecom Association IA, MN $19.6 8,000 people x 

www.wctatel.com 

Woodstock Telephone Company MN $15.2 8,000 people, 180 businesses, x 

www.woodstocktel.com 


XIT Rural Telephone Cooperative TX $2.1 500 people, 50 businesses x 

www.xit.net 

* Project includes other access technologies in addition to FTTH 


INDEPENDENT 

TELCOS 

All Our Customers Need Higher-Speed Accesss 

Wabash Mutual Telephone, a subscriber-owned 

telephone exchange in 

western central Ohio, chose Occam 

Networks’ BLC 6000 multiservice access 

platform (MSAP) to expand its 

broadband services. As part of a $4.3 

million broadband stimulus-funded fiber 

project, Wabash will provide digital 

television, high-speed Internet and voice 

services to Fort Recovery and the surrounding 

area. Work on the project has 

already begun, and the first services will 

be turned up before the end of the year. 

The project is expected to be completed 

in less than three years. 

“In addition to our residential customers, 

Fort Recovery is home to several 

major businesses, including a worldwide 

distributor of farming equipment, one 

of the top 10 egg production companies 

in the United States, an automotive 

parts manufacturer and a die cast facility,” 

says Mike Boley, CEO of Wabash 

Mutual Telephone. “What our customers 

all have in common is the need for 

higher-speed access.” 

A long-time Occam partner, Wabash 

Mutual began rolling out triple-play services 

in 2005 and has been working with 

Occam ever since to expand its service 

footprint and migrate to an all-IP network. 

For this deployment, Wabash will 

use Ethernet technologies, including 

GigE and 10GigE-capable Ethernet optical 

line terminals (OLTs) and the ON 

2342 optical network terminal (ONT). 

Slic Network Solutions, a subsidiary 

of Nicholville Telephone, also chose 

Occam’s MSAP to serve more than 

700 households and 39 businesses and 

anchor institutions in remote western 

Franklin County, N.Y. As part of a $5.2 

million broadband stimulus fiber project, 

Slic will offer triple-play services, 

including three tiers of high-speed Internet 

and IPTV. 

“The local communities are both excited 

and surprised that we are bringing 

broadband into an area that has never 

experienced the benefits of high-speed 

Internet,” says Phillip Wagschal, Slic’s 

CEO. “We are pleased to be part of a 

project that bridges the digital divide 

with communications services that promote 

growth and development in both 

the townships and the outlying areas.” 

Slic has a long-standing reputation 

for bringing advanced broadband services 

to the north country. Past deployments 

have included constructing lastmile 

fiber networks to serve neighboring 

communities, particularly to deliver 

high-speed access to anchor institutions 

that include hospitals, school districts 

and government offices. This deployment 

will include dedicated fiber optic 

connections between hospitals and rural 

clinics in Franklin County. 

Slic has already begun working on 

the Franklin County project and expects 

the deployment to be fully under way by 

fall. It will deploy 136 miles of fiber optic 

cable across five townships and the 

surrounding areas. Slic will use GPON 

technology, including the BLC 6322 

GPON OLT and the ON 2541 ONT. 

Big Bend Telephone Company in 

Alpine, Texas, has deployed Occam’s 

BLC 6000 MSAP to transition from 

copper to fiber broadband services. Big 

Bend Telephone covers a territory larger 

than the state of Rhode Island, serving 

its customers with a mix of access network 

technologies, including GigE and 

GPON for anchor institutions such as 

rural health clinics, a local university 

and regional Homeland Security offices. 

As part of a strategic shift to Ethernet 

and a fiber infrastructure, Big Bend 

will use the BLC 6000 MSAP to deliver 

voice, high-speed Internet and data 

backup services to residential and business 

customers. In less demanding areas, 

the BLC 6000’s DSL technology will 

provide broadband coverage. 

Central Scott Telephone, headquartered 

in Eldridge, Iowa, deployed Occam 

solutions in two significant upgrade 

projects: an upgrade of its existing DSL 

network and a competitive overbuild 

that will make advanced FTTH services 

available in the neighboring Quad Cities 

area. In the Quad Cities, which offer a 

high population density and more than 

300,000 broadband-hungry consumers, 

Central Scott deployed GPON in the 

BLC 6000 MSAP and began delivering 

high-bandwidth services, effectively positioning 

itself against local competitors. 

Central Scott also serves anchor institutions, 

such as schools and government, 

and it networks several medical 

facilities with connections as fast as 100 

Mbps. These new rings are connected to 

Iowa Network Services (INS), an organization 

of 127 independent telephone 

companies that operates a statewide fiber 

optic network. 

Reducing Cost 

and Complexity 

LaWard Telephone Exchange in southern 

Texas selected ADTRAN’s Total 

Access 5000 MSAP and its 300 Series 

ONTs for fiber-based GPON business 

and residential services. LaWard plans 

to extend fiber services to rural residents, 

reaching previously underserved 

areas and also bringing next-generation 

services to existing customers. 

Nick Strauss, plant manager for La- 

Ward Telephone, says, “ADTRAN’s 

unique technology allowed us to reach 

all our customers without adding equipment 

cabinets in the field, significantly 

reducing the cost and complexity of 

our fiber-to-the-home deployment.” 

ADTRAN’s GPON system has a reach 

of 30 km per PON with a full 32-way 

split. 

WNM Communications, formerly 

Western New Mexico Telephone Company, 

also selected ADTRAN’s Total 

Access 5000 for enhanced broadband 

deployment, Carrier Ethernet delivery 

and next-generation services migration. 

WNMC is an ILEC and CLEC service 

provider that serves a 15,000-squaremile 

area of southwestern New Mexico. 

The ADTRAN solution will be used for 


Calix Reaches 100-Customer Milestone for E7 Platform 

More than 100 service providers have now deployed the 

E7 Ethernet Service Access Platform that FTTH equipment 

vendor Calix began shipping in December 2009. 

Calix says this is the fastest deployment rate for any of 

its service platforms; more than 20 percent of its fiber 

access customers are now using the new platform. 

The E7, which was architected to address the challenges 

of an all-video world, is focused entirely on fiberbased 

Ethernet services, both GPON and active Ethernet. 

Geoff Burke, marketing director at Calix, says the E7 supports 

“revolutionary” leaps to next-generation services, 

as opposed to the “evolutionary” approach enabled by 

Calix’ flagship C7 platform, which supports both legacy 

services and next-generation services. 

Independent telcos, municipalities, international carriers, 

cable operators and competitive local exchange 

carriers have all adopted the new E7 platform. Despite 

their diversity, Calix says, they share a common goal of 

bringing fiber-based services to market quickly while 

managing the services efficiently and accommodating 

future capacity growth. 

Fiber on a Small Scale 

Burke explains that service providers have chosen the E7 

as a solution in four different scenarios: 

First, the scalability of the E7 allows providers to deliver 

advanced, fiber-based services in small areas. (The 

building block of the E7 is a one-rack-unit, two-slot chassis.) 

Smaller providers choose the E7 for rural exchanges 

in dire need of upgrading, in which a rip-and-replace 

strategy makes more sense than an evolutionary transition. 

The broadband stimulus program has provided 

funding for many buildouts of this type; nearly all the 

Calix customers that have been awarded stimulus grants 

and loans have selected the E7 as their key platform. 

One of these customers, Mike George, president and 

general manager of Northeast Louisiana Telephone 

Company, says, “As a broadband stimulus award winner, 

it was important for us to ensure that we were deploying 

a platform that was aligned with the long-term strategic 

needs of our network. The E7 provides us with the peace 

of mind that we can utilize the right technology to address 

emerging applications in our network, while providing 

us an operational model that allows us to scale 

after broadband stimulus projects are over.” 

Although most larger providers, such as Tier 2 telcos, 

are not deploying the E7 widely because they are retaining 

their existing last-mile copper, nearly all of them 

have niche locations where they want to deploy highend 

services, and the E7’s scalability allows them to do 

this on a pay-as-you-grow basis. 

Active Ethernet on a Large Scale 

A second scenario in which the E7 is gaining traction is 

large-scale deployment of active Ethernet services. “It 

takes a unique set of economic models and drivers to 

be able to deliver active Ethernet to tens of thousands of 

users,” Burke comments. “But if you’re dropping 1 Gbps 

to every home in the community, the platform is well 

suited to that – every port has symmetrical gigabit services, 

and you need that capacity to scale and manage 

that demand and traffic.” 

A good example of this scenario is South Slope Cooperative 

Communications Company, Iowa’s largest 

independent telco, which selected the E7 along with Calix 

700GX/700GE ONTs to bring active Ethernet services 

to 14,000 homes and businesses. The company plans 

to replace its aging copper infrastructure with a fiber 

access network capable of delivering 1 Gbps to every 

premises. This five-year, $60 million project will leverage 

fiber to deliver IPTV, symmetrical residential and business 

data services and reliable VoIP. J. R. Brumley, South 

Slope’s CEO, says, “We could already see on the horizon 

a need for 50 to 100 Mbps per home, and realized that if 

we didn’t aim higher, we’d be going through this same 

exercise again in a few years’ time.” 

Urban and International Business Services 

A third common use for the E7 is to provide business 

services in urban areas. “Even large MSOs look at it as 

an ideal vehicle for urban business services,” Burke says. 

He adds, “In the traditional model of an ATM envionment 

with T1 lines, if you wanted more bandwidth, you 

placed an order for more T1 lines and another modem. 

But if you are … a competitive exchange carrier addressing 

that need in an urban area, and you come in with 

a less expensive model like Ethernet, you can emulate 

that same service but provide a full Gbps. Or you can 

segment the bandwidth and [customers] can provision 

it or turn the speeds up and down themselves, which 

gives you an enormous economic advantage over the 

incumbent.” 

Finally, a number of Latin American and Caribbean 

service providers have selected the E7 because it is optimized 

for international standards. Its form factor, its ability 

to allow access from the front and its support of E1 

services are all appealing to international operators. 

Transtelco, an innovative operator serving businesses 

throughout northern Mexico and cities along 

both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, is an example of 

an international provider’s selecting the E7 platform. 

Headquartered in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, 

Transtelco sees wide fiber deployment as key to its future. 

Targeting companies that do business across the 


order, Transtelco will use both GPON and point-to-point 

Ethernet technologies on the E7 to support E1, T1, GigE 

and a variety of Metro Ethernet Forum services. 

“As a [communications service provider] competing 

against a large incumbent operator, it is crucial for Trans- 

telco to differentiate itself and deliver the most advanced 

services efficiently and effectively,” says Manuel Marin, 

vice president of engineering and development at Transtelco. 

“Fiber to the premises provides us with the optimal 

delivery vehicle for addressing our customers’ demands.” 

ADSL2+ residential services and Carrier 

Ethernet services for business customers. 

In the future, WNMC will be able 

to transition to all-fiber services without 

a forklift upgrade. 

“ADTRAN’s Total Access 5000 

enables us to service both business and 

residential customers from a single 

platform,” says Dom Bianco, general 

manager, WNMC. “This solution will 

allow us to significantly improve our 

operational efficiency, reduce costs and 

gracefully transition to an all-Ethernet 

architecture without replacing existing 

ATM-based customer modems or core 

equipment as we begin our migration to 

next-generation services.” 

Oxford Networks, a telecommunications 

company in Maine, selected 

the Total Access 5000 to deliver a mix 

of voice, high-speed Internet access, 

FTTH and Carrier Ethernet services to 

residential and business customers, including 

key anchor institutions such as 

schools and libraries. Oxford Networks 

has one of the largest fiber investments 

in northern New England and is aggressively 

modernizing its network to bring 

next-generation services to market, using 

the 10 Gigabit Ethernet transport of 

the Total Access 5000. 

Reliance Connects, a telecom provider 

in Oregon and Nevada, also selected 

ADTRAN’s Total Access 5000 

platform, along with the Total Access 

1124P Sealed DSLAMs and Total Access 

300 Series ONTs for future FTTH 

deployments. 

A Transformative 

Technology 

In addition to the stimulus program it 

oversees, RUS continues to operate its 

ongoing loan programs. In July, through 

its telecommunications program, RUS 

awarded a $7.1 million loan to Swisher 

Telephone Company in North Liberty, 

Iowa, to provide FTTP-based service 

to 779 subscribers and make improvements 

to its system. 

A Minnesota telco, Lismore Cooperative 

Telephone Company, is wrapping 

up the deployment of fiber to its 

320 subscribers with the help of an RUS 

loan, according to local press reports. 

The company began building its pointto-point 

fiber network in 2009. It plans 

to deliver voice and Internet services and 

is considering offering a video service in 

the future. 

In another RUS-funded project, 

KanOkla Networks selected Zhone’s 

MXK Terabit-Scale MSAPs and zNID 

ONTs for an extensive FTTH project 

that will provide the foundation for 

1 Gbps active Ethernet service. 

KanOkla currently serves 20 exchanges 

in a 1,400-square-mile region 

that extends throughout Oklahoma and 

Kansas. Many of its subscribers live 10 

miles or more from its central offices. 

“We see FTTH as a transformative 

technology for our communities,” says 

Greg Aldridge, CEO of KanOkla. “For 

example, broadband fiber is helping 

ranchers and farmers in our area compete 

more effectively in the open market 

through online video auctions and upto-the 

minute intelligence on commodity 

pricing.” 

“At a relatively early stage in the 

technology, over-the-top video already 

accounts for roughly 30 percent of 

Internet bandwidth traffic, making 

1 Gbps service inevitable,” says Ed Bernard, 

plant supervisor and director of 

KanOkla’s FTTH project. “Scalability 

and the flexibility to make changes and 

provision new services remotely provide 

savings that will continue to compound 

for our subscribers over time.” 

KanOkla employed the Nebraska 

firm HunTel Engineering to assist with 

RUS funding, network design and vendor 

selection. HunTel and KanOkla 

evaluated offerings from six vendors and 

selected two. “Zhone’s autoprovisioning 

is a key differentiator, and it becomes 

increasingly valuable in a dispersed geography,” 

says Karlin Kelley, general 

manager of HunTel. 

Ohio independent phone company 

CT Communications is deploying the 

Allied Telesis Intelligent Multiservice 

Access Platform (iMAP) active Ethernet 

product line for its next-generation 

network. “We chose the Allied Telesis 

active Ethernet platform because we 

were confident it could support our 

network bandwidth needs, both today 

and in the future,” says Tim Bolander, 

director of network operations for CT 

Communications. “We recognized early 

on the need for 100 Mbps symmetrical 

capabilities, and with Allied Telesis, we 

can improve service and deliver a strong 

quality of experience to our customers. 

We envision our implementation of the 

Allied Telesis solution as a model for the 

FCC’s National Broadband Plan.” 

Initially, CT Communications will 

deploy active Ethernet FTTP to residences 

and businesses in the Urbana, 

West Liberty and Bellefontaine, Ohio, 

areas. The company will migrate its 

customers from older BPON and DSL 

systems. 

A core business requirement for CT 

Communications was a unified management 

system. The Allied Telesis 

AlliedView unified network management 

system met CT Communications’ 

need, as it provides flow-through provisioning 

that will lower the total cost of 

ownership. 

Canadian competitive provider 

Vianet Internet Solutions is using Enablence 

solutions to bring high-definition 

television and fast Internet connectivity 

to Greater Sudbury, Ontario. Over 

the past 15 years, Vianet has expanded 

across Ontario to provide competitive 


phone, Internet, data and hosting services. 

Now it is moving to triple-play 

services over FTTH. 

Using a GPON solution on Enablence’s 

MAGNM platform, Vianet 

will deliver IPTV with whole-home 

DVR services and enough bandwidth 

to supply HDTV signals to three large 

televisions simultaneously. It will also 

provide Internet access at speeds of up 

to 45 Mbps. 

“We wanted a network that would 

give us the increased bandwidth we 

need now for HDTV and high-speed 

Internet, with an easy and affordable 

upgrade path as the network and the 

demands upon it grow,” says Daniel Regaudie, 

Vianet’s Director of Broadcast 

Services. “MAGNM emerged as the 

obvious choice due to the easy network 

provisioning afforded by its Broadband 

Access Manager [element management 

system] and the future-proof benefits of 

its F-8200 series switch fabrics.” 

The new switch fabrics provide 

10 Gbps redundant connections to access 

modules in the system, and they 

can be upgraded with no service interruptions. 

These features allow an easy 

upgrade path in the future without a 

major investment in new equipment. 

Phase 1 of Vianet’s three-phase rollout 

will be completed by the end of this 

year. Vianet’s goal is to claim a substantial 

share of the 65,000-home Greater 

Sudbury market over the next three to 

four years. In addition, Vianet is also 

considering upgrading to FTTH some 

other Ontario markets that it serves. 

Using GIS to Track 

a Fiber Rollout 

Mid-Plains Rural Telephone Cooperative, 

a telco based in Tulia, Texas, 

recently selected Mapcom Systems’ M4 

Solutions as the GIS tool for its fiber-tothe-premises 

rollout. 

“We are currently constructing 

FTTP in several of our serving areas and 

wanted a product that would allow us to 

take full advantage of mapping the new 

construction,” explains Rick Hurt, OSP 

Manager for Mid-Plains. “M4’s versatility 

was a key component to its selection. 

Having the capability to add as much 

detailed information as we deemed necessary 

and track all the components was 

very important to us.” The M4 Solutions 

software includes design and mapping 

tools; integrated work order, fiber and 

central office management; and support 

applications such as CPR integration, 

dispatch management and services 

management. 

ITS Telecommunications Systems 

(ITS), headquartered in Indiantown, 

Fla., is deploying the Sorrento GigaMux 

1600 and 3200 platforms in its new 

RUS-funded FTTH network, which 

will make high-speed broadband services 

available to every residence in its rural 

service area. By implementing Sorrento’s 

wavelength-division multiplexing platforms 

within its FTTH network, ITS is 

expanding the scalability and flexibility 

of its metro optical infrastructure to offer 

more, higher-speed data services. ITS 

plans to complete its FTTH project by 

the end of 2011. 

“With our FTTH initiative, we are 

able to offer our residential and business 

customers integrated voice and data 

services, with video to be added in the 

near future, as well as effectively provide 

those in our service area with the 

virtually unlimited communications 

capabilities they will want and need as 

technology advances in the future,” says 

Jeff Leslie, president and CEO of ITS. 

“We have dedicated the past four years 

to this project and see the addition of 

Sorrento’s WDM products to our network 

as a critical piece of our new fiber 

optic network architecture.” 

Sorrento Networks’ GigaMux platforms 

enable ITS to deliver high-speed 

services with a minimal capital outlay 

and few management requirements. 

A protocol-independent design allows 

GigaMux platforms to transport and extend 

the traffic of SONET/SDH, layer 

2/3 Ethernet and SAN simultaneously 

and in their native format. This level of 

flexibility and control allows ITS to add 

or upgrade bandwidth incrementally 

based on traffic requirements. 

Hamilton County Communications 

in Dahlgren, Ill., is using the 

GENBAND C15 Compact Softswitch 

to lay the groundwork for its rollout of 

FTTH to seven exchanges in southern 

Illinois. The C15, a VoIP softswitch, 

equips Hamilton to offer hosted business 

solutions, SIP PBX trunking, IP 

Centrex services and SIP multimedia 

applications to residential and small and 

medium-size business customers. GEN- 

BAND is also providing installation, 

commissioning, project management, 

training and technical support services. 

“Our goal is to enable rural Illinois 

subscribers to experience high-quality 

telecommunications services that you 

might typically only see in large metropolitan 

areas,” says Kevin Pyle, general 

manager of Hamilton County Telephone 

Co-op, Hamilton County Communications’ 

parent company. 

GENBAND’s C15 integrates with 

existing TDM infrastructure, making it 

affordable for small and medium-sized 

operators to bring VoIP to their customers. 

Carriers can reuse their existing 

proprietary peripheral equipment rather 

than replacing the entire TDM office. 

new customers for eti’s triad 

ETI Software Solutions deployed its 

Triad service delivery platform to a duo 

of fiber-to-the-home operators: 

• TCT, which offers triple-play services 

in northern Wyoming, used Triad to 

integrate its telephone customer care 

and billing system with the Cisco 

IPTV interface, manage and assign 

set-top boxes, activate IPTV services 

and support on-screen caller ID. 

• Cincinnati Bell used Triad for automated, 

flow-through service activation 

on its FTTH network. Using 

Triad’s application programming 

interface, several BSS and OSS applications 

push data into the service 

delivery platform, which in turn 

provides flow-through activation of 

voice, video, and data on the ONT 

ports. Cincinnati Bell also uses Triad 

to control service activation on video 

set-top boxes and video on demand. 

Cincinnati Bell was recently named 

the exclusive provider of digital television 

programming and high-speed Internet 

connectivity for Fountain Square, 

a public space where Cincinnatians 

gather, celebrate and connect. Cincinnati 

Center City Development Corpora- 


tion (3CDC), one of whose subsidiaries 

manages Fountain Square, entered into 

an agreement with Cincinnati Bell to 

provide these services via its new Fioptics 

product line, which is now available 

to about 50,000 households. 

“Cincinnati Bell is playing a pivotal 

role in the successful revitalization of 

downtown and Fountain Square, our 

city’s premier civic space,” says Steve 

Leeper, president and CEO of 3CDC. 

will ultimately serve the entire city. 

Texas Hill Country telco GVTC 

achieved another milestone in its $35 

million FTTH project. In July, GVTC 

made fiber to the home available to more 

than 1,000 houses, with the capacity to 

immediately provide service to another 

900 lots. Nineteen subdivisions are part 

of this latest expansion. New fiber-tothe-home 

customers can receive cable 

TV, Internet access, voice and security 

monitoring services from GVTC, which 

currently offers the fastest Internet connection 

in South Texas – 40 Mbps. 

When GVTC’s fiber expansion project 

is complete in 2013, it will make fiber to 

the home available to more than 18,500 

houses in the Hill Country. 

Four Telcos Reach Milestones 

Competitive provider Velocity Telephone 

broke ground on the Eagan 

(Minn.) Community Fiber Network in 

April with what it calls the “first metro 

ring fiber network in the country.” 

Metro rings, in which fiber lines form 

interconnected circular networks, are actually 

common; this type of redundant 

construction reduces deployment costs, 

increases network reliability and minimizes 

repair costs. However, a typical 

metro ring connects large business locations, 

while Velocity’s ring connects businesses 

of all sizes as well as residences. 

“High-speed Internet is essential in 

today’s fast-paced, media-heavy world, 

which is why high-speed Internet access 

for all Eagan residents and businesses 

is among the City Council’s top priorities,” 

says Eagan Mayor Mike Maguire, 

who participated in the groundbreaking. 

“We’re very excited that Velocity chose 

Eagan as the first community to extend 

this fiber optic offering to and that Velocity 

is the first telecommunications provider 

to capitalize on making this competitive 

step forward in our community.” 

“Having reliable, cost-effective 

high-speed Internet is a necessity and a 

competitive advantage in today’s marketplace,” 

says Todd Kerin, president of 

Machine Tool Supply, the first Eagan 

business to participate in the network. 

“I believe Velocity’s Eagan Community 

Fiber Network will enhance our ability 

to provide superior service to our diverse 

customer base and, as a result, improve 

our profitability.” 

Phase I of the Eagan network includes 

a 4-square-mile optical fiber ring in the 

northwest quadrant of the city that takes 

advantage of Velocity’s existing colocation 

facility. Additional phases will create 

more interconnected fiber rings that 

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optimum lightpath’s Business Customers Prosper With Fiber Services 

Competitive provider Optimum Lightpath, whose fiber 

network serves businesses in the New York metropolitan 

area, announced new connections with CENX and Telx, 

operators of Carrier Ethernet exchange services. The 

CENX connection enables Optimum Lightpath to directly 

connect its customers to more than 10 million Ethernet 

service locations worldwide – a requirement for global 

organizations looking to establish Ethernet-based, lowlatency, 

high-bandwidth connections between the New 

York metro area and other key locations. 

Telx, an interconnection and colocation provider in 

strategic North American markets, serves some of the 

world’s most advanced algorithmic trading service providers 

and financial exchanges. Many of these businesses 

now have access to Optimum Lightpath’s services in New 

York City and Northern New Jersey, which provide them 

with low-latency and route-diversity advantages. 

Optimum Lightpath also reports on several recent 

customer success stories: 

home health care provider expands care 

with Secure Network 

Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) is using 

Optimum Lightpath services to cut costs by more than 

$150,000 per year while expanding patient care. VNSNY’s 

staff and clinicians use Web-based applications and also 

need to communicate securely with other health care 

providers from the office and the field. The organization 

wanted to expand access to more clinicians and staff, roll 

out a teleworker initiative and support its 24/7 contact 

center. 

To meet these needs, VNSNY relocated its data center 

and turned to Optimum Lightpath to double its Internet 

bandwidth and improve circuits to support high-quality 

VoIP services. When Optimum Lightpath rolled out an 

all-Ethernet, all-fiber telecommunications network that 

was scalable, stable and cost-effective, the clinicians, 

who access the Internet primarily via mobile devices 

from patients’ homes, felt the benefits immediately. 

VNSNY’s teleworker initiative also went into high gear, 

allowing the organization to scale up its contact center 

without the expense of a dedicated physical location. 

“We couldn’t be more pleased with how VNSNY has 

been able to grow and deliver an enhanced experience 

to patients, staff and clinicians as a result of rolling out 

smarter telecommunications services,” says Randy Cleghorne, 

VNSNY’s vice president of information technology 

services and support. “We rely so heavily on this network, 

and downtime isn’t an option. With Optimum Lightpath, 

we know the service is stable and problem calls have been 

virtually nonexistent. ” 

Students Gain Better Access to Information 

Brooklyn Law School, a 100-year-old graduate educational 

institution, more than doubled its Internet bandwidth 

capacity and greatly improved voice service and 

reliability while cutting costs. 

“Access to information is at the heart of what allows 

our students and teachers to be successful every day, 

and in a 24/7 access environment, with bandwidth needs 

increasing all the time, it’s important that we work with 

a service provider that can help us meet these growing 

network demands,” says Phil Allred, chief information officer, 

Brooklyn Law School. 

Brooklyn Law School increased its Internet capacity 

from 45 Mbps to 100 Mbps and implemented an improved 

voice service that is more feature-rich and reliable 

than its previous copper-based solution. The institution 

also has greater flexibility to employ new digital 

learning tools and methods in the classroom and across 

campus. 

Fiber Services Attract Business Tenants 

Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, a commercial real estate 

leader in the Northeast, has brought Optimum Lightpath’s 

services into more than 70 buildings to meet the 

demands of its financial services, health care and enterprise 

tenants. 

Mack-Cali, which operates primarily class-A office 

and office/flex buildings, has buildings lit by Optimum 

Lightpath in Morris County, N.J.; Jersey City, N.J.; and 

Westchester County, N.Y., where its clients are seeking 

low latency, high bandwidth, disaster recovery, business 

continuity and other benefits. 

“Mack-Cali’s relationship with Optimum Lightpath 

has emerged as a competitive differentiator, empowering 

us to attract and retain business while assuring 

our tenants that they will always have access to highquality 

telecommunications services,” says Nicholas 

Mitarotonda Jr., vice president of information systems 

for Mack-Cali. “Optimum Lightpath has successfully met 

the demand that our tenants have for cost-effective, 

high-bandwidth services with fast turn-up times. 

“At Mack-Cali, we put strong emphasis on our ‘tenant 

first’ philosophy, which Optimum Lightpath shares and 

has demonstrated time and time again,” adds Mitarotonda. 

“Whether getting telecommunications services 

to a tenant in a brand-new location within just 24 hours 

following a devastating tornado, or beating quoted turnup 

times when a customer needed to be up and running 

fast, we have always been able to count on Optimum 

Lightpath to be a true partner for us. The bottom line is 

that when Optimum Lightpath is involved, we know that 

our tenants are in good hands.” 


XFONE completed its buildout in 

Levelland, Texas, adding 6,200 passings 

to its overall FTTP footprint. Guy Nissenson, 

XFONE’s president and CEO, 

says that since beginning to sign up 

Levelland customers in August 2009, 

the company has seen a strong response 

to its triple-play service offerings; he 

expects to reach 69 percent of the Levelland 

market. The company says the 

Levelland project, which was financed 

through a low-cost loan from RUS, will 

“serve as the blueprint for our future 

projects in new markets.” 

Fiber-to-the-home pioneer SureWest 

Communications, which now serves 

not only its original Northern California 

territory but also parts of the greater 

Kansas City area, has completed its 

FTTH deployment and is now focusing 

on using the network to market advanced 

video and cellular backhaul services. In 

June, the company introduced Online 

DVR Manager and Caller ID on TV at 

no additional cost to qualifying customers. 

Online DVR Manager allows customers 

to manage their DVRs remotely 

from Web-connected computers; Caller 

ID on TV presents incoming caller information 

on customers’ TV screens. 

In his report on the company’s secondquarter 

financial results, SureWest president 

and CEO Steve Oldham said, “Expanding 

our fiber-to-the-home network 

over the last five years has provided us a 

significant performance advantage over 

our competitors. We have a large inventory 

of marketable homes and therefore 

do not require further capital expenditures 

to extend the network. We built 

momentum in our core broadband segment 

during the quarter, highlighted 

by Advanced Digital TV and wireless 

carrier backhaul. Advanced Digital TV 

triggered a sequential increase of 5,200 

RGUs [revenue-generating units], our 

best results since 2008. Taking advantage 

of our ubiquitous fiber network, we 

are working with three major carriers to 

provide wireless backhaul service to over 

200 cell sites and are in negotiations for 

100 additional sites. These backhaul 

projects set the stage for future growth 

on recurring revenue streams, and can 

be delivered quickly and cost-efficiently 

due to our high-capacity networks and 

proximity to cellular sites.” 

RBOC Update 

AT&T Delivers U-Verse Services Over Fiber 

In Two New Communities 

AT&T, the Apartment Renovation 

Group and RPM Management will 

bring AT&T bulk services over FTTP 

at Campus Pointe in Fresno, Calif. – a 

multidwelling, cosmopolitan community 

located at California State University, 

Fresno, that serves more than 

550 residents. Under a new agreement, 

AT&T, through its Connected Communities 

program, will deliver U-verse TV, 

U-verse High Speed Internet and U- 

verse Voice over fiber to designated units 

in Campus Pointe. 

Campus Pointe offers residential living 

options for students, seniors and everyone 

in between. It also offers 30,000 

square feet of office space and plans to 

add restaurants, specialty retail stores, an 

outdoor performance venue, a 14-screen 

movie theater and loft condominiums. 

“This agreement with AT&T gives 

us an advantage over other properties in 

the area, while also boosting the value 

of the apartments we offer here at Campus 

Pointe,” says Chris Duke, property 

manager, Campus Pointe. “Our clientele 

ranges from students to business professionals 

to seniors and, with AT&T’s 

high-speed services, we’re able to meet 

the varying technology demands of our 

residents and guests in an easy, turnkey 

way.” 

Another Connected Communities 

project is the Barclay at Dunwoody in 

Dunwoody, Ga., where AT&T is now 

delivering U-verse TV, U-verse High 

Speed Internet and U-verse Voice over 

an all-IP, all-fiber network. In addition 

to U-verse services, Dunwoody residents 

will have access to a dedicated AT&T 

retail store. 

Ken Wright, mayor of Dunwoody, 

says, “These investments bring the potential 

to grow our economy and create 

new jobs in the area.” Adds Robin 

Johnson, community manager for the 

Barclay at Dunwoody, “Thanks to this 

agreement with AT&T, we’re able to offer 

the latest and greatest entertainment 

solutions directly to our residents, boosting 

the value of our property and making 

this an even more desirable place to 

live in Dunwoody.” 

FiOS Growth Slows 

in Second Quarter 

In the second quarter of 2010, Verizon 

Communications reported a slowdown 

in its FiOS rollout as it approached the 

end of the deployment and prepared to 

sell a large part of its territory to Frontier 

Communications. Highlights of its 

report included the following: 

• As of the end of 2Q10, the FiOS network 

passed 15.9 million premises, 

an increase of about 300,000 over 

the end of the first quarter. 

• Focusing on marketing rather than 

building its fiber network, Verizon 

added 196,000 net new FiOS Internet 

customers and 174,000 net new 

FiOS TV customers; by June 30, it 

had 3.8 million FiOS Internet and 

3.2 million FiOS TV customers. The 

increase in FiOS Internet connections 

during the quarter more than offset a 

decrease in DSL-based connections. 

• FiOS Internet penetration (customers 

as a percentage of potential customers) 

reached 29.7 percent by the 

end of the quarter, when the product 


was available to 12.9 million premises. 

This compares with 28.1 percent 

and 11.0 million, respectively, 

at the end of 2Q09. 

• FiOS TV penetration reached 25.9 

percent by the end of the quarter, 

when the product was available to 

12.4 million premises. This compares 

with 24.6 percent and 10.3 million, 

respectively, at the end of 2Q09. 

• FiOS broadband revenues grew 33.2 

percent year over year. All FiOSbased 

services, including narrowband 

voice, generated 43 percent of 

consumer wireline revenues in 2Q10, 

compared with 33 percent in 2Q09. 

• Average monthly revenue per user 

(ARPU) for FiOS customers exceeded 

$145, compared with $80.76 

in consumer ARPU for all wireline 

services. 

In a marketing departure, Verizon 

made began offering month-to-month 

FiOS bundles at the same prices it 

charges for term contracts. Monthly 

customers receive price protection for 

one year without an early-termination 

Vendor Spotlight 

fee. For customers who want two-year 

price protection, Verizon expanded its 

30-day FiOS Worry-Free Guarantee. 

In the past, prices for month-to-month 

FiOS bundles were $20 higher per 

month than contract term bundles. 

“We’ve listened closely to the market 

and heard potential customers say 

that … they want time to consider their 

switch from cable,” says Mike Ritter, 

Verizon chief marketing officer for consumer 

wireline and business services. 

“We want customers to know that the 

shift to FiOS is the best move they can 

make, that a two-year commitment 

provides them with price protection for 

their home-entertainment needs, and 

that our month-to-month pricing option 

and Worry-Free Guarantee help reduce 

anxiety from their decision.” 

An Upgrade for FiOS1 

Verizon recently deployed Clearleap’s 

cloud-based content management, delivery 

and advertising platform into its 

FiOS TV infrastructure. Its initial deployment 

of Clearleap is being used to 

ADC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.adc.com 

ADTRAN ..................................................www.adtran.com 

Allied Telesis .........................................www.alliedtelesis.com 

Amino Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.aminocom.com 

ARRIS .......................................................www.arrisi.com 

Calix ........................................................www.calix.com 

CCG Consulting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.c-c-g.com 

Clearleap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.clearleap.com 

Design Nine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.designnine.com 

Enablence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.enablence.com 

Ericsson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.ericsson.com 

ETI Software Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.etisoftware.com 

GENBAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.genband.com/ 

HunTel Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.htleng.com 

Intwine Energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.intwineenergy.com 

Mapcom Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.mapcom.com 

Microsoft . .............................................www.microsoft.com 

Momentum Telecom ........................ www.momentumtelecom.com 

Motorola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.motorola.com 

Occam Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.occamnetworks.com 

S&C Electric Company ......................................www.sandc.com 

Sorrento Networks ...................................www.sorrentonet.com 

Tantalus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.tantalus.com 

Tilgin ...................................................... www.tilgin.com 

Zhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.zhone.com 

streamline production for the FiOS 1 

channel, which offers hyper-local content, 

including news, sports, traffic and 

weather. 

In addition, Clearleap says it will help 

bolster FiOS1 on VoD across all FiOS 

TV markets. For example, Verizon is using 

Clearleap to help professional sports 

teams deliver VoD content directly to 

FiOS TV subscribers. Several teams are 

already using the Clearleap technology 

to produce, upload and deliver content 

to their respective FiOS VoD channels. 

In Long Island, N.Y., and Washington, 

D.C., Verizon uses Clearleap’s 

cloud-based processing and Web-based 

management portal to help FiOS1 producers 

upload content from anywhere, 

process it centrally and redistribute it 

back to targeted local markets within 

minutes. 

“Clearleap’s platform allows us to 

create more compelling local content 

while dramatically increasing the speed 

and reducing costs for quickly getting 

that content into customers’ homes,” 

says Tricia Lynch, director of content 

strategy and acquisition for Verizon. 

Clearleap’s CEO, Braxton Jarratt, 

adds, “Verizon has done a tremendous 

job of pioneering new, more personalized 

TV experiences in the home. Integration 

of our platform will help them 

offer more content and create huge efficiencies 

in workflow. This also gives 

FiOS the potential to bring more interactivity 

into the living room at a time 

when demand for TV apps is starting to 

flourish.” 

Fiber to the Desk 

in Stony Brook 

At the Center of Excellence in Wireless 

and Information Technology at Stony 

Brook University in New York, Verizon 

Business teamed with Motorola and 

ADC to implement an all-fiber enterprise 

LAN infrastructure solution that 

it says provides a secure, energy-efficient 

and highly cost-effective alternative 

compared with traditional enterprise 

LAN architectures. Verizon Business 

provided integration services and support 

for the implementation, while ADC 

provided all the fiber structured cabling 

components. 


Motorola’s Passive Optical LAN 

(POL) solution includes the AXS1800 

enterprise aggregation switch, the 

ONT1120GE intelligent POL workgroup 

terminal (WGT), the WT21004 

WGT with power over Ethernet and 

the AXSvision advanced management 

system for the enterprise. The solution 

simplifies LAN management and allows 

for the optimization of IT resources. 

Benefits of POL solutions include: 

• Rapid return on investment and low 

total cost of ownership at half the 

cost of copper-based LANs 

• Ease of installation and operation 

• High security 

• All-fiber reliability 

• Reduced environmental impact. 

Bell aliant: ftth in New 

Brunswick and Nova Scotia 

May was a good month for Canada’s Bell 

Aliant. At the beginning of the month, 

the company announced that it was accelerating 

its rollout of FTTH by raising 

its investment to $350 million over 2011 

and 2012. This accelerated investment, 

which will be internally funded, will 

add about $100 million annually to Bell 

Aliant’s current capital program run rate 

and bring fiber-to-the-home services to 

more than 600,000 homes and businesses, 

or approximately one-third of 

Bell Aliant’s competitive territory, by 

the end of 2012. (Bell Aliant expects to 

pass 140,000 homes and businesses with 

FTTH by the end of 2010.) 

Later in the month, Bell Aliant 

launched FibreOP for Business, an Internet 

service for small and medium-sized 

businesses in New Brunswick that offers 

speeds of 20 Mbps downstream and 

5 Mbps upstream. Kelly Duplisea, VP 

for customer solutions at Bell Aliant, 

says, “Offering new services like 

FibreOP for Business provides the foundation 

for business growth and also 

helps attract and retain new and existing 

talent in the future – a key ingredient 

for business success.” 

At the end of May, Bell Aliant annnounced 

that it was bringing FibreOP 

to Nova Scotia and would offer Internet 

speeds of 170 Mbps downstream and 30 

Mbps upstream on the new network. 

This is the first time such Internet speeds 

will be available to residential customers 

in the region. FibreOP services will 

be available in Sydney, Nova Scotia, as 

early as this fall. 

Bell Aliant will invest $15 million in 

the Sydney area to bring FibreOP services 

to more than 30,000 homes and 

businesses. This investment is part of Bell 

Aliant’s previously announced 2010 capital 

program. The province of Nova Scotia 

is contributing $2 million to the project. 

In its second-quarter financial report, 

Bell Aliant said its FTTH expansion 

continues on plan with strong IPTV 

and Internet bundle performance. 

Manitoba Gets Fiber Rollout 

MTS Allstream in Manitoba will invest 

$125 million over the next five years to 

accelerate deployment of its FTTH network, 

branded as FiON. By the end of 

2015, MTS expects to deploy fiber to 

about 120,000 homes in 20 Manitoba 

communities, where it will provide its 

MTS Ultimate TV service and veryhigh-speed 

Internet services. 

Together with the company’s existing 

VDSL networks, this fiber deployment 

should make advanced broadband 

and television available to about 65 percent 

of Manitoba homes. FiON customers 

today have access to Internet services 

with speeds up to 25 Mbps, but MTS 

envisions offering future broadband 

speeds of more than 100 Mbps. 

MTS launched its FTTH network 

this January in Winnipeg and announced 

in April that it would expand 

the initiative to include the city of Selkirk 

and outskirts. The company plans 

to have the Selkirk network fully deployed 

by 2011. 

Municipal 

Fiber 

Smart-Grid Projects in the Tennessee Valley 

BVU, the municipal telecom and electric 

utility for Bristol, Va., and surrounding 

areas, will deploy a smart-grid system on 

its FTTH network, using a communications 

platform from Tantalus Systems. 

BVU was the first municipal utility in 

the United States to offer triple-play services 

over fiber, and Tantalus says adding 

smart-grid applications will give it a 

“home-run” network. 

With the wireless Tantalus LAN, 

not every customer premises has to be 

connected directly to fiber. Rather, each 

fiber connection can serve as a collection 

point for the data from several smart 

meters. This configuration ensures a 

smooth evolution as time-of-use pricing, 

load shedding, customer signalling and 

advanced distribution automation applications 

become more prevalent. 

Broadband is credited for breathing 

new life into the region, according to 

Wes Rosenbalm, BVU’s president and 

CEO, who says, “Here, triple play has 

translated into high-paying jobs, incredible 

educational opportunities and 

a local economy built to thrive during 

tough times.” He adds, “Our sights are 

now set on implementing a smart grid 

that will have the same positive impact 

on the way energy is distributed and 

managed. The ability to leverage [the 

FTTH network] for additional cost and 

energy savings will continue to pay off 

for years to come.” 

EPB of Chattanooga, Tenn., has increased 

the Internet access speeds on its 

FTTH network to 150 Mbps and is also 

proceeding with its implementation of 

smart-grid technology. Using funding 

from a Department of Energy stimulus 

grant, EPB will purchase IntelliRupter 

PulseClosers and the IntelliTEAM SG 

Automatic Restoration System from 

S&C Electric Company. The Intelli- 

Rupter PulseCloser verifies that the line 

is clear of faults before initiating closing. 

PulseClosing reduces stress on system 


components as well as voltage sags experienced 

by customers upstream of a fault. 

This equipment, running on the FTTH 

network, will help EPB achieve the highest 

level of electric service reliability and 

power quality in North America and 

reach its goal of a 40 percent reduction 

in customer outage minutes. 

Morristown Utility Systems 

(MUS) of Tennessee is adding smartgrid 

functionality to its network with 

technology from Tantalus Systems. The 

utility will leverage its FTTH network 

for advanced metering of electricity and 

water, as well as for energy management 

programs that will enable it to interact 

with customers in cost-saving and conservation 

initiatives. 

“Leveraging our fiber network for 

smart-grid applications gives us a head 

start on implementing the energy efficiency 

and demand-response programs 

proposed by the TVA,” says Jody Wigington, 

Morristown’s general manager. 

“We’ve offered FTTH to our 15,000 

customers for five years. By deploying a 

Tantalus system, we’re now in a position 

to build out the value of the network and 

set the stage for time-of-use pricing and 

tightly coordinated load control. This 

will go a long way toward reducing consumption 

and keeping the valley clean 

and green.” 

MUS is also deploying ETI Software’s 

SOLO Field Tech Assistant for 

the maintenance of its FTTH network. 

SOLO Field Tech Assistant supports 

technicians in tasks such as closing work 

orders, assigning services and devices, 

refreshing STBs and swaping ONTs. 

The LENOWISCO Planning District 

Commission extended its FTTH 

network to the community of Blackwater 

in southwestern Virginia, using 

funding from the Rural Utilities Service 

and the Virginia Tobacco Commission. 

This extension will make affordable, 

high-speed Internet services available to 

90 residents and businesses. 

The funding also paid for a new public 

Internet access site at the Blackwater 

Post Office, equipped with 10 computers, 

where residents can access the Internet 

without charge six days a week 

and avail themselves of free computer 

and Internet training workshops. The 

commission will also provide free highspeed 

Internet services for two years to 

the Blackwater Volunteer Fire Department 

and has established a community 

website for Blackwater. 

Muni Systems and Video 

CDE Lightband, the broadband provider 

for the city of Clarksville, Tenn., 

chose Amino Communications as the 

long-term provider of MPEG-4 set-top 

boxes. CDE Lightband serves more 

than 59,000 customers via a 960-mile 

FTTH network. The Amino STBs 

support CDE’s 200 channels of digital 

television, an interactive programming 

guide and VoD service. 

LUS Fiber in Lafayette, La., launched 

an IPTV offering powered by Microsoft 

Mediaroom. The new service, available 

on LUS Fiber’s FTTH network, features 

whole-home DVR, instant channel 

changes, picture-in-picture browsing 

and enhanced search capabilities. “During 

the deployment of our LUS Fiber system, 

a number of our customers asked us 

for more advanced video features,” says 

Terry Huval, director of LUS and LUS 

Fiber. “Microsoft Mediaroom provides 

the platform that will deliver the features 

our customers want and, because 

it’s a Web-based system, it offers us endless 

possibilities for future applications 

and expansion.” To implement the new 

system, LUS must replace all the set-top 

boxes currently in use. 

In North Carolina, the latest of several 

attempts to delay or prohibit municipal 

broadband was defeated in July 

during a late-night legislative session. 

Broadband activists in the state organized 

to keep community broadband 

options open, and apparently they made 

their voices heard. One of the communities 

most pleased by this news is 

Salisbury, which has named its FTTH 

provider Fibrant Communications. 

Fibrant has completed its buildout in 

one neighborhood and is close to finished 

in about half of the city. As BBP 

went to press, the company expected to 

launch services in August. 

In addition to its previously announced 

selections of Zhone for FTTH 

equipment and Ericsson for IPTV, 

Fibrant selected Momentum Telecom to 

provide digital voice solutions and ETI 

Software Solutions to provide the énconcert 

BSS/OSS software suite, which 

supports customer care, work order, 

billing and provisioning. Énconcert is 

preintegrated to Fibrant’s FTTH and 

IPTV technologies as well as the city’s 

enterprise utility billing system; it will 

allow the city to send out a single billing 

statement for all services. 

Fibrant will also deploy ETI’s TV 

Ticket to help market its services, 

whether self-activated, prepaid or complimentary 

services. In addition, Fibrant 

will deploy ETI’s SOLO Field Tech 

Assistant, which lets field technicians 

open and close work orders, manage 

and assign devices and turn up services 

independently without contacting a 

dispatcher. 

UTOPIA, the FTTH network operator 

owned by a consortium of Utah 

cities, announced that one of its member 

cities, Brigham City, is now the 

fastest city in the state, according to the 

NetIndex report released by broadband 

speed tester Ookla. Brigham’s average 

download speed of 21.66 Mbps approaches 

three times the state average 

of 8 Mbps and puts it on par with the 

top five fastest countries in the world. 

Upload speeds in Brigham City are particularly 

impressive: UTOPIA customers 

in Brigham City have average upload 

speeds of 26.08 Mbps, far above the 

second-place ranking of 4.18 Mbps and 

the state average of 2.56 Mbps. 

As part of UTOPIA’s financial restructuring, 

five of its cities have formed 

the new Utah Infrastructure Agency, 

which plans to borrow an additional 

$60 million or more to continue building 

out the fiber network to new subscribers. 

The agency’s plan anticipates 

adding about 20,000 more customers 

over the next several years. 

New Municipal Projects 

Starting Up 

Danville Utilities in Virginia is proposing 

a $2.5 million pilot project for the 

final phase of its nDanville network, 

residential FTTH deployment. A demographically 

diverse neighborhood of 

about 1,200 homes in the Averett community 

has been identified as the first 


targeted area. (A postcard survey of Averett showed about 85 

percent were interested in obtaining service.) A second, similarly 

sized neighborhood will also be selected. nDanville is an 

open-access network on which third-party providers may offer 

telecommunications, entertainment, and Internet services. 

At the time BBP went to press, the Danville City Council 

had scheduled a vote but had not yet voted on the pilot project. 

The Danville Utility Commission has already recommended 

proceeding with the project, which would be funded from existing 

nDanville revenues. 

With its financing plans well under way, the 23-town EC 

Fiber consortium in Vermont has decided to proceed with a pilot 

project. “We have identified several unserved areas that will 

help to prove our concept,” says project director Tim Nulty. 

“Engineering crews started the preconstruction process the 

morning after the vote [by the governing board]. We’re very 

excited to get to work. This has been a long time coming.” 

“Delivering cost-effective, high-quality, reliable broadband 

to rural America is a challenge,” says Ron Cassel, coordinator 

of the buildout. “We decided that we needed an innovative approach 

to that challenge. We have built a successful model in 

our labs, but there is no better test than a real-life deployment. 

That’s when the rubber hits the road. We now have a solid rollout 

plan in place and hope to be installing our first customers 

in a few months!” 

The pilot project will provide a solid foundation for the 

capital lease used to build out the rest of the network, which 

will provide 100 percent coverage in 23 towns in east-central 

Vermont. Although the intent of the pilot project is to prove 

that the larger project is viable, Nulty says, “It will be able to 

stand on its own if we don’t raise another dime of capital.” The 

pilot project will be financed with privately raised funds. 

WiredWest, a project inspired by EC Fiber, has been 

launched by a consortium of 47 towns in western Massachusetts 

that want to build an FTTH network. In June, the towns 

took official action to set the project in motion. Dr. Andrew 

Cohill of consulting firm Design Nine is now working with 

800.882.7950 

www.glds.com 

Digital • VOD • VoIP 

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Over 300 Satisfied Operators 

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the WiredWest committee on its governance, business model, 

financing, needs assessment, market survey and network planning, 

financed by a grant from the Massachusetts Broadband 

Institute. In addition, the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission 

and the Franklin County Council of Governments are 

providing grants for preparatory legal work and GIS mapping. 

Eight Minnesota cities – seven in Sibley County plus the 

nearby city of Fairfax – have received grants from county governments 

and the Blandin Foundation to perform a feasibility 

study for an FTTH network. According to local press reports, 

the feasibility study will be carried out by CCG Consulting. 

Residents of Opelika, Ala., voted in a referendum to approve 

building a community FTTH network throughout the 

city. According to the city’s website, “For many years now … 

numerous complaints were received from citizens about the 

high prices and poor service they were receiving, while others 

have complained that they can’t get any cable service in 

their neighborhoods at all. After years of trying to get other 

cable/Internet providers to come into Opelika and give Charter 

Communications competition – to no avail – we decided 

that the best way to give our citizens competitive services was 

A sign on the city’s website thanks voters for their support. 

to offer competition ourselves.” The city plans to deliver phone, 

Internet and video services over fiber, possibly in partnership 

with cable provider Knology. The municipal electric utility will 

use the network for smart-grid applications. 

Cable 

Companies 

Cable Companies Turn to Fiber 

Trinity Communications, a cable operator 

based in South Pittsburgh, Tenn., 

launched triple-play services over fiber in 

Marion and Sequatchie County, Tenn., 

using ARRIS FTTMax RFoG equipment. 

The major components include 

ARRIS CORWave II multiwavelength 

forward transmitters, FTTMax RFoG 

optical network units (ONUs) at the 

customer premises and the TransMax 

RFoG repeater for optical amplification 

of RFoG wavelengths. When completed, 

the deployment will offer triple-play services 

to approximately 3,000 homes and 

businesses. 

RFoG, which combines RF and 

PON technologies, enables cable operators 

to use their existing headend infrastructure, 

current provisioning systems 

and CPE devices. “We selected the AR- 

RIS CORWave and RFoG solutions because 

of their proven reliability and to 

meet our capital and operational budgetary 

needs,” says James Gee, president 

of Trinity Communications. “In our 

system, population density is low and 

spread out, so the RFoG cost model and 

return on investment is very attractive 

to us. Once the backbone is in place, we 

can simply drop a fiber to the residential 

or small-business customer, install the 

RFoG ONU and they’re set.” 

In a competitive overbuild, cable 

company Merrimac Communications 

is installing fiber to the home in Prairie 

du Sac, Wisc. According to local press, 

the company expects to offer triple-play 

services to every home in the village by 

December and to add another 350 customers 

by the end of the year. 

Other 

deployers 

Connexion Partners With KDM Development 

Network operator Connexion Technologies 

announced a partnership with 

KDM Development, which manages 47 

manufactured-home communities with 

7,500 rental sites. Connexion will create 

a customized network solution for the 

delivery of television, high-speed Internet, 

and telephone for these communities’ 

residents. 

“Our relationship with Connexion 

Technologies has allowed us to simplify 

telecommunications arrangements,” says 

Ken Burnham, founder of KDM. “We 

also look forward to offering enhanced 

services from Connexion Technologies’ 

service providers.” 

Connexion recently placed a volume 

order for home gateway products from 

Swedish provider Tilgin – apparently 

Tilgin’s first major sale of the gateways 

in the U.S. market. According to Tilgin, 


Deployer Spotlight 

States with deployments 

referenced in this article 

Alaska 

North American Telcos 

(See list on p. 23 for new stimulus-funding awardees) 

AT&T 

www.att.com 

Bell Aliant 

www.bellaliant.ca 

Big Bend Telephone Company 

www.bigbend.net 

Central Scott Telephone 

www.centralscott.com 

Cincinnati Bell 

www.cincinnatibell.com 

CT Communications 

www.ctcn.net 

GVTC 

www.gvtc.com 

Hamilton County Communications www.hamiltoncom.net 

ITS Telecommunications Systems www.itstelecom.net 

KanOkla Networks 

www.kanokla.com 

LaWard Telephone Exchange 

www2.laward.net 

Lismore Cooperative 

Telephone Company 

www2.lismoretel.com 

Mid-Plains Rural Telephone Cooperative www.midplains.coop 

MTS Allstream 

www.mts.ca 

Northeast Louisiana 

Telephone Company 

www.northeasttel.com 

Optimum Lightpath 

www.optimumlightpath.com 

Oxford Networks 

www.oxfordnetworks.com 

Reliance Connects 

www.relianceconnects.com 

Slic Network Solutions 

www.slic.com 

South Slope Cooperative 

Communications Company 

www.southslope.com 

SureWest Communications 

www.surewest.com 

Swisher Telephone Company www.swishertelephone.com 

TCT 

www.tctwest.net 

Transtelco 

www.transtelco.com 

Velocity Telephone 

www.velocitytelephone.com/ 

Verizon Communications 

www.verizon.com 

Vianet Internet Solutions 

www.vianet.ca 

Wabash Mutual Telephone www.wabashtelephone.com 

WNM Communications 

www.gilanet.com 

XFONE 

www.xfone.com 

Other North American Deployers 

BVU 

www.bvu-optinet.com 

Case Western Reserve University 

www.case.edu 

CDE Lightband 

www.clarksvillede.com 

Connexion Technologies www.connexiontechnologies.net 

Danville Utilities 

www.ndanville.net 

EC Fiber 

www.ecfiber.ne 

EPB 

www.epb.net 

Fibrant Communications 

www.fibrant.com 

LENOWISCO Planning District Commission www.lenowisco.org 

LUS Fiber 

www.lusfiber.com 

Merrimac Communications 

www.merr.com 

Morristown Utility Systems www.morristownutilities.org 

Trinity Communications 

www.trinitycable.net 

UTOPIA 

www.utopianet.org 

this new order is intended for five of 

Connexion’s student housing projects. 

Case Western Reserve University 

in Cleveland, Ohio, has adopted Wi-Fi 

thermostat technology from Intwine Energy 

for its Case Connection Zone pilot 

research project. The IECT220 and the 

IECT 210 Intwine Wi-Fi Thermostat, 

as well as a beta version of the Intwine 

Energy Wi-Fi Connected Whole-House 

Power Monitor, which includes the Blueline 

Innovations sensor, and Smart Plug, 

have been successfully demonstrated to 

researchers and will be installed into a 

beta community. 

The Case Connection Zone will 

bring 1 Gbps fiber to about 100 residences 

near the university in an initiative 

to determine how high-speed Internet 

connectivity can be made relevant 

and useful in people’s everyday lives. 

The project will include Internet-enabled 

services related to health care, neighborhood 

and public safety, education and 


household energy management. 

The IECT220 Intwine Wi-Fi Thermostat will enable residents 

to remotely monitor and control all home energy usage. 

It will display historical data and trends for individual devices 

and for the entire home, both locally and over the Web. The 

result is expected to be lower energy usage and cost, as well the 

ability to integrate energy usage into personal lifestyles. 

Fiber Through the Sewers Coming to the US 

The British fiber optic infrastructure firm i3 Group has set up 

a U.S. subsidiary. Based in New York, i3 America will follow 

i3’s methods, including the use of ready-made ducts such as the 

sewer system. 

Elfed Thomas, CEO of i3 Group and of i3 America, says: 

“Delivering superfast connectivity is a global issue. The United 

States has exactly the same drivers as the United Kingdom and 

other countries that we are working in. American homes and 

businesses need access to high-speed broadband that supports 

bandwidth-heavy applications such as HDTV, so that people 

can communicate more effectively and access advanced information 

and entertainment services. 

“We have developed a unique offering which allows us to 

build fiber optic networks at a fraction of the cost of traditional 

methods and much faster. The way that we build our networks 

also means that a large part of the workforce is recruited from 

the local area, providing a boost to the local economy.” 

i3 Group is already operating in Australia, the Middle East 

and South Africa, in addition to the United Kingdom. BBP 

INTERNATIONAL 

DEPLOYMENTS 

Fiber through the sewers in the UK ... Shared fiber network in Italy ... FTTH sent to Siberia ... 

First fiber optic service in Iraq ... China Telecom launches major FTTH initiative. 

Read all of these stories and more in the digital edition at 

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Alexan Midtown, 

Sacramento 

By Joe Bousquin ■ Contributing Editor, Broadband Properties 

This month, we showcase Alexan Midtown, a luxury rental apartment community in Sacramento, Calif., developed 

by Trammell Crow and served with a fiber optic network from independent incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) 

SureWest. Our thanks to Trammell Crow’s Steve Hester and SureWest’s Ron Rogers, Ted Allegra and Greg Chamberlain 

for their assistance in preparing this feature. 

For Trammell Crow’s Steve Hester, 

just getting the Alexan Midtown 

project up and running was a 

Herculean task. In 2007, while his team 

was planning the 245-unit mid-rise on 

the edge of Sacramento’s hip Midtown 

area, the wheels started coming off capital 

market financing. Originally, Trammell 

Crow had envisioned the project as 

a condominium whose units would be 

marketed to young professionals working 

in Sacramento’s health and government 

sectors, but it had to modify that 

plan quickly as lenders began to balk. 

The company thought the project’s 

underlying concept still made sense even 

in the altered financial environment. The 

site is located in Sacramento’s “medical 

triangle,” within easy biking distance of 

three major hospitals, including the UC 

Davis Medical Center, and just a few 

minutes from the California State Capitol 

and myriad state government offices 

and agencies. 

“Even though for-sale was out of the 

question, the property still had a great 

story,” says Hester, Trammell Crow’s 

president of construction for Northern 

California. “It’s transit-oriented, it’s urban 

infill, and it’s just a couple-minute 

car commute to employers in the downtown 

area. We continued to believe in it, 

even as a for-rent property.” 

There was only one catch: Given Sacramento’s 

starring role in the housing 

debacle, with the area routinely ranking 

near the top of foreclosure statistics nationally, 

the rental market was flooded 

with houses that otherwise would have 

been for sale. That, in turn, put pressure 

on overall apartment rental rates. For the 

Alexan Midtown to compete, it would 

need to offer residents more for their 

money, including state-of-the-art technology 

that would appeal to the young 

medical and government professionals 

that were still its target market. That was 

especially true because of the Midtown 

price point – studios were advertised for 

just under $1,400 a month, more than 

double the rent of other entry-level digs 

in the area. 

One differentiator materialized by 

chance. Because the aesthetics of the 

project called for existing overhead cables 

to be buried underground, Hester 

got to work contacting the owners 

of those cables. One happened to be 


Joe Bousquin is a contributing editor to Broadband Properties and a journalist with 

more than 15 years’ experience writing about finance, real estate and technology. You 

can reach him at joe@ameredit.com. 


Greenfield or retrofit Greenfield 

Number of residential units: 275 

Style: Mid-rise 

Percent of units occupied: 30 percent 

Time to deploy 12 months 

Date services started being delivered: 

Jan. 1, 2010 

Roseville, Calif.-based SureWest, an independent 

ILEC that has been aggressively 

rolling out IP-based services in 

Northern California. SureWest started 

offering IP-based HDTV as early as 

2006 in the greater Sacramento area, 

and already had a fiber ring running 

right past the site of the Alexan. 

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and 

that almost never happens, where there’s 

actually existing fiber fronting the property,” 

Hester says. “If it does happen, 

you usually can’t tap into it because it’s 

for 911 or a hospital or someone else’s 

dedicated use. But in this case, we had 

SureWest right there, and they were only 

too happy to serve the property.” 

Because the property already had fiber 

running literally to its door, the developer 

decided to make an investment 

for the future and take the fiber path all 

the way to its units. Now, the Alexan 

Midtown is served by a pure, 100-percent 

fiber network that feeds each of 

the property’s units, and residents can 

choose data speeds up to 50 Mbps. 

“Oftentimes, people talk about having 

a fiber network. But I think … that 

term has gotten watered down, just as 

the term ‘organic’ has been overused in 

the food industry. Nobody knows what 

it means anymore,” Hester says. “But at 

the Alexan, we have the real deal. This is 

a pure fiber system. As far as we can tell, 

no one else in the market can say that.” 

Vital Stats 

Property Description: Alexan Midtown 

aims to redefine Sacramento’s living 

experience with luxury apartments 

for rent in the heart of the city’s most 

desirable urban location. Amenities 

include a resort-style pool, a relaxing 

outdoor patio with a fire pit, the fastest 

download speeds on the block, a 

cutting-edge fitness center, an entertainment 

room for film and gaming 

and a gourmet kitchen to entertain 

friends and neighbors. For residents’ 

four-legged friends, Alexan Midtown 

has its own bark park. For more info, 

see www.alexanmidtown.net. 

Technology 

Greg Chamberlain, SureWest’s executive 

director of network engineering, provided 

the following answers. 

How does fiber get to the property A fiber 

spur from our existing FTTH 

network connects into the property’s 

main point of entry (MPOE). 

How is fiber distributed inside the building 

Because our network hub is 

within a few blocks of the site, there 

was no need to deploy FTTH electronics 

to the site. There is a direct 

fiber feed from our network hub. At 

the MPOE, a fiber jumper connects 

our network to the building’s internal 

fiber distribution network. From 

there, it terminates in a wiring cabinet 

inside each unit, which houses 

our ONT. Following SureWest’s recommendations, 

the owner deployed 

Corning’s ClearCurve bend-insensitive 

fiber compact drop cables in the 

internal distribution network. 

What is the FTTH technology Active 

Ethernet. 

Property of the Month Highlights: 

Alexan Midtown 

• Though SureWest Communications has a large FTTH network 

in the Sacramento area, this is the first apartment community 

in Sacramento with an all-fiber feed all the way to the unit. 

• Luxury downtown rental property is targeted to young, techsavvy 

professionals working in health care and state government. 

• Active Ethernet network supports 50 Mbps Internet access and 

IPTV with advanced features. 

• Though apartments are also wired for cable and DSL and 

tenants can choose other service providers, SureWest has 55 

percent penetration. 

• Vendors include Allied Telesis, Cisco, Corning, Microsoft. 


What type of gear is used A Cisco Catalyst 

4510 switch router with 100 

Mbps customer-facing optical ports 

and Allied Telesis ONTs. The ONTs 

are Allied Telesis iMG726MOD 

Gateways for 100M and Gigabit 

triple play. 

How did you deal with wiring and plug 

access within the units Because this 

was new construction, we were able 

to specify power requirements for 

our equipment, and we didn’t have 

to fish the walls [run new wires behind 

existing walls]. There is a power 

outlet inside each in-unit communications 

box. 

Have you provided wireless signals within 

units Yes. 

How much square footage did you have 

to dedicate to the network inside the 

building Just some wall space for 

the network cable to terminate. We 

needed one rack for electronics for 

RF video for the exercise equipment 

in the workout area. 

Could closets be shared with other utilities, 

or did you need to create a dedicated 

maintenance space Other service 

providers can share the closets 

if necessary. Each unit has two wallmounted 

fiber termination panels 

(for a total of 288 terminated fibers). 

Services 

Ted Allegra, business sales manager at 

SureWest, and Ron Rogers, SureWest’s director 

of corporate communications, provided 

the following answers. 

Does the building have triple-play services 

Yes. SureWest offers a full selection 

of data, telephony and entertainment 

choices. Our advanced digital 

TV package, powered by Microsoft 

Mediaroom, offers popular features 

such as whole-home DVR capability, 

instantaneous channel changes 

and the ability to flip between live 

and recorded programs by hitting a 

single button on the remote. 

Can residents subscribe to IPTV Yes. 

SureWest has been offering true 

IPTV to the Sacramento area since 

2006, and our Microsoft Mediaroom 

offering is an IP-based system. However, 

we don’t market ourselves as offering 

IPTV. Our research has led us 

to conclude that our customers aren’t 

concerned with the technology platform 

behind the system, they just 

want it to work. The Microsoft Mediaroom 

platform gives us the ability 

to offer cutting-edge entertainment 

We don’t market ourselves as offering IPTV. 

Customers aren’t concerned with the technology 

platform – they just want it to work. 

choices through a best-of-breed delivery 

system that provides a seamless 

viewing experience. 

Are there amenities beyond triple play, such 

as free wireless in common areas or entertainment 

systems in common rooms 

Yes, each piece of exercise equipment 

has an individual video monitor, and 

there are additional TVs in the game 

room and entertainment room, as 

well as a 10 Mbps Internet feed to 

the leasing office. SureWest delivers 

Wi-Fi throughout the property with 

strong signals available in the common 

areas of the community. 

Can residents choose service providers 

Steve Hester: Yes. Although SureWest 

has a preferred marketing agreement 

at the Alexan Midtown, offering residents 

a choice of service providers 

was also important. For that reason, 

AT&T and Comcast services are 

also available. 

How did you set up the multiple choice 

capabilities 

Steve Hester: To ensure that our residents 

could select the provider of their 

choice, we ran two additional cables 

from the MPOE to each living unit 

so that each apartment would be 

served not only by fiber but also by 

coaxial cable and traditional copper 

wiring. 

Who provides support If residents have an 

issue or technical challenge, whom do 

they call The resident’s provider of 

choice. 

Business 

Who owns the network Does the property 

owner have “skin in the game” Who 

paid for what 


Data switch for the in-building network. 

Data switch showing redundant multimode uplinks. 

Fiber jumpers connecting to the core data routers. 

Media converter shelf (optical-to-electrical Ethernet conversion). 

Fiber switch for IPTV. 

Greg Chamberlain: The property owner installed the fiber to 

the unit. SureWest owns the fiber ring network leading to 

the building MPOE and has exclusive use of the fiber network 

within the building. 

Was there a door fee 

Steve Hester: Although we were able to negotiate a door fee with 

SureWest, because it was a nonexclusive property the door 

fee basically covered the cost of building the fiber network 

internally. Unlike the previous model, where service providers 

would both pay door fees and bear the costs of setting 

up a network within an owner’s building, we’re seeing fewer 

opportunities for ancillary income in these arrangements. 

If you can get a door fee, it’s just going to cover your costs; 

you’re not going to make money off the deal. 

Are services automatically included in the rent If not, what was 

the initial take rate 

Greg Chamberlain: No. SureWest has achieved 55 percent penetration 

rate among occupied units, which we view as a 

great success. 

Who handles billing and collection The resident’s provider of 

choice. 

How are the services marketed, and by whom 

Ted Allegra: The property owner includes a SureWest promotional 

package to residents with their move-in documents 

and refers new residents to Surewest before they move in. 

We also have access to new resident contact information so 

that we can market to them directly. 

What has the return been on this implementation, in dollars or otherwise 

– for example, better retention, higher conversion rates 

of leads, marketing leverage, amenity advantage, less churn 

Greg Chamberlain: Without mentioning dollar amounts, all 

the returns listed above are accurate, which makes this a 

very successful project from SureWest’s perspective. 

On-site Experience/Lessons Learned 

What was the biggest challenge 

Greg Chamberlain: Because of the market conditions, the timeline 

was protracted and there was the added challenge of 

converting the project from a condominium community to 

rental units. However, we’ve been very happy with the project’s 

initial take rate since opening this year. 

What was the biggest success 

Ted Allegra: High penetration. Alexan Midtown offered us an 

excellent opportunity to market our services to a number of 

residents. We consider this an ongoing opportunity to offer 

our services not only to the Alexan’s initial residents but 

also to future residents as they move in over time. 

What would you say to owners who want to deploy a similar network 

What issues should they consider before they get started 

Ted Allegra: In this environment, it’s very important to consider 

the cost of capital versus the buildout timeline. For SureWest, 

it was actually a much better scenario when the property converted 

to rental units. If this had gone ahead as a for-sale com- 


munity, we would have been looking 

at a five-year buildout, which is obviously 

less desirable. In this scenario, 

we’re looking at approximately 18 

months for lease-up and the opportunity 

to offer services to all 275 units. 

Were there any guidelines or requests from 

the owner about limiting residents’ 

pain points during installation 

Greg Chamberlain: No. Because this was 

new construction, each installation 

went very smoothly. We were able to 

specify our technical requirements 

to the owner during the buildout. 

There were some issues initially with 

scheduling access to individual units 

and coordinating with other trades 

on-site, but we worked those out as 

the project progressed. 

What is the property manager’s perspective 

on this installation Has it been a success 

What has been the response from 

residents 

Steve Hester: Given our market of young 

medical and government professionals, 

we think that offering this 

amenity is a must. As far as we can 

ascertain, no other competing community 

in our market can say it has a 

pure fiber network all the way to the 

unit. We believe our resident demographic 

understands the distinction 

and the importance of having that 

technology in the unit. It definitely 

lets us speak to our residents in a language 

they understand. BBP 

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COMMUNITY BROADBAND 

Making the Third Way 

For Broadband Work 

Open-access networks are the best hope for universal broadband, says a 

veteran of the fiber-to-the-home and utility industries. However, making 

them successful may require changing some long-held assumptions. 

By James Salter ■ Atlantic Engineering Group 

When I read Dr. Andrew Cohill’s 

article The Third Way 

for Broadband, in the May/ 

June issue of this magazine, I thought of 

my first encounter with him in 2002. To 

Dr. Cohill’s credit, he has been a consistent, 

long-time proponent of openaccess 

networks. The first time we met, I 

was giving a short-list presentation to his 

client, the city of Los Alamos, N.M. My 

firm, Atlantic Engineering Group, was 

trying to be selected as the design-build 

contractor for the city’s FTTH network 

(the city never went forward with the 

project). In front of the vendor selection 

committee, in a community that wanted 

to create an open-access network, I un- 

Open-access networks were conceived of as toll 

roads. In the early days, some of them generated 

barely enough revenues to pay the toll takers. 

wisely engaged in a passionate argument 

with Dr. Cohill about the virtues and 

problems of a community-owned, openaccess 

solution! Shown here is the slide 

that got the argument started. 

During the years after that initial debate, 

our firm developed a bit of a reputation 

for being anti-open access – and in 

a sense we were. Our concern was that 

any failure of an open-access network 

in the nascent municipal FTTH arena 

would arm incumbents with a strong political 

argument in support of their “munis 

don’t belong in telecom” stance. I 

thought that open access, and in particular 

its early poster child, UTOPIA, could 

destroy the entire municipal broadband 

experiment if it failed financially. 

Using Dr. Cohill’s analogy of telecom 

with transportation infrastructure, 

our view of early open-access networks 

was that most of them were built to be 

toll roads; that, like toll roads, they were 

financed with government bonds; and 

that they simply didn’t generate enough 

toll-paying traffic to pay off the debt. In 

fact, we were concerned that some of 

them wouldn’t generate enough traffic 


James Salter is chief strategy officer for Atlantic Engineering Group, a design-build 

firm that has built 22 municipal FTTH networks (19 retail, three open access). Prior 

to founding the firm in 1995, he was a municipal utility manager. Mr. Salter is also 

a former chairman of the FTTH Council. 



For open-access networks to succeed, 

network builders must find sources of revenue 

beyond the triple play. The smart grid offers 

a revolutionary opportunity to make these 

networks more financially viable. 

to pay the booth workers to collect the 

tolls! 

Why didn’t they have enough tollpaying 

traffic First, incumbent providers 

didn’t have any incentive, either 

financial or political, to encourage their 

traffic to use the roads. They had their 

own roads. Joining an open-access network 

as a service provider would have 

forced an incumbent to do one of two 

things – abandon its existing copper or 

coax infrastructure or compete against 

itself for customers. 

Neither strategy made any sense; the 

incumbent would have to either abandon 

and write off its plant asset or turn 

its high-margin legacy customers into 

lower-margin, open-network customers. 

In addition, although nonincumbent 

retail service providers joined the openaccess 

networks, they didn’t deliver as 

many cars and trucks to the road as network 

owners had hoped or anticipated. In 

early deployments, the service providers 

were all relatively small, underfunded enterprises 

trying to create entrepreneurial 

opportunities for their businesses. These 

providers had a powerful incentive to try 

negotiating with municipalities to keep 

all the money they collected (“Lower the 

toll, and I’ll deliver more traffic to make 

up the difference”), thus reducing the 

revenue dollars available to repay the municipal 

indebtedness. Tight cash-flow requirements 

made these service providers 

scale their level of service to meet immediate 

capex needs or cash-flow availability. 

Poor service quality, in turn, reduced 

the number of toll-paying customers. 

Both these issues – no incumbent 

traffic and low take rates – put tremendous 

pressure on the business plans for 

repaying the bonds issued to build the 

early open-access fiber networks. 

Fortunately, times and viewpoints 

have evolved. I’m here to tell you that 

I believe Dr. Cohill was right in his 

view about the virtues of open access in 

2002, and he is right today. Open access 

is the deployment model that will 

get broadband networks built in smaller 

and rural markets, and it is the model 

that will increase universal bandwidth 

availability the fastest. As Dr. Cohill 

said in his article, the standard “bucket 

model” for broadband (if users empty 

the bucket, the service provider refills it) 

is broken and can’t be fixed. I really like 

that analogy. 

Citizen Involvement 

With Network Costs 

How will we get the third way for broadband 

to work 

First, we must accept that open-access 

networks may not work financially without 

some public money. For the model 

to work, I believe citizens will have to 

buy down the cost of networks, using 

a sort of “Consumer Communications 

Savings Index.” Lack of direct citizen involvement 

in the cost of these networks 

is the primary reason that the United 

States is 23rd (and flailing) in terms of 

broadband deployment worldwide. 

The majority of the 22 countries 

ahead of us have decided that some 

form of governmental involvement in 

the cost of broadband deployments is 

the only way to make the buildout happen 

as quickly as it needs to happen. If 

you analyze the real consumer savings 

associated with a competitive FTTH 

network, you will realize that the idea of 

citizens, either individually or through 

local governments, buying down a portion 

of network costs may not be such a 

terrible idea at all. 

Where will this consumer savings 

come from One source is the savings 

associated with competition. Residents 

of Atlanta, where I live, pay about $165 

per month for basic voice, video and 

data services provided by a duopoly of 

telephone and CATV incumbents. In a 

typical muni FTTH network that my 

firm has built, the competitive triple 

play costs around $110. This consumer 

savings of $660 per year would repay 

the cost of the network ($2,500 per 

home served) in about four years. This 

is an oversimplification, of course, but 

my point is that we must develop alternative 

thinking for a communityfunded 

model. UTOPIA’s experiment 

in Brigham City, in which consumers 

prepurchase their FTTH connections, 

is a perfect example of direct consumer 

involvement in funding the networks. 

Telecom and the Smart Grid 

Another important part of the openaccess 

success equation is leveraging the 

network for multiple purposes, not just 

the telecom triple play. This has the effect 

of providing economies of scale, or 

spreading the capex and opex costs over 

more service units. 

Network operators can achieve 

economies of scale in many ways, from 

sharing IPTV video headends to forming 

multigovernmental networks. Those 

strategies can all contribute to the financial 

success of open-access networks, 

but I’m convinced there is an even bigger, 

revolutionary opportunity available 

to make these networks more viable 

through cost sharing: the smart grid. 

Muni electric utilities such as Bristol 

Tennessee Essential Services (BTES) 

and Chattanooga EPB, even though 

they both use retail telecom models, are 

amortizing significant portions of their 

networks for their value to the electric 

system. Both these communities are 

convinced that smart-grid requirements 

are going to necessitate advanced communications 

capability to their electricity 

customers, and they are convinced 

that FTTH will meet that need. 

My personal view is that this marriage 

of the smart electric grid with telecommunications 

is the single biggest 

opportunity for the cost sharing that 



will ensure the financial success of openaccess 

networks. Dr. Michael Browder, 

CEO of BTES, was originally driven to 

consider building an FTTH network 

because a severe ice storm destroyed 

much of the utility’s electric system, and 

he wanted a better outage reporting system, 

which required communications 

capability to individual residences. Similarly, 

Harold DePriest, CEO of Chattanooga 

EPB, has often said that EPB 

didn’t build its FTTH network for cable 

television; it built it for better electric 

system performance and reliability. 

As an old electric utility guy myself, 

I believe that smart-grid technologies for 

electric utilities are inevitable, not because 

of Al Gore and some “green conspiracy” 

but rather because the cost of 

inefficiency in the American electric grid 

is too high to ignore any longer. Just look 

at the numbers: The electric generating 

capacity in this country is approximately 

900,000 megawatts. However, the average 

hourly usage of electricity throughout 

the year is about 450,000 megawatts, 

so on average people use only about 50 

percent of the capacity of these expensive 

power generating plants. The only time 

we use all 900,000 megawatts is on hot 

summer afternoons during a nationwide 

heat wave, when every family is running 

its air conditioning wide open. 

Building a new power generating 

plant costs about $4 million per megawatt. 

Think about that staggering number 

– $4 million per megawatt to build 

and, on average, we’ve got 450,000 

megawatts of unused electric generation 

available to us. That is $1.8 trillion extra 

dollars invested in a system that isn’t used 

very efficiently. This usage curve must be 

changed nationwide, or electricity costs 

will skyrocket in the future. This is what 

creates the real need for a smart grid 

that will give consumers feedback and 

choices about how to use their electricity 

resources. This smart grid will have tremendous 

data requirements, making it a 

perfect partner to help amortize the cost 

of the open-access network. The community 

doesn’t have to have a municipal 

electric utility to make the scheme work, 

but having the local electric company as 

a partner should be a cornerstone goal. 

To induce incumbents to offer services, openaccess 

community networks might provide 

incentives, such as buying out depreciated assets 

or offering favorable prices during the transition. 

Getting Incumbents Involved 

Finally, how do we get incumbents involved 

in these open-access networks 

Not an easy question, but here are a few 

thoughts: 

• As for CATV incumbents – well, sell 

your CATV stock now! If video remains 

the cornerstone of their business, 

they are in trouble. Studies show 

that 8 percent of Americans will pull 

the plug on traditional CATV or satellite 

services this year and get their 

video entertainment from the Internet, 

including from such services 

as Hulu and Netflix. Those are the 

8 percent of households that have 

broadband connections fast enough 

to allow video options. I’m not young 

and cool, but even I am watching 

online video, although I haven’t quit 

paying my exorbitant satellite TV 

bill each month ($150 per month for 

“all in”). I’m now paying about $25 

per hour for the six hours of satellite 

TV I watch in a month. CATV has 

a decent broadband pipe with DOC- 

SIS 3.0, but it’s not a pipe that will 

compete long-term against FTTH. 

My advice to cable providers is to get 

on community-owned, open-access 

networks as retail service providers 

while they still own the customers. 

They could use their current cash 

flow to transition their basic business 

model to a service model, rather than 

the capital-intensive network ownership 

model they are presently trying 

to keep on life support. Maybe we 

should give them “most favored nation” 

status on our new open-access 

networks for a few years. 

• The incumbent telephone companies 

are a different matter. One of them, 

Verizon, has embraced FTTH as its 

technology of choice. But the truth 

is that Verizon and AT&T are making 

less and less margin from wired 

services and more and more margin 

from wireless services. If my mobile 

phone bill is $150 per month and 

my DSL/wireline phone bill is $50 

per month, where do you think they 

should put their focus I’ll bet if “the 

people” could make the ILECs an 

offer for their depreciated wireline 

networks and convert them to open 

networks, the incumbents would 

jump at the chance to dump them 

– which would essentially take the 

wireline business back to being a regulated 

entity. This would allow a netneutral 

broadband pipe while leaving 

the wireless business model alone. 

I wish I had a more definitive answer 

for what to do about enticing the incumbents 

to join in our reindeer games. 

I do know that it isn’t good for the 

country when an incumbent obstructs a 

community that wants to build its own 

network to improve its communications 

infrastructure. As Google is doing with 

its open-access experiment, Americans 

must think in new, fair, but radical ways 

to encourage innovation in the broadband 

arena. 

The United States isn’t entitled by 

birthright to be number one in preparedness 

for the information age in which we 

now live. We must continually earn the 

number one spot, and we’re way behind 

– which could cost this country dearly in 

the years ahead in the competitive world 

economy. We should be applauding all 

those communities willing to take the 

risk of building FTTH networks in an 

attempt to facilitate positive change on 

behalf of their citizens, whether they 

employ a retail model or an open-access 

model. BBP 


INDUSTRY ANALYSIS 

FiOS vs. U-verse 

Verizon and AT&T have taken very different approaches to building and 

marketing their next-generation access networks. A noted industry analyst 

shares his insights about the two telco giants and their competition with 

the cable companies – and each other. 

By Clifford R. Holliday ■ B & C Consulting Services 

On May 29, 2003, the three largest 

Regional Bell Operating 

Companies (RBOCs) – Bell- 

South, AT&T and Verizon – announced 

that they had adopted a common set of 

technical specifications for the delivery 

of fiber to the premises. In other times, 

such an announcement would have been 

viewed by most as another technical 

standardization and elicited a big yawn. 

However, at that time it was the biggest 

news in the telecommunications world – 

perhaps the biggest in years – and it continues 

to be big news today. 

The initial announcement was followed 

by a joint RFP issued in June 2003 

to select vendors for the FTTP equipment. 

Responses and vendor selections 

were scheduled for the third quarter of 

2003, with initial deployments to begin 

in 2004. This schedule was not completely 

met, but the RBOCs were close. 

Then in late 2005, the RBOCs issued an 

RFP for GPON approaches to FTTP. In 

mid-2006, Verizon announced awards 

under that RFP. AT&T announced its 

GPON vendors in mid-2007. 

In 2003, the biggest news was that 

three RBOCs actually agreed on a direction 

and issued an RFP. At the time, 

the RBOCs didn’t agree on much of 

anything else. In 2004, the main story 

was the technology and the fact that 

the RBOCs (at least Verizon) were serious 

about an FTTP program and had 

begun deployment. By 2005, the main 

story was that the RBOCs (at least Verizon) 

were going into residential video 

delivery in a big way. After a lot of tests, 

learning curves, false starts and failures, 

the RBOCs were really committing to a 

With 3 million and 2 million video subscribers, 

Verizon and AT&T now rank number eight and 

number 10 among U.S. video providers. That’s 

impressive, considering that they’re newcomers. 

massive effort to compete on a network 

basis in residential video delivery. Those 

of us who had been in the industry for 

a long time remembered the RBOCs’ 

1985–1987 video trials in Cerritos, 

Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; and elsewhere, and 

we wondered whether they had learned 

enough to be successful in this very difficult 

business. 

The reason for the excitement about 

their entry into the video business was 

that these RBOCs (now down to two 

since AT&T’s acquisition of BellSouth) 

serve about 80 million of the approximately 

150 million access lines in the 

United States. They also control the largest 

interexchange carriers and the largest 

cellular phone companies. The companies 

are the powerhouses of the telecom 

world. In a recent year, their capital expenditures 

were 76 percent of the total 

by major telephone companies and more 

than 46 percent of all capital spent by 

all telecommunications carriers. Clearly, 

these companies have the financial power 

to rule the equipment markets. 

When the equipment vendors looked 

at the potential size of a project to bring 

fiber near these companies’ customers, 

they visualized a return to the go-go 

days of the late 1990s telecom market. 

At $1,000 to $1,500 capital cost per installed 

fiber line, a program that involves 

more than 100 million lines could easily 

drive a return to profitability for many 

equipment vendors. 

FiOS and U-verse Today: 

Major Video Providers 

The “new” AT&T and Verizon have 

moved into the video business in a massive 

way. These two RBOCs are now 

major providers in the residential TV 

delivery business. As of the end of 2009, 


Clifford Holliday is president of B & C Consulting Services, which provides telecommunications 

consulting to government and industry, and is a noted telecommunications 

analyst at Information Gatekeepers Inc. This article is excerpted from his 

new report, “FiOS vs. U-verse,” available from Information Gatekeepers at www. 

igigroup.com. You can contact Clif at c.holliday@ieee.org. 



Verizon had nearly 3 million video subscribers 

and AT&T had slightly more 

than 2 million. These numbers put them 

in the ranks of the top 10 video providers 

in the United States – Verizon at number 

eight and AT&T at number 10 – which 

was impressive, considering that many of 

the others on the list have been in the 

video business for decades. In addition, 

they both rank consistently at the top of 

customer-satisfaction polls of video customers. 

By the end of 2010, we expect 

Verizon to exceed 3.5 million FiOS TV 

subscriptions and AT&T to reach about 

3 million U-verse Video subscriptions. 

Both companies have deployed several 

relatively new technologies in their 

entries into the video business, including 

IPTV, FTTP, VDSL, fiber to the node 

(FTTN) and residential gateways. The 

RBOCs use just about every imaginable 

combination of those technologies to 

achieve their objectives. 

FiOS and U-verse 

Deployments Slow 

The 2008–2009 recession had the expected 

effect of slowing down capital expenditures 

for FiOS and U-verse. AT&T 

reported in its 2009 annual report that 

wireline capital expenditures decreased 

by 21 percent, due in part to a reduction 

in expenditures on U-verse. Similarly, 

the number of high-speed Internet customers 

added by FiOS dropped by about 

40 percent from the second quarter of 

2008 to the second half of 2009. 

The recession has definitively put 

a damper on the growth of advancedaccess 

architecture (AAA) services, for 

FiOS much more than for U-verse. As of 

mid-2010, it is not at all clear that FiOS 

will ever resume the robust gains it was 

making before the recession. 

The recession is not the only factor 

slowing AAA growth. In public announcements, 

Verizon executives have 

said they will not expand the FiOS network 

beyond the originally planned 18 

million homes passed. The company will 

reach that goal by the end of 2010 and 

now says that it will curtail construction 

growth activities and focus on marketing 

to the 18-million-home footprint. 

Verizon is in the process of selling off 

a number of its wireline services (most 

of them formerly GTE properties) to 

Frontier. This sale will reduce Verizon’s 

wireline footprint from approximately 

32 million to 27 million customers. This 

sale will also reduce the number of FiOS 

homes passed by about 750,000 of the 

18 million. (Frontier will continue to 

serve those customers.) 

However, although curtailing construction 

may seem like an end to FiOS 

growth, that interpretation would be 

very misleading. Verizon reports that 

it is achieving an average penetration 

rate of about 25 percent with FiOS. 

That leaves 75 percent of the footprint 

to market. The company could easily 

double and may even triple the number 

of FiOS customers without adding any 

more construction. 

The Net Neutrality Issue 

Net neutrality is another reason given 

for the slowing of construction. The issue 

heated up a few years ago when one 

cable company limited transmission of 

an extremely high-byte-rate usage service 

on its Internet service. It is now 

entangled with the issue of whether the 

Federal Communications Commission 

(FCC) should regulate broadband offerings 

under Title 1 or Title 2 of the Communications 

Act. Title 1 is for information 

services and involves much lighter 

regulation than Title 2, which is for telecommunications 

common carriers. A 

third scheme being considered by some 

of the FCC commissioners, denoted as 

the “third way,” offers a compromise between 

Title 1 and Title 2 regulation. 

The major carriers, including AT&T 

and Verizon, are opposing any change 

from Title 1, and AT&T has rather 

pointedly stated that changing to Title 2 

regulation would result in a curtailment 

of its investment in U-verse. 

The FCC will make a decision on this 

in 2010. Many writers (this one included) 

think AT&T may already have made a 

decision to slow construction spending 

on U-verse, and is using this regulatory 

issue as a scapegoat. 

Overbuilding 

This leaves a question about Verizon’s 

experiment with overbuilding adjacent 

AT&T territories in Texas. (Full disclosure: 

The author lives in such a territory 

and has just purchased a FiOS 

installation.) 

The advantages for Verizon of overbuilding 

are as follows: 

• First, and most obviously, overbuilding 

gives Verizon access to 

more customers – and not just any 

customers. Normally, a telephone 

company’s customer base is limited 

by the historical accidents that led to 

the creation of its franchise boundaries. 

There is no process for selecting 

customers. With an overbuild, Verizon 

has the ability to select its new 

customers. Of course, it will select 

high demographics or highly mobile 

demographics – both very good markets 

for new technologies that may 

be relatively expensive. 

• By adding addressable customers, 

Verizon broadens its base for video 

programming. Programming is sold 

to a network based on the number 

of eyes that network may bring to 

the programming. By being able to 

selectively broaden its customer base, 

Verizon has the opportunity to lower 

its programming costs. 

• By growing out of franchise, Verizon 

also has the option of expanding its 

footprint for businesses. This same 

architecture could be selectively expanded 

to pick off prime technology 

parks, corporate offices and so forth. 

• This expansion could be done within 

current capital budget commitments 

by delaying planned additions of 

FiOS in franchise and instead using 

the funds to serve what it calls “near 

out of franchise” (NOOF), or areas 

close to its incumbent footprint. Verizon 

can always serve the in-franchise 

customers later. 

• A NOOF overbuild can use existing 

higher-level infrastructure (that 

is, higher than the access plant), including 

central-office buildings, and 

take advantage of trained technical 

personnel already in the area. 

• Because Verizon can select areas 

where demand for FiOS services will 

be high, overbuilding should achieve 

a higher rate of growth for FiOS and 

improve bottom-line results. 



This is a very impressive list of advantages, 

and it makes me think Verizon 

must have more in mind than just 

northeast Texas. 

Possible locations for 

Verizon Overbuilds 

GTE, which was merged into Verizon, 

was known as the “suburban telephone 

company.” GTE did not have many 

large cities in its service area, but it was 

well located in the suburbs of some of 

the nation’s largest cities. In northeast 

Texas, Verizon is using exactly these 

suburban cities around the Dallas-Fort 

Worth Metroplex for overbuilding into 

AT&T areas. 

Other former GTE areas that are 

currently part of Verizon include suburbs 

surrounding Los Angeles, Houston, 

Seattle, Portland and Chicago, among 

others. Many of these are being sold by 

Verizon to Frontier, but the California 

territories are not. California is the obvious 

next target for Verizon. The market 

is huge, and the company has many old 

GTE franchises that surround the entirety 

of Los Angeles, which is AT&T 

territory. This area would be a perfect 

target of opportunity for Verizon, and 

AT&T could suddenly be subjected to 

some very strenuous competition in very 

large, lucrative markets. 

Architectures of FiOS 

and U-verse 

The architectures of FiOS and U-verse 

are very different and represent very 

different design philosophies. FiOS is 

primarily an FTTP approach, while 

U-verse is primarily FTTN. 

FiOS is an effort to future-proof the 

installation. The design approach of placing 

fiber all the way to the end customer 

attempts to put in place a facility that 

will never have to be changed. Advances 

will be accommodated by changing the 

equipment on the ends of the fiber, but 

the facility itself is a lifetime facility. This 

philosophy is very well illustrated by the 

following quote from Paul Lacouture, 

then Verizon’s executive vice president 

for network and technology, explaining 

the company’s announcement that 

it would switch from BPON to GPON 

technology: 

“GPON is the next step in the evolution 

of the all-fiber-access network. 

When we first launched the nation’s only 

large-scale FTTP program in 2004, we 

said that one of the most important competitive 

and cost-effective features is that 

we could increase speed and capabilities 

by evolving to more advanced electronics 

and without having to change the 

fiber we had already deployed or are deploying. 

Today’s announcement begins 

to fulfill that promise. 

“In addition to the ability to boost 

our broadband Internet speeds on fiber, 

this new technology will enhance the 

video-on-demand capabilities of our existing 

FiOS TV product on fiber and sets 

the stage for an all-IP TV offering in the 

future. This new technology also brings 

us substantial cost benefits, allowing us 

to reduce costs of the electronics portion 

of the FTTP platform by about 25 percent. 

The bottom line is that this is an 

access network at the local level that is 

without peer in this industry.” 

By contrast, U-verse seeks to achieve 

a relatively high-bandwidth delivery to 

the customer while minimizing the capital 

costs of new fiber. It places fiber only 

to neighborhood nodes that are as much 

as 5,000 feet from the end customer. The 

remainder of the route is composed of existing 

copper wire plant. This approach 

results in placing much less fiber and 

consequently requires far less capital. 

Three predominant AAAs are in use 

by telcos today, and those used by the 

cable companies are generally similar 

except for having coax on the last leg. 

These are the AT&T approach of fiber 

to the node, the Verizon approach of fiber 

to the premises and the BellSouth 

(now AT&T) approach of fiber to the 

curb (Figure 1). 

Since Alexander Bell first decided 

to build outside plant, telephone engineers 

have debated the best way to extend 

service to the final mile. The debate 

continues now with the various FTTx 

schemes for bringing fiber close to the 

customer. In some ways, the debate has 

not changed much – it is still about the 

economics of each approach – but in one 

very real way, it is different now. 

In the past, this debate was always 

about plain old telephone service 

(POTS) and the economics of various 

way of providing it. Now, although the 

debate is still about economics, it is also, 

maybe even more, about alternative ways 

to meet requirements for the bandwidth 

needed for some very exotic services. 

The question is not just “Which is 

cheaper” but “What services will I provide 

“How many of each service will 

the customer need” “How much bandwidth 

do I provide for these requirements” 

and “How will compression 

Service Architecture Name Description Distance of Last Leg 

Now defunct FTTC Fiber to the 

Curb 

Very near the home – used primarily by 

BellSouth. Can be used with VDSL to 

deliver HDTV, high-speed data and voice. 

500 feet 

U-verse FTTN Fiber to the 

Node 

FiOS FTTH/P Fiber to the 

Home/Premises 

Serves a subdivision – AT&T and Qwest 

current primary plan. Can be used with 

VDSL2 or ADSL2+ to deliver HDTV, highspeed 

data and voice. 

Fiber all the way to the house – Verizon’s 

current plan. 

Figure 1: Predominant Advanced-Access Architectures 

3,000–5,000 feet 

N/A 



advances impact my choices” The answers 

to these questions now guide the 

technology choices for the last mile at 

least as much as economics does. 

While the debate was never simple, 

the addition of new unknowns about 

service requirements makes it much 

more complex. To see how complex, one 

just needs to note that the three (now 

two) major telcos – Verizon, AT&T and 

BellSouth – studied this issue with all 

their great resources and came up with 

three completely different answers! 

Figure 2: Bandwidth Needs Through 2013 

In earlier years, the bandwidth capacity 

of access networks was a moot 

issue because the bandwidth needed 

was only what was necessary for a voice 

call. Now the local loop is carrying data 

and, most recently, television. With 

the desire for high-speed data driving 

ever-higher-bandwidth data services, 

and with video now in the equation, 

the need for bandwidth is much more 

complex. The answer to the question of 

bandwidth requirements drives multiple 

billions of dollars of capital investment 

on the part of the local telephone and 

cable companies. (See Figure 2.) 

This chart shows that, by 2013, the 

need for bandwidth to the home will be 

driven by the delivery of multiple highdefinition 

television (HDTV) channels, 

which will account for 80 percent of 

the total requirement. This requirement 

will far exceed any other driver of bandwidth. 

Traditional voice is so small as 

to barely be visible on the graph. Even 

high-speed data is only a minor percentage 

of the requirement. 

The chart also forecasts the virtual 

end of standard-bandwidth video by the 

end of the period. By then, we expect 

virtually all telecasts from the major 

networks and local stations in the top 50 

markets to be in high definition. Standard-definition 

television will be limited 

to specialty networks, local feeds and 

small-market stations. Although standard 

TV sets will certainly receive HD 

signals, having so much high-definition 

programming available will certainly 

drive customers to upgrade. 

Remembering that AAA deployment 

is, at least initially, going into areas 

with high marketability (also known as 

higher income), we should understand 

that AAA bandwidth demand is not national 

average bandwidth demand. To 

meet the needs of high-marketability areas, 

more bandwidth than the national 

average will be required. Figure 3 addresses 

this type of area. 

The bandwidth requirements shown 

2013 Bandwidth Requirement Scenario 

Item Channels Bandwidth 

(Incremental) Mbps 

Per Customer, 

Watching Video Mbps 

HD Channels @ 8 Mbps each 

High-Speed Data Channels at 8 Mbps each 

68% watching one HD set 22x.68=15 120 8 

68% watching two HD sets 22x.68=15 120 8 

additional 

68% recording two HD channels on a DVR 2x22x.68=30 240 16 

68% using high-speed Internet access. 22x.68=15 highspeed 

120 8 

channels 

Total 600 40 

Figure 3: 2013 Bandwidth Requirements 



Bandwidth Item 

Four HD Video Streams 

Amount of Bandwidth Required 

4x8=32 Mbps 

Data Channel Minimum = 5 Mbps, but more likely at least 8 

Mbps to be competitive 

Voice 

1 @ 64 Kbps 

Total Requirement 40 Mbps 

Figure 4: Forecast Access Bandwidth Requirements 2013 

Why Is U-verse 

Outselling FiOS 

Verizon started selling and marketing its 

FiOS service earlier than AT&T started 

selling U-verse, and because of that 

head start, Verizon remains the leader in 

terms of customers served. But in recent 

quarters, U-verse has begun to catch up, 

and it has outsold FiOS substantially. 

in Figure 3 reflect the need for four simultaneous 

HD streams per household 

in 2013 and a simultaneous high-speed 

data channel. This represents only two 

HDTV sets and a single DVR or multiple 

HDTV sets with two DVRs. We 

actually feel this is a very modest requirement 

given the above statistics. It 

is competitive only with what is now offered 

by satellite TV services. 

By comparison, AT&T started to 

offer two HD streams with U-verse 

in some markets in mid-2008. Verizon 

has had multiple streams available 

with FiOS almost from the beginning. 

FiOS also offers multiple additional HD 

streams from its RF overlay. 

In Figure 4, taking the four HD 

streams and the voice and data requirements, 

we forecast a need for 40 Mbps 

in 2013. 

This is clearly above the capabilities 

of VDSL2 except at much shorter 

distances than are planned in U-verse. 

Note that the 5 Mbps for data is very 

conservative. Verizon’s current lowestspeed 

offering is twice this – 10 Mbps. 

AT&T has recently begun to offer data 

speeds of 24 Mbps but not with four 

streams of high-definition video. 

Figure 5: Cumulative Subscribers for FiOS and U-verse 

In spite of technical shortcomings, U-verse 

manages to play up its positive features while 

Verizon seems to hide some of its. 

Verizon has what is arguably a superior 

product, at least in terms of bandwidth 

delivery, and Verizon has achieved a 3:2 

dominance in the market over AT&T. 

However, in the last three quarters, 

AT&T has been outselling FiOS by substantial 

(35 to 40 percent) margins. As 

Figure 5 illustrates, this author forecasts 

that U-verse will nearly catch up with 

FiOS in the next few years. Why 

One reason is certainly that AT&T 

is doing a much better job of marketing 

its service. In spite of technical shortcomings, 

U-verse manages to play up 

its positive features while Verizon seems 

to hide some of its. A clear example of 

this is in the number of channels that a 

user can record simultaneously. AT&T 

makes a major point of telling users 

they can record four simultaneous programs 

with the U-verse DVR. It doesn’t 

mention that the service is capable of 

delivering only two HD streams to the 

home because of bandwidth limitations. 

FiOS, on the other hand, has plenty of 

bandwidth but fails to utilize it because 

it provides an outmoded DVR that is capable 

of recording only two programs. 

In addition, AT&T does much more 

to promote U-verse. Living in one of 

the few areas that can receive both services, 

I see the marketing materials from 

both companies. AT&T sends out much 

more material, and it has much better 

offers (incentives.) Maybe we just throw 

most of the marketing materials away, 

but advertising does work. BBP 


Technology 

A New Fiber Deployment 

Technique for Brownfield 

Conversions 

Using Kabel-X technology, Buckeye CableSystem in Ohio upgraded a neighborhood 

from hybrid fiber-coax to fiber to the home in record time. 

By Michael K. Hebbard ■ Kabel-X USA 

Like most of today’s telecommunications 

carriers, Buckeye Cable- 

System of Toledo, Ohio, found 

itself facing an ever-expanding array of 

real and potential competitors, running 

the gamut from new wireline competitors 

to innovative Internet programming 

options. As they often do, these 

new competitive pressures prompted 

Buckeye to consider new ways to differentiate 

itself in the market. 

Already a formidable competitor 

with a modern HFC network, an aggressive 

presence in business services and 

a robust offering of video, Internet and 

telephone services, Buckeye concluded 

that a fiber-to-the-home offering – with 

its potential of much faster upload and 

download speeds, greatly expanded 

video options and superior uptime – 

seemed like the natural answer. However, 

the high cost and risk of deploying 

fiber through existing neighborhoods 

made Buckeye pause, until the company 

heard about Kabel-X technology. 

A No-Dig Method 

The Kabel-X cable extraction process 

was invented in Austria. It is marketed 

in North America by Kabel-X USA 

LLC, a privately held Florida company. 

The system allows network operators 

such as Buckeye to convert existing, 

buried cables to optical fiber without 

trenching or boring in a fraction 

of the time required for conventional 

placement methods. Instead of rolling 

heavy machinery through the backyards 

of their customers, digging up their 

yards and disrupting their lives, companies 

using the Kabel-X process connect 

small, quiet electric pumps to existing 

cables, extract the old copper or aluminum 

cores and insert new fiber in the 

old cable sheaths. 

outer sheath. When the fluid is brought 

up to pressure, it squeezes the core to a 

smaller diameter so it can be pulled away 

from the surrounding sheath. Loosened 

and lubricated by the Kabel-X fluid, the 

core is then extracted easily, leaving the 

empty sheath in place. 

The process works on almost any 

telecommunications cable and on some 

The Kabel-X process involves extracting old 

copper cores from existing cables and inserting 

new fiber in the old cable sheaths. 

It’s like magic – almost. Actually, it 

is more like physics with a little chemistry 

mixed in. 

Even though outside-plant cables 

are not intended to be disassembled in 

the field, the Kabel-X process does just 

that. Kabel-X certified technicians direct 

a nontoxic, nonflammable, nonhazardous 

fluid into the small space between 

the cable’s soft inner core and its hard 

power cables as well. In general, the stronger 

the outer sheath, the higher the pressure 

that can be applied inside the cable 

and the faster the process works. More 

compressible cores extract more easily 

than cores filled with incompressible 

jellies and water-blocking compounds. 

Harder, less compressible cores require 

higher pressures than softer ones. In the 

case of large, lead-sheathed telephone 


Michael Hebbard is the chief operating officer for Kabel-X USA. His 35 years of telecommunications 

experience include telephone company engineering, construction, 

and operations; wireless and wireline CATV services; and international business 

ventures. Find out more at www.kabelxusa.com 


Technology 

The BrightPath splitter 

Bringing the cable up 

to pressure 

The coax core being extracted from the sheath 

The coax core being extracted from the sheath 

The coax core being coiled 

after extraction 

Bringing the cable up 

to pressure 

cables, which have soft inner cores but 

weak outer sheaths that can withstand 

relatively little pressure, a 500-foot span 

of cable between manholes can take a 

couple of hours to extract. By contrast, 

500 feet of P3-type coaxial cable can be 

extracted in 10 minutes or less. 

There are other variables as well. Pulpinsulated 

telephone cables require fluids 

that can coat and lubricate their paper 

wrappers without damaging the paper 

itself. Hard-line coaxial cores, with no 

separate layers to seal their foam cores, 

require fluids that can creep between 

the core and the outer sheath without 

soaking into the foam. Cables without 

welded-ring outer sheaths – including 

flooded telephone cables and braidedsheath 

coax drops – require different fluids 

and special low-pressure regimes. 

Some cables lend themselves well to 

simple mechanical attachments; others 

require that steel fittings first be glued 

to the outer sheath before hydraulic 

couplers can be attached. The ideal fluid 

selection, connection process, pressure 

regime and extraction process is different 

for each type and size of cable. 

Customizing the Process 

Kabel-X USA maintains an extensive 

inventory of cable design data and test 

results and has formulated fluids, core 

isolation techniques and pressure regimes 

to extract the cores of most common 

telecommunications cables. Sample 

lengths of less common cables are sent to 

the Kabel-X Operations Center in Davie, 

Fla., where a team of expert technicians 

develops recipes for optimal results 

and fine-tunes the Kabel-X fluids and attachment 

hardware to speed the extraction 

process. For larger jobs, the Kabel-X 

team can even tweak fluids and recipes 

in the field as job experience dictates. 

Though the science behind the 

Kabel-X process is fairly complex, the 

implementation process is very simple. 

In the field, a Kabel-X trained and certified 

technician following a Kabel-X 

recipe attaches a special hydraulic fitting 

to a prepped coax or twisted-pair telephone 

cable, then connects the fitting 

to a Kabel-X pump and fluid flow meter. 

The technician pumps the specified 

proprietary fluid into the cable core and 

brings it to the correct pressure, loosening 

the core from the cable sheath. Then 

the core is extracted, leaving behind the 

metal turnplate and outer cable sheath, 

which are used as a conduit. Using pull 

strings or cable-blowing technology, the 

technician inserts a new fiber cable core, 

or even a complete new cable, into the 

conduit. In a matter of minutes, an old 

cable becomes a new one. 

Compared with other methods of 

placing underground fiber cable, the 

Kabel-X process requires far less field 

engineering, needs less detailed design 

work, consumes less on-site construction 

time and practically eliminates site 

restoration. As a result, the process is 


Technology 

In most cases, the Kabel-X process requires 

no digging – which is one reason it cuts cable 

replacement costs by 40 percent to 70 percent. 

However, to be reused, a cable must have a 

sheath that can withstand some pressure. 

Damaged and missing cables present problems 

that require extra work. 

much faster and much more economical 

than conventional overbuilding. As 

a bonus, because the process reuses existing 

cables and discourages wasting 

precious natural resources, it is environmentally 

friendly. It is not a coincidence 

that the Kabel-X logo is green. 

Kabel-X customers can save an estimated 

40 percent to 70 percent of 

cable replacement costs using Kabel-X 

extraction. These enormous savings 

stem from eliminating the need to reengineer 

cable routes, to bore or cut and 

restore neighborhood lawns and streets 

and to repair the collateral damage that 

occurs so often in the course of burying 

new facilities. 

The speed of the process also appeals 

to system operators. A two-person crew 

can convert more than a mile of coax 

cable to fiber in a day, making it possible 

to consider the conversion of an entire 

neighborhood from coax to fiber in a 

single night. Instead of costly, long-leadtime 

system redesigns, Kabel-X customers 

can upgrade areas as small as a single 

node to FTTH technology in a matter 

of days, working from the existing pedestals, 

with no need for cable locates, 

permits or new rights-of-way. 

This potential for almost instantaneous 

upgrades adds a whole new dimension 

to considerations of competitive 

response and is what ultimately led 

Buckeye to turn to Kabel-X for its fiber 

conversion needs. 

Buckeye’s Pilot Deployment 

Once Buckeye’s technical team learned 

that it could deploy fiber in existing 

neighborhoods without trenching, directional 

boring, cutting streets or generally 

annoying its customers, at a fraction 

of the cost of traditional construction 

methods, the company decided on a 

pilot project to provide fiber directly 

to the 160 homes in its Carrington 

Woods neighborhood near Toledo, using 

a modified version of CommScope’s 

BrightPath FTTH distributed-splitting 

architecture. 

Carrington Woods presented Buckeye 

and Kabel-X with a perfect demonstration 

environment. The neighborhood 

layout was ideal for the BrightPath solution, 

and old coax facilities still in place 

from an earlier rebuild gave Buckeye 

and Kabel-X plenty of opportunity to 

experiment with a variety of coax types 

and sizes, different fiber cable configurations 

and different fiber cable placement 

methods without disrupting service to 

existing customers. 

The old cables were mostly located 

on front lot lines and had a significant 

number of splices and cut or damaged 

points. Buckeye was eager to see whether 

the Kabel-X technology could work with 

less-than-perfect facilities and whether 

the resulting pathways would permit 

economical fiber placement and splicing 

arrangements. Buckeye also wanted to 

see how the emptied-out cable sheaths 

would stand up to the cold, wet Ohio 

winters. 

Kabel-X trained and certified Buckeye’s 

local contractor, Metro Fiber and 

Cable Construction Company; provided 

Metro with the necessary extraction 

equipment and fittings; and 

supplied the proprietary KX-40 fluid 

specially formulated for P3 coax cable. 

By connecting the cable to the pump at 

each pedestal, Metro Fiber technicians 

were able to remove the core from more 

than 17,000 feet of cable in less than 

two weeks with minimal impact on the 

community. With only one exception, 

every section of the cable core came out 

when pumped and every defective spot 

was found and fixed. I’ll tell you more 

about the problem section later. 

Well, Almost No Digging 

Some digging was required, of course. 

Although the Kabel-X process is extremely 

reliable, it does require that 

a reused cable have a sheath that can 

withstand some pressure and a core that 

can provide a pathway for the Kabel-X 

fluid. Old buried repairs, flat spots, cuts 

and even missing cables present unique 

problems. Fortunately, we in the telecommunications 

industry have seen 

all these potential showstoppers many 

times before. 

Most of the digging involved finding 

the sections where the old cable had been 

cut off and the old pedestals removed. 

Sometimes neither end of the cable was 

available for attachment, and there were 

a number of old cables in the ground. 

Locating the correct cable ends was the 

hardest part of the whole process. Once 

technicians found them, they pieced 

out the cut-off cables and brought them 

back into the pedestals. 

When the Kabel-X process reaches 

a hidden splice, fluid flow in the cable 

stops. Fortunately, the injection of the 

Kabel-X fluid into the core dramatically 

changes the electrical characteristics of 

the coax cable, and simple time-domain 

reflectometer (TDR) measurements can 

quickly pinpoint the exact distance to 

the splice. Once the splice is dug up, reattaching 

the Kabel-X pump takes only 

a couple of minutes, and the extraction 

process moves on as before. When the 

core is out, the old splice connector is 

replaced with a new, hollow one. 

Flattened and damaged sections are 

resolved just as easily. Serious dents, 

kinks and cut cables are best found 

with the TDR and fixed before pumping. 

Leaks, on the other hand, usually 

show up the same way splices do – when 

the fluid fails to progress beyond them. 


Technology 

Kabel-X, Buckeye CableSystems and the 

construction contractor experimented with a 

variety of methods for blowing fiber cable into 

the sheath from which old coaxial cable had 

been removed. The process they developed used 

Sherman & Reilly Microjet equipment. 

Although Buckeye had several possible 

methods of replacing short bad sections 

at Carrington Woods, it finally decided 

to replace all damaged sections with 

new coax outer sheath so the maintenance 

team would be able to locate the 

cables in the future. 

All in all, about 40 feet of cable were 

replaced, mostly in sections of about 2 

feet, which were used to piece out the 

cut-off ends. One long section of about 

25 feet was replaced where the cable had 

been crushed by large rocks that had 

been laid on top of it when it was originally 

placed. That one repair location, 

with 30 feet of open trench, was such an 

anomaly on the Carrington Woods job 

that technicians jokingly called it “the 

Grand Canyon.” 

Buckeye tried a variety of splice repair 

fittings at Carrington Woods, including 

simple bronze compression fittings. 

In the end, however, the tried-and-true 

straight splice cable connector, modified 

to create an open internal pathway, 

and standard heat-shrink tubing proved 

the fastest and most satisfactory repair 

method. In general, Kabel-X recommends 

using the tools, equipment and 

procedures that are most familiar to operators, 

because those methods require 

the least new training and equipment. 

A Difficult Situation reSolved 

About that section that wasn’t removed: 

It was a difficult situation. A 300-oddfoot 

section of the old cable, viewed on 

the TDR before pumping, showed at 

least three, and possibly four, potential 

trouble spots. Even worse, this particular 

cable swept gently around a corner at 

a busy intersection, deep into the perfect 

landscaping of a beautiful corner 

lot. Buckeye, Metro Fiber and Kabel-X 

technicians were absolutely certain that 

all the troubles could be cleared, but 

they were even surer they didn’t want to 

dig holes in that showplace lawn. 

Instead, they changed cables. An 

even older section of P3-750 cable, 

which predated the P3-500 that was 

being updated, followed the same path 

and was in great shape. Problem solved. 

Buckeye’s great landscaping team dug 

up the ends of the 750, the Metro Fiber 

team cleared out the core and the work 

moved on as before. Cable is cable, especially 

when it is made into conduit. 

Buckeye found once again that its old 

cables, long abandoned, had tremendous 

value as pathways for new fiber. 

Push or Pull 

Buckeye had originally planned to use 

pull strings, blown into the hollowedout 

coax, to pull in the new fiber cable. 

The solution was simple, and everyone 

was certain it would be successful. But 

pulling the new fiber cable by hand 

from pedestal to pedestal seemed a little 

primitive after watching the cores flying 

out of Buckeye’s coax. Even worse, 

there is always a risk of pulling the new 

cable too hard, damaging the delicate 

fiber core. So Buckeye decided instead 

to blow in the new cable, using cablejetting 

technology. 

To develop a method for Buckeye to 

blow in the new cable, Kabel-X experts 

used the 2,600-foot outside-plant test 

bed located near the Florida Operations 

Center. The test bed is equipped with a 

variety of cable types and pedestal spacings 

where Kabel-X experiments with 

different cable configurations and sizes to 

provide the best advice for customers. 

With the help of industry experts 

from cable-jetting equipment suppliers, 

and with samples of cable provided by 

several cable manufacturers, Kabel-X, 

Metro Fiber and Buckeye formulated 

and field-verified methods and procedures 

to quickly and easily blow the new 

fiber cable into Buckeye’s coax. When 

it came time to place Buckeye’s cable in 

Carrington Woods, the process was well 

understood. 

After removing the cable core, the 

Metro Fiber technicians used loops of 

1/2-inch HDPE innerduct and airtight 

fittings to temporarily join the individual 

spans at each pedestal, creating 

much longer continuous lengths of 

hollowed-out cable. Then they blew 

foam cleanout plugs through the cable 

with jetting lubricant to clean and lubricate 

the pathway. Finally, using Sherman 

& Reilly Microjet equipment, they jetted 

a complete, new, outside-plant-rated 

fiber cable from AFL through the newly 

created conduit in pushes of up to 2,500 

feet, looping up and down through as 

many as 10 pedestals at a time. When 

the cable blowing speed slowed, they 

laid out the cable in figure eights on the 

ground, set up the Microjet at the new 

location and resumed placement. No 

additional splice points were introduced 

into the cable, and no sections were 

damaged in placement. 

The only real delay in the blowing 

process came right at the beginning. 

Over the winter, a short section of the 

empty coax was damaged when another 

utility undertook a repair. The workers 

who repaired the damage weren’t familiar 

with working on hollow coax, and 

technicians had to dig up the repair spot 

and reconnect the conduit. Oops! At 

any rate, Buckeye had its answer about 

the viability of empty coax: no water 

accumulations, no freezing and no collapsed 

ducts. 

Once the cable was in place, the 

Metro Fiber technicians began preparing 

it for splicing. Working backwards, 

pedestal by pedestal, from the far end of 

each cable leg, they split off the temporary 

innerduct loops, pushed out loops 

of fiber cable for each location so the 

break-out fiber work could be done in 

a trailer or splicing tent and sealed the 

ends of the conduit. Then they installed 


the BrightPath terminal equipment and 

began the cutover to the new system. 

Buckeye’s savings on this deployment 

were significant compared with 

traditional construction methods such 

as trenching and directional boring. By 

minimizing disruption in the community, 

Buckeye created no ill-will among 

its customers or local authorities, which 

was also important. The new system has 

been extremely well received by Buckeye’s 

Carrington Woods customers. 

“We see the Kabel-X technology as an 

innovative tool that will allow us to costeffectively 

deploy a fiber-to-the-home 

architecture in areas currently served by 

a traditional hybrid fiber-coax network. 

This technology will allow us the opportunity 

to effectively manage our network 

architecture so as to best meet our overall 

needs,” says Joe Jensen, chief technology 

officer for Buckeye CableSystem. 

Technology 

Other Applications 

Local operators such as Buckeye Cable- 

System are using Kabel-X in their fiberto-the-home 

deployment trials, but the 

Kabel-X process also works well elsewhere 

in the telecommunications network. 

Potential applications include extending 

fiber deeper into neighborhoods 

for node splitting, upgrading cellular 

backhaul and reinforcing middle-mile 

routes. Kabel-X can even be used with 

aerial cable in places where permit requirements 

or make-ready requirements 

could delay important highway or railroad 

crossings. 

In Hawaii, for example, the U.S. 

Army relied on Kabel-X technology to 

upgrade more than a mile and a half of 

vintage copper cable with state-of-the-art 

fiber optics interconnecting parts of its 

data operations facility. The Army used 

Honolulu contractor CEI to implement 

the Kabel-X technology and deploy fiber 

deeper into the government-owned network 

on the island of Oahu. The original 

lead-sheathed telephone cable had 

been placed in the early 1960s. The cable 

route ran up a mountainside, on government-owned 

right-of-way, through an 

established civilian neighborhood. 

Shelton Choy, president of CEI, says, 

“Kabel-X allowed us to quickly and efficiently 

remove the copper core and 

blow in fiber while avoiding trenching 

through volcanic rock in an established 

neighborhood. Without Kabel-X, this 

project would have been much less attractive 

to the Army and would have 

had serious impact on the people who 

live along this route. Additional benefits 

included preventing erosion and runoff 

normally created through trenching, 

which in this environment is critical. 

And the Army even got credit for the 

copper salvaged from the old core.” 

The Army was pleased with its first 

Kabel-X project for the same reasons 

Buckeye CableSystem was pleased: new 

fiber facilities, minimal digging, minimal 

disturbance to neighborhoods, no 

disruption of traffic and no harm to the 

environment. Life goes on, and work goes 

on. What’s not to like about that BBP 

The Northeast’s 

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Leading Vendors 

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September 29-30 2010 

Turning Stone Resort & 

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Conference Sponsors: 

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® 


New FTTH Market Review 

and Forecast 

There has never been a more 

important time for an FTTH 

market review and forecast! 

Where will the North American 

FTTH market go next Who will 

be deploying fiber in the future 

The 2010 RVA report provides 

a very detailed overview of 

the history, current status, 

and societal impact of FTTH. 

Most importantly, it offers 

extremely detailed forecasts of 

homes passed, marketed, and 

connected by major segments 

such as RBOCs, ILECs, CLECs, 

Municipalities, MSOs, and Real 

Estate Integrators. Additionally, the 

report provides forecasts by dwelling type (single family versus MDU), 

technical architecture, by region and much more! 

The new RVA forecast is critical in helping you set 

strategies, forecast revenue, evaluate investments, 

and understand all aspects of the market. 

www.RVALLC.com • 800-619-3102

Attend Michael 

Render’s Presentation 

at the 2010 FTTH 

Conference & Expo 

North American 

FTTH: Current 

Deployment Status 

And The Consumer 

Experience 

1:00 pm Tuesday 

September 14 

EXPO Theater 

RVA research also outlines ways 

FTTH is impacting communities 

across North America: 

• Faster and more stable broadband 

improves quality of life 

• FTTH spurs local price competition 

• More telework results in significant 

green impacts 

• Traditional businesses are being 

attracted and retained 

• Efficiencies add billions to 

home-based business 

Michael Render will 

present the latest 

deployment results 

for North American 

FTTH and prospects 

for the future. Also, 

a 2010 consumer 

study will highlight 

ways FTTH is being 

used, is exceeding the 

performance of other 

broadband, and is 

starting to significantly 

change the way we 

live, work, and play.

FTTH LAS VEGAS COVERAGE 

It’s All About the Bandwidth: Welcome From 

FTTH Council President Joe Savage ..........................................| 62 

Q&A With the FTTH Council’s Incoming President, Daniel O’Connell . . . . . . . . . . . | 64 

Guide to the Exhibit Floor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 66 

Agenda at a Glance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 67 

Featured Exhibitors .............................................................| 70 

News Releases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 73

LAS VEGAS conference 

It’s All About the Bandwidth 

Users want more bandwidth. Fiber to the home provides it. That’s why FTTH 

will inevitably continue to grow. 

By Joe Savage ■ FTTH Council North America 

Let’s talk bandwidth – in particular, 

how far we have come during 

the nine years since the Fiber-tothe-Home 

Council was founded. 

At the time of the Council’s establishment 

in 2001, the vast majority of 

Internet users in North America and 

around the world accessed the ’Net 

through a dial-up service. Only a precious 

few (including some who were 

fortunate enough to subscribe to the 

pioneering FTTH networks) had faster 

connectivity than a dial-up connection 

could provide. 

Today, more than three-quarters of 

Internet users in the United States have 

broadband connections. According to 

Akamai’s State of the Internet Report, 

the average download speed in the country 

with the fastest broadband, South 

Korea, is 33 Mbps, about twice the average 

download speed for U.S. broadband 

users. It’s no accident that FTTH/B is 

the leading access technology in South 

Korea. 

Here in North America, according 

to research firm RVA LLC, consumer 

awareness of FTTH is growing. The 

technology is now recognized by more 

than 40 percent of broadband users, 

compared with less than 30 percent 

just a year ago. Overall satisfaction 

with FTTH continues to lead satisfaction 

with other access technologies by 

as much as 20 percentage points. Consumers 

express the most appreciation for 

the speed, reliability and HDTV picture 

quality of their all-fiber service. 

Meanwhile, RVA’s survey shows a 

steady climb in the download and upload 

speeds – measured by survey respondents 

themselves – that FTTH subscribers 

are getting. At an average 16.6 

Mbps for downloading and 10.8 Mbps 

The principal issue is no longer whether to 

upgrade to fiber to the home, but rather how and 

when. FTTH has left the starting gate and taken 

its place as the access technology of choice. 

for uploading, FTTH is well ahead of 

cable modem and DSL services. 

However, although FTTH is already 

showing its capabilities, its greatest attribute 

may be its almost unlimited bandwidth 

in the future, as bandwidth needs 

continue to surge. 

More Bandwidth Means 

More Applications 

At the end-user level, we’ve seen applications 

evolve from simple Web surfing and 

basic e-commerce to Internet video, interactive 

social media sites and cloud computing. 

High-definition video is becoming 

more widely available, and 3DTV is 

now emerging into commercial markets. 

According to Cisco, global IP traffic increased 

66 times from 2001 to 2009 and 

is expected to triple again over the next 

four years, reaching two-thirds of a zettabyte 

(a trillion gigabytes) by 2013, with 

video (TV, VoD, Internet video and P2P) 

accounting for more than 90 percent of 

global consumer traffic. The need for 

reliable broadband will further increase 

as citizens rely on their connections for 

mission-critical medical, educational and 

remote-employment uses. 

The Great Urban Myth 

One of the great urban myths is that 

in 1899, the director of the U.S. Patent 

Office said, “Everything that can be 

invented has already been invented.” It 

never happened. But with the growth 

in North America’s need for speed and 

greater bandwidth showing no signs of 

letting up, we may have our own urban 

myth in the making: that our 21st-century 

bandwidth needs can be satisfied 

with a copper-based, or even a wireless, 

last-mile access infrastructure. 

The principal issue is no longer 

whether to upgrade to FTTH but rather 

how and when. With more than 6 million 

homes across North America already 

connected, and nearly a fifth of all 

homes now passed by FTTH networks, 

FTTH has long since left the starting 

gate and has taken its place as the access 

technology of choice among American 

consumers. 

Verizon, with its pioneering spirit, 

made the move to all-fiber access a number 

of years ago, and indeed it remains by 

far the largest North American deployer 

of FTTH. Although the company’s 

FiOS project is reaching its scheduled 


Joe Savage is president of the Fiber to the Home Council. You can reach him at 

president@ftthcouncil.org. 



completion, and growth of FTTH may 

therefore pause a bit, America’s ongoing 

upgrade to end-to-end fiber will doubtless 

maintain a steady march through 

the next decade. 

America’s national policymakers 

have said as much. The staff of the Federal 

Communications Commission, in a 

report earlier this year, said that fiber is 

“the only last-mile technology capable 

of meeting ultra-high-speed needs.” Accordingly, 

in step with the “100 Megabit 

Nation” policy that the Council has 

promoted for the past several years, the 

FCC’s National Broadband Plan is anchored 

by a “100 Squared” objective – 

that is, 100 Mbps service to 100 million 

U.S. homes by 2020. The plan’s emphasis 

on further development of a fiber-based 

smart grid to provide greater energy efficiency 

and security is another indication 

of how our nation will depend on endto-end 

fiber in the years ahead. Thus 

far, more than half the last-mile projects 

funded by the federal broadband stimulus 

program are FTTP-based. 

Fiber Deployers of the Future 

Who is going to be doing all this FTTH 

deployment that consumers want and 

need 

A recent survey by RVA LLC provides 

some indication. Even though 

a large portion of FTTH deployment 

thus far has been due to Verizon’s $23 

billion dollar investment in overbuilding 

its wireline plant, the survey found 

that fiber to the home is now being deployed 

by more than 750 service providers 

across North America. Most of 

those are small, independent telephone 

companies that are replacing their copper 

lines with end-to-end fiber in order 

to ensure their future competitiveness as 

broadband providers. 

Further, the study found that more 

than 65 percent of small independent 

telephone companies that have not upgraded 

to FTTH said they would very 

likely do so in the future, with another 

11 percent saying they were somewhat 

likely to do so. More than 85 percent of 

those that have already deployed FTTH 

said they would add more direct fiber 

connections going forward. 

It’s not difficult to see why they are 

planning to deploy fiber. In the RVA 

The FTTH industry is ready, willing and able 

to get us to 100 Mbps and beyond. 

survey, many of the ILECs mentioned 

the need to replace aging copper lines, 

the fact that FTTH enables them to give 

their subscribers a video offering and the 

ability to future-proof their networks 

against ever-increasing subscriber demands 

for more bandwidth and faster 

Internet connectivity. 

Except for Verizon, which faces a 

much more competitive environment, 

companies that deploy FTTH have experienced 

average subscriber take rates 

above 52 percent for the past five years. 

What’s more, average revenue per user 

for FTTH subscribers is increasing. 

A number of U.S. cable companies, 

including several that are members of 

the FTTH Council, are upgrading from 

coaxial cable to RFoG or other all-fiber 

systems. To the north, after a slow start, 

more than a dozen Canadian service 

providers are now deploying fiber to the 

home, with the innovator Bell Aliant 

pursuing the largest Canadian FTTH 

project. We are also starting to see early 

deployments in the Caribbean and Latin 

American markets, as evidenced by the 

early growth and success of the FTTH 

Council’s Latin American Chapter. 

Telecommunications companies in 

all these regions see the writing on the 

wall. To continue meeting the rapidly 

growing bandwidth requirements for 

emerging applications and services, and 

even to stay in business, these companies 

know that they must eventually 

run fiber all the way to the premises. 

It’s that simple. Accordingly, I have no 

doubt that FTTH will continue to significantly 

expand its market presence 

throughout North and South America 

in the decade to come. 

The Hullabaloo About Fiber 

Here’s another reason I know this. Look 

at all the hullabaloo over Google’s announcement 

that it would build gigabitenabled 

fiber-to-the-home networks in a 

few select communities. This led to public 

discussions in hundreds of communities 

across the U.S. about ultra-highspeed 

broadband and its importance to 

economic development. Mayors jumped 

into shark tanks. Cities offered to rename 

themselves “Google.” 

Does this sound as though North 

American consumers and community 

leaders will be satisfied with anything 

less than fiber all the way to the premises 

in the next few years to come 

On the contrary, communities large 

and small recognize that the future belongs 

to those who stay ahead of the 

broadband curve. Local leaders know 

that access to state-of-the-art digital 

content, services and applications will 

be critical to their survival. They know 

that better broadband infrastructure attracts 

new businesses and creates jobs. 

The need for speed is apparent, and the 

demand is there both for business and 

for residential subscribers. And now 

telecommunications providers large and 

small know that FTTH is the only way 

to meet that demand. 

That’s why the theme of this year’s 

FTTH Conference and Expo is “FTTH: 

All Fiber, All the Way!” We’re focusing 

on how broadband service providers will 

use all-fiber access to meet consumer 

demand and win in the marketplace 

and how equipment providers and network 

engineers will fiber up the world 

with next-generation broadband. In 

light of all the indications that FTTH 

will expand in the coming years, we are 

expecting our biggest show ever in Las 

Vegas in September. 

From dial-up to broadband, and 

from grainy dancing-dog videos to 

World Cup games in high definition 

and 3D over the Internet – it’s all happened 

in just one decade. Imagine what 

the coming decade will bring. Then just 

try to imagine it without ubiquitous allfiber 

access – FTTH to every home. 

After a decade of growth and development, 

the FTTH industry is ready, 

willing and able to get us to 100 Mbps 

and beyond. BBP 



Verizon’s Dan O’Connell to Be 

New FTTH Council President 

In a Q&A session with Broadband Properties editors, O’Connell spoke about 

attracting new members to the Council, including Latin American providers, 

stimulus-funding recipients and application providers. 

By Steven S. Ross ■ Broadband Properties 

The Fiber-to-the-Home Council 

has selected Daniel O’Connell, 

national sales director for Verizon 

Enhanced Communities, to replace retiring 

president Joe Savage. “The choice was 

based on the FTTH Council Board’s assessment 

of Dan as a great public face for 

the organization, as well as his connections 

and knowledge within the industry 

and his organizational and managerial 

experience,” said Savage. O’Connell is 

to be introduced at the FTTH Council’s 

annual show in Las Vegas, which starts 

September 12. He joins the organization 

October 1 for a three-month phase-in 

period. Savage officially retires December 

31. 

O’Connell holds a bachelor’s degree 

in financial management from Catholic 

University in Washington, D.C., and an 

MBA in marketing from Loyola University 

in Chicago. 

The change comes as the Council – 

and the entire industry – has been hit 

by a wave of consolidations, delays in 

stimulus funding disbursements, competition 

from overseas manufacturers, 

regulatory uncertainty and reduced access 

to capital for building advanced 

telecommunications networks. 

We interviewed O’Connell as he was 

preparing to leave Verizon, his corporate 

home for the past decade. 

BBP: Can you talk about the experience 

that you bring to the table 

O’Connell: For the last five years, I’ve 

been national sales director for Verizon 

Enhanced Communities, working with 

We have to articulate the benefits FTTH gives 

to the end user and to vertical market segments 

such as telecommuting, education and 

health and wellness management. 

builders and developers of planned communities, 

MDUs, and some niche markets 

such as student and military housing. 

In that time, we reached agreements 

to place more than 2 million living units 

under contract for fiber broadband access. 

In many respects, I’ve been the 

public face of Verizon in housing communities, 

presenting the value proposition 

of FTTH and FTTB networks. 

BBP: Your experience at Verizon predates 

FiOS, though, doesn’t it 

O’Connell: Before FiOS, I worked almost 

entirely in the MDU segment at 

Verizon for five years, installing copper. 

I’ve also had a lot of experience with 

international negotiations and multinational 

companies. Before Verizon, I 

spent three years living in Mexico City, 

negotiating interconnection agreements 

with Telmex on behalf of a consortium 

that was formed in 1996. Part of that job 

involved lobbying the Mexican version 

of the FCC. After that, I was in Brazil 

for two years doing the same thing on 

behalf of MCI, then WorldCom. 


Steve can be reached at steve@broadbandproperties.com. Visit his blog at www. 

bbpmag.com. 



BBP: As we’ve watched you over the years, 

we see a talented salesman who is very flexible 

in negotiating with building owners. 

O’Connell: The environment changes 

daily. My aim is to strike a mutually beneficial 

deal. Likewise, FTTH Council 

members have diverse needs, but they’re 

still in one industry. We’re looking to advance 

the FTTH initiative. I’ll be very 

firm when I have to be. It’s important to 

keep long-term strategic goals in sight. 

Under the leadership of Eric Cevis, 

Verizon Enhanced Communities has 

more flexibility and in-house decisionmaking 

ability, more autonomy, than 

a traditional ILEC. And when we ran 

into design problems, such as the need 

for bendable fiber or for multiple-unit 

ONTs, we were able to excite vendors 

because of our size and commitment. 

Verizon continues to do that, looking for 

less intrusive, more flexible market solutions, 

and constantly asking for feedback 

from the communities we serve. 

BBP: How might you apply those lessons to 

the FTTH Council 

O’Connell: By asking for and respecting 

the input of the membership. It’s got 

to be an open forum where everyone’s 

experience and decisions and ideas and 

thoughts are respected. I don’t expect to 

come to the table and say, “Here’s how 

it’s going to be done.” I think it’s also 

important to recognize that the marketplace 

is changing. There are different 

kinds of entities that we think are going 

to want to be members of the FTTH 

Council. We need to maintain flexibility 

to quickly recognize and respond to and 

access changes in the political and economic 

environment, whether it’s stimulus 

money to be had, energy savings, or 

network neutrality. We also have to make 

sure we’re adaptable not just in North 

America but worldwide. And I think 

we have to clearly articulate the benefits 

FTTH gives to the end user and to vertical 

market segments. 

BBP: Which verticals benefit the most 

O’Connell: I see a big three – work at 

home, due to telecommuting and nontraditional 

job roles; education; and 

telemedicine with health and wellness 

management. Look at work at home. 

The economic news this week wasn’t 

good. Nontraditional means of employment 

are being created as people have 

to change their jobs. American business 

may further embrace telecommuting. It 

cuts infrastructure costs. 

Nontraditional forms of learning are 

going to become a bigger segment of 

higher education. The cost of education 

is outrageous to begin with. With job 

losses, people are not going to be able 

to afford traditional forms of education. 

That’s going to be a challenge. 

BBP: Almost every college student today has 

taken a course through distance learning. 

O’Connell: Absolutely. I have two kids 

in college and I’d say that of their five 

classes per semester, on average one or 

two courses are taken from their rooms 

on their own schedules. They’re not always 

going to a traditional classroom. 

BBP: What about the medical and wellness 

industries 

O’Connell: We have a graying population. 

The two fastest growing segments 

of our population are the elderly and the 

young. The education market is going 

to absolutely demand alternative delivery, 

and the aging population is going to 

continue to be challenged by costs if we 

continue to keep our traditional means 

of patient-doctor interaction. 

BBP: What types of companies would you 

like to attract to the Council 

O’Connell: Applications developers – 

whether in education, gaming, imaging, 

or medical, there are applications being 

developed that are bandwidth-intensive. 

Traditional copper, coax or hybrid fibercoax 

can’t keep up. Entertainment is 

attracting application developers, too. 

And look at the companies that are developing 

solutions for home automation 

or security or environmental controls – I 

would love to see if we could convince 

some of them of the benefits of being 

members. 

BBP: Do you also see recipients of stimulus 

grants joining the Council 

O’Connell: They already are in some 

measure. Some members of long standing 

have received broadband stimulus awards, 

and more than three dozen telecom service 

providers have joined the Council in 

2010, including some that received stimulus 

funds. I know the Council was very 

active in educating its members on how 

to apply for and win stimulus monies. 

There’s clearly an advantage to membership 

in an organization that advocates on 

your behalf. There’s lots of opportunity 

for growth there. 

BBP: The Council has a brilliant Washington 

face in Tom Cohen, of course. But 

you live closer to D.C. than Joe, who lives 

in Portland, Ore. Do you see yourself doing 

more in D.C. 

O’Connell: No more than what’s appropriate. 

We haven’t had enough discussion 

to know what the right level might be. 

Certainly the Council has some priorities 

on its agenda with respect to Washington. 

I know it’s an important part of 

what the Council has responsibility for. 

The fact that I’m close will make it easier 

for me to be there. 

BBP: Are there any vendor concerns you 

need to address in terms of active members 

Joe has expressed concern about goldlevel 

members consolidating. 

O’Connell: I think the most immediate 

opportunity is for us to add memberships 

in Latin America, which is just 

starting FTTH deployments. 

BBP: Joe has noted that your Spanishlanguage 

and cultural skills will indeed 

be welcome. The majority of fiber deployments 

in Latin America are also MDU deployments, 

as are most of the deployments 

in Europe. In the United States, though, is 

there any concern that you will be seen as 

too RBOC-focused 

O’Connell: The continued growth of 

FTTH in the United States is dependent 

upon smaller local and regional players. 

Verizon is certainly not finished with its 

FTTH build by any means, but Verizon’s 

footprint is at the end of the day 

about 30 million access lines around the 

country – less after the sale to Frontier. 

The viability of FTTH in the United 

States at every level is going to require 

that the big guys be active participants, of 

course. But it’s also going to require that 

regional players and rural service providers 

be involved, and that municipal service 

providers all buy in. 

I’m excited about the challenge. It’s 

going to be a lot of fun. BBP 


60' 

7' 

40' 

30' 

6' 

TRAILER 

459 

6' 

758 

6' 

20' 

658 

460 

756 

755 

656 

6' 

6' 

6' 

7' 

7' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

Featured Exhibitors in Red 

EXPO THEATRE 

753 754 

20' 

20' 

554 

553 

454 

751 752 

652 

651 

552 

551 

452 

750 

649 

20' 

549 

Subject to Change 

20' 

20' 

20' 

647 

547 548 

448 

342 

246 248 

545 

446 

B 

6' 

6' 

NEW PRODUCT SHOWCASE 

AISLE 

643 

A 

20' 

THE FIBER ZONE 

641 

542 

6' 

7' 

7' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

7' 


INTERNET CAFE 

1'-10" 

20' 

737 

20' 

20' 

30' 

736 

735 

636 

635 

734 

733 

633 634 

534 

732 

20' 

729 730 

630 

20' 

530 

20' 

20' 

429 

330 

20' 

229 

728 

727 

628 

627 

528 

527 

428 

427 

328 

226 

227 

20' 

FREEMAN 

ES 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

FREEMAN 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

SALES 

SES 

720 

719 

620 

520 

519 

420 

320 

220 

219 

LEAD RETRIEVEL 

10' 

FLORAL 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

SERVICE DESK 

20' 

715 

20' 

20' 

415 

20' 

215 

714 

30' 

713 

514 

414 

30' 

214 

213 

711 

612 

411 

312 

211 

20' 

20' 

SERVICE 

ELEVATOR 

20' 

709 

20' 

510 

20' 

409 410 

PREMIUM 

310 

PREMIUM 

20' 

209 210 

708 

707 

608 

607 

20' 

507 

408 

307 

20' 

20' 

SHOW 

MGNT. 

705 

606 

605 

506 

305 

206 

PREMIUM 

20' 

703 

604 

503 

304 

4'-8" 

20' 

30' 

2'-2" 

30' 

3'-3" 

2'-6" 

20' 

20' 

20' 

20' 

706 

13'-1" 

8'-2" 

701 

600 

500 

499 

400 

300 

200 

704 

KITCHEN EXPANSION 

702 

PREFAB COMPANY OFFICE RENTALS 

700 

FTTH 

COUNCIL 10'X16' 10'X16' 10'X16' 10'X16' 

6' 

FHC 

FHC 

EMERGENCY EXITS 

TABLE TOP EXHIBITS (3) 

6'x36"T 

6' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

EXHIBITOR NAME BOOTH EXHIBITOR NAME BOOTH EXHIBITOR NAME BOOTH 

3M Company ..........................720 

Actiontec Electronics, Inc. ..............454 

ADC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 514 

Adesta, LLC ............................305 

ADTRAN ...............................219 

AFL Telecommunications / Tellabs .....206 

Allied Telesis, Inc. ......................736 

Alpha Technologies ....................542 

Alphion Corporation ...................636 

Anritsu ................................446 

AOC Technologies .....................427 

BEC Technologies, Inc. .................549 

BKtel Communications GmbH .........703 

Bowlin Services ..........................5 

Broadband Properties Magazine .......600 

Byers Engineering .....................554 

Cable Services Co., Inc. .................227 

Calix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .500 

Charles Industries, Ltd. .................507 

CHR Solutions .........................643 

Clearfield, Inc. .........................510 

CommScope ..........................620 

Communications Technology ............2 

Condux International ..................608 

CornerPost ............................450 

Corning Cable Systems ................200 

C-Tech Associates Inc. ..................529 

Dasan Networks, Inc. ..................714 

Diamond USA Inc. .....................246 

Ditch Witch ............................647 

Draka Communications ................506 

DSM Desotech Inc. ....................612 

EchoStar ...............................635 

Emerson Network Power ..............420 

Enablence .............................304 

Ericsson Inc. .......................12, 627 

ETI Software Solutions, Inc. ............328 

EXFO ..................................633 

Finley Engineering Company ..........310 

FTTH Council .....................10, 641 

GE, Smallworld & 

MapFrame Solutions .............551 

General Machine Products .............527 

Genexis B.V. ...........................411 

GM PLAST .............................630 

Graybar ...............................428 

Great Lakes Data Systems ..............634 

GS Battery USA (Inc.)...................410 

Hitachi Communications 

Technologies America, Inc. ........414 

Huawei Technologies (USA)............307 

ILSINTECH Co., Ltd. ....................652 

IPG Photonics .........................330 

JDSU Uniphase Corporation ...........210 

KGP Logistics ..........................460 

LG, Ericsson Co., Ltd. ...................719 

Lightwave .............................730 

Lode Data Corporation ................732 

MapCom Systems .....................503 

Marais Group ..........................750 

MasTec North America, Inc. ............552 

Michels Corporation ...................429 

Miniflex, Inc. ...........................557 

Montclair Fiber Optics Inc. .............211 

Motorola ..........................11, 320 

Multicom, Inc. .........................530 

Occam Networks ......................312 

OFC/NFOEC .............................6 

OFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .220 

Oldcastle Precast Enclosure Solutions . . 342 

OSP Magazine ...........................7 

Pelusa .................................715 

Pencell Plastics ........................606 

Phoenix Contact .......................604 

Pivot Group .............................1 

Plumettaz Inc. .........................501 

Power & Telephone Supply Company . .628 

Preformed Line Products ..............400 

Primex ................................408 

Prysmian Cables & Systems ............519 

QEES ..................................751 

Quanta Services .......................520 

Quazite (Hubbell Lenoir City) ..........215 

R&A Engineering Company ..............3 

Remee Wire & Fiber Optic Cable .......734 

RVA Market Research ...................19 

SENKO Advanced Components, Inc. ...605 

Sigma Designs .........................548 

Sigma Systems ........................545 

Sterite Technologies Limited ...........213 

Superior Essex .........................300 

Suttle ..................................409 

Tantalus Systems Corp. ................607 

Tech Products, Inc. .....................701 

Tellabs / AFL Telecommunications .....206 

Tetra Tech Construction Services Inc. ...248 

The Light Brigade Inc. ..................209 

Thermo Bond Buildings, LLC ...........528 

Titan Photonics ........................415 

Topstone Communication Inc. .........728 

Tyco Electronics .......................226 

Underground Construction ..............4 

UniTek Global Services .................727 

UTOPIA ...........................231, 459 

Vermeer Corporation ..................448 

Walker and Associates .................534 

Williams Communications, Inc.. . . . . . . . .729 

Zhone Technologies, Inc. ..............214 

SPONSOR BOARDS 

6' 

6' 

6' 

6' 

SPONSOR BOARDS 

6'x36"T 

ENTRANCE 

6' 6' 6' 

ENTRANCE 

UNIT 


Schedule at a glance 

2011 FTTH Conference Schedule 

Featured speakers in red 

New Technology 

Fiber all the Way and Building Revenue 

Success Stories and Finance Regulations 

Key to Track Sessions: 

Advanced Network Design, Construction 

and Management 

Latin America 

Sunday, September 12 

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm Registration Open 

8:00 am – 5:00 pm 1 st WDM-PON Workshop (additional registration required) 

9:00 am – 5:00 pm The Great Video Brain-Unloading Workshop 

(additional registration required) – Jim Farmer 

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm IAG Meeting 

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm LATAM Chapter Members Meeting 

Monday, September 13 

7:00 am – 5:00 pm Registration Open 

8:00 am – 9:45 am PAN 100 Series – MDU Panel 

MDU Considerations – get the latest on how to reach MDU 

residents with FTTH service by understanding the challenges 

and approaches for bringing fiber to the unit. 

Moderator: Bernhard Deutsch, Corning Cable Systems 

– Kevin Smith, Verizon 

– Barry Walton, Bell Aliant 

– Chris Hogan - UTOPIA 

10:45 am – 11:00 am Refreshment Break / Networking / Poster Sessions 

11:00 am – 11:45 am Track Session 201 – New Technology 

Green Effects of Fiber all the Way 

– Kevin Morgan, ADTRAN 

11:00 am – 11:45 am Track Session 202 – Fiber all the Way and Building Revenue 

Connecting Communities – How Fiber Binds the Utility/ 

Consumer Experience – Mike Smalley, Carina Technology, Inc. 

11:00 am – 11:45 am Track Session 203 – Success Stories and Finance Regulations 

The Influence of National Broadband Plans on 

Telecommunications Projects – Randall Frantz, ESRI 

11:00 am – 11:45 am Track Session 204 – ANDCM 

Exploiting New Opportunities for Scalable, More Profitable 

Networks – Robert Koslowsky, Cyan Optics 

11:00 am – 11:45 am Track Session 205 – LATAM Feature Track Portugués 

Uso de sistemas de supervisão e manuteção de redes FTTH 

– Helio Silvino de Almeida Prat, CpQD 

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm On Own for Lunch 

Michael Smalley 

Carina Technology 

Joe Savage 

Fiber to the Home Council, NA 

Eric Murray, P.Eng. 

Tantalus 

Dan Pecarina 

Hiawatha Broadband Communications 

Thomas W. Cohen 

Kelley Drye 

Lawrence R. Freedman 

Fleischman and Harding 


Fiber Lights the Way for the New Connected Home 

– Steve Klein, Allied Telesis 


Over the Top Considerations for a Network Operator 

– Kevin Bourg, Enablence Systems 


FTTH: Driving Smart Grid and New Broadband Services 

– David Wade, Chattanooga Electric Power Board (EPB) 

10:00 am – 10:45 am Track Session 104 

The Business of Broadband Network Transformations for FTTx 

– Fred Terhaar, Ericsson 

10:00 am – 10:45 am Track Session 105-LATAM – Chapter Feature Track – Spanish 

FTTH Networks in Latin America – Testing 101 

– Manuel López Oliver, JDSU 

11:45 am – 1:00 pm Service Provider – Birds of a Feather Luncheon 

(registration required to attend) 

Hosted by: FTTH Council Service Provider Committee 

– Ellis Hill, Broadband Media marketing Association 

– Kris Ward, ATMC 

1:00 pm – 1:45 pm Track Session 301 – New Technology 

Technological Innovations for OSP Cables 

– Eric Whitham, OFS 

1:00 pm – 1:45 pm Track Session 302 – Fiber all the Way and Building Revenue 

Converting an HFC Network to an All Fiber Network 

– Dan Pecarina, Hiawatha Broadband 

1:00 pm – 1:45 pm Track Session 303 – Success Stories and Finance Regulations 

FTTH Public Funding – International Benchmark / National 

Broadband Plan Insights – Roland Montagne, IDATE 



1:00 pm – 1:45 pm Track Session 304 – ANDCM and FTTH 101 

Fiber Testing – The Fundamentals for Successful Broadband 

Deployment – Matt Brown, JDSU 

1:00 pm – 1:45 pm Track Session 305 – LATAM Chapter Feature Track – Spanish 

FTTH Deployment in Buenos Aires, Argentina 

– Mario Eduardo Quaroni 

1:45 pm – 2:00 pm Refreshment Break / Networking / Poster Sessions 

2:00 pm – 2:45 pm PAN 400 Series – Marketing Panel 

Marketing Successful FTTH Service Offers 

Moderator: David St. John, St. John Communications, LLC 

– Kelly Duplisea, Bell Aliant 

– Robin Anderson, Dakota Central Communications 


Current Topics in Telecom Regulations and Legislation 

– Tom Cohen, Kelley, Drye & Warren, LLP 

2:00 pm – 2:45 pm Track Session 402 –Building FTTH Revenue 

FTTH ARPU and Service Considerations 

– Benoît Felten, Yankee Group 

10:15 am – 11:30 am PAN-GS-100 – Large Carrier Perspectives 

Hear executives explain the power that fiber all the way to the 

home provides their customers, and how they plan to leverage 

FTTH bandwidths to enable revolutionary new service offers. 

Moderator: Tim Pillows, OFS 

– Chuck Graff, Verizon Communications 

– André Kriger, Telefonica Brazil 

11:30 am – 3:00 pm Expo Hall Opens 

11:30 am – 1:00 pm Luncheon in Expo Hall 


Terabit Access Networks – Building Your Network for the Next 

25 Years – Eric Presworsky, Zhone Technologies 


Who Will Win Wireline vs. Wireless Networks 

– Ed Harstead, Alcatel-Lucent 


FTTH Service and Network Infrastructure 

– David Burpee, Bell Aliant 

Jim Baller 

The Baller Herbst Law Group PC 

Kris Ward 

ATMC 

Mary A. Mallory 

HBC Media Productions/HBC TV 25 

Jerry Sharp 

Atlantic Engineering 

Patrick Sims 

ADC 

Kevin Morgan 

ADTRAN 


Transactional and Regulatory Strategies for Structuring Wired 

Broadband Community Arrangements 

– Lawrence Freedman, Fleischman & Harding LLP 


Fiber Geometry, Fusion Splicing and FTTH 

– Guy Swindell, OFS 

3:00 pm – 6:30 pm EXPO Grand opening & Opening Reception 

Tuesday, September 14 


7:00 am – 8:00 am Continental Breakfast 

8:00 am – 10:00 am Opening General Session 

– Keynote Speaker: Mike Quigley, CEO, NBN Co. Limited 

– Keynote Speaker: Ivan Toner, CTO, Bell Aliant 

– LATAM Keynote Speaker: André Kriger, FTTH Director, 

Telefonica Brazil 

Featured Speakers: World of FTTH 

– Chris Holden, FTTH Council, Europe 

– Nelson Hiroshi Saito, FTTH Council, Latin America Chapter 

– Y.K. Loke, FTTH Council, Asia/Pacific 

10:00 am – 10:15 am Refreshment Break / Networking 


Delivering the Promise in the Last 100 ft. 

– Jay Kilby, Suttle 

3:15 pm – 4:00 pm Track Session 505 – Spanish 

Tecnologia GPON para ENTEL 

– Estanislao “Tani” Loayza, ENTEL Chile 

4:00 pm – 4:15 pm Refreshment Break / Poster Sessions 


The Imperative for PON Wavelength Overlay 

– Mark Cannata, IPG Photonics 


A Gigabit to Every Home – Overkill or Necessity 

– Steve Klein, Allied Telesis 


Lessons Learned from A 4 Season FTTH Build 

– Barry Walton, Bell Aliant 


Future Proofing Your FTTH Network 

– Dean Mischke, P.E., Finley Engineering 

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm Track Session 605 – LATAM Chapter Feature Track – Spanish – 

ANDCM 

FTTH (GPON) trial in Mexico 

– Jesús Zuñiga, TelMex 


Schedule at a glance 


The Role of WDM in Optical Access Networks 

– Ronald Heron, Alcatel-Lucent 


Open Network Services Model – Making FTTH Affordable 

In Tier Three Cities 

– Jerry Sharp, Atlantic Engineering Group Inc. 


Annual Review of Key Legal Issues Affecting Fiber Projects 

– Jim Baller, Baller Herbst Law Group 


Stimulating Your Fiber Deployment: Planning the Life Cycle 

Management of FTTH 

– Scott Combs, Mapcom Systems 

5:15 pm – 6:00 pm Track Session 705 – Success Stories 

New Zealand’s Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative 

– Rob Spray, Telecommunications Industry Group NZ 

6:30 pm – 7:30 pm International Attendee Reception (by invitation only) 

8:00 am – 8:45 am Track Session 804 – ANDCM and FTTH 101 

FTTH Network Service Activation – Key Features in 

BSS/OSS Applications 

– Christopher Beisner, ETI Software Solutions 


All-Fiber Access – The Economic Advantages 

– Catie McNaught, Corning Cable Systems 


The Grand Slam Network – The FTTH Enabled Smart Grid 

– Eric Murray, Tantalus Systems Corp. 

9:00 am – 9:45 am Track Session 904 – ANDCM and FTTH 101 

OSS Best Practices to Deliver Innovative Service Bundles over 

FTTH – Kerbey Altman, Sigma Systems 

10:00 am – 12:30 pm Expo Hall Open 

12:45 pm – 2:30 pm Closing General Session and Luncheon 

FTTH Council Awards, Sponsored by the FTTH Council 

7 th Annual FTTxcellence Awards, Sponsored by Lightwave and 

Corning 

Steve Klein 

Allied Telesis 

Catie McNaught 

Corning Cable Systems 

Eric Whitham 

OFS 

Ed Harstead 

Alcatel-Lucent 

Ronald Heron 


Chuck Graff 

Verizon Communications 

Wednesday, September 15 


7:00 am – 8:00 am Continental Breakfast / Networking / Poster Sessions 

8:00 am – 9:45 am PAN-800 – Fiber-Enabled Content and Services 

Discover how the all-fiber network is creating a revolution in 

entertainment services that has only just begun. 

Moderator: Robert J. Schaeffer, Technology Planners 

– Mary Malloy, Hiawatha Broadband Communications 

– Mike Carney, Dascom Systems Group, LLC 

– Pete Bryant, Avail-TVN 

– Bryan Wassom, 180 Squared 


Realizing More Profit with Miniaturized Solutions in 

Fiber-to-the-Premises Networks – Patrick Sims, ADC 


RFoG – Fiber Technology Supporting an Emerging SMB 

Opportunity for Cable 

– Shridhar Kulkarni, Aurora Networks 

8:00 am – 8:45 am Track Session 803 – Success Story 

FTTH Marketing Case Study – Dakota Central 

Telecommunications 

– Robin Anderson, Dakota Central Telecommunications 

Keynote Speaker – Ellis Hill, Executive Director, Broadband 

Multimedia Marketing Association 

Keynote Discussion – Broadband in America: A Current Affairs 

Perspective 

– Eric Fitzgerald-Reed, Vice President, Market Issues and 

Policy, Verizon Communications 

– Kathleen Franco, Executive Director – Public Policy, 

AT&T Services, Inc. 

– Tom Cohen, Counsel, Kelley Drye 

Thursday, September 16 

7:00 am – 9:00 am Registration Open 

8:00 am – 5:00 pm Co-Located Event: 2010 Digital Home Summit 

(additional registration required) 

9:00 am – 12:00 pm FTTH Council NA Board of Directors Meeting 

9:00 am – 4:00 pm WK 103 – Fiber to the User (Fiber 102) (additional fee required) 

8:00 am – 5:00 pm WK 104 – CFHP Course Day 1 (additional fee required) 

Friday, September 17 

8:00 am – 5:00 pm CFHP Course Day 2 (additional fee required) 



Featured Exhibitors at 

the FTTH Conference 

To connect in Las Vegas with companies that don’t have booth 

numbers, visit the BBP exhibit in the Expo Hall at Booth #600. 

Adesta LLC 

www.adestagroup.com 

Booth #305 

Adesta specializes in the design 

and implementation of modern 

communications networks and 

infrastructure for public and private 

customers. A trusted provider of facilities, equipment and 

personnel for a wide variety of communications infrastructure, 

Adesta offers custom-tailored, results-oriented services in SO- 

NET, IP/Ethernet, DWDM/CWDM, wireless, last mile and 

broadband networks. 

Adesta has deployed more than 2 million miles of fiber and 

can help develop a greenfield network or integrate into an existing 

infrastructure. The company works with inside- and outside-plant 

facilities and provides all types of networks for voice, 

data and video applications. It offers a wide range of services, 

including design, engineering, cable and equipment procurement, 

aerial and underground installation, construction, system 

testing and turn-up, fusion splicing and documentation. 

With more than 150 metropolitan and rural networks 

nationwide, Adesta has the talented engineering and design 

teams, efficient project management and operations and maintenance 

services to create lasting value for customers. 

ADTRAN 

www.adtran.com 

Booth #219 

An established supplier of advanced network solutions, 

ADTRAN develops innovative systems using IP/Ethernet architectures 

for both wireline and wireless media. These solutions 

enable video deployments, broadband expansion, Ethernet 

service delivery and converged network services. 

ADTRAN’s innovative broadband access solutions include 

the industry’s most widely deployed FTTN sealed OSP 

DSLAM. For FTTH using GPON or active Ethernet, Carrier 

Ethernet, services migration or voice applications, ADTRAN’s 

Total Access 5000 Multi-Service Access Platform provides the 

value required by today’s service providers. The multiservice architecture 

of the Total Access 5000 enables the deployment of 

an advanced packet network infrastructure that delivers a host 

of services across a pure Ethernet core. When coupled with Total 

Access 300 Series ONTs, it provides an end-to-end fiber deployment 

strategy that is supported by a common management 

solution built on the proven ADTRAN Operating System. For 

Broadband You Can Build On, visit ADTRAN at booth #120. 

AFL Telecommunications 

www.afltele.com 

Booth #206 

AFL Telecommunications is an industry-leading manufacturer 

of fiber optic products and provider of engineering expertise 

and integrated services to the telecommunications industry for 

the transmission of video, voice and data. AFL also offers fiber 

management systems, optical connectivity, closures, demarcation 

and fiber optic cable as well as fusion splicers, test equipment 

and related accessories. 

AFL has extensive experience in both design and application 

across all markets, including fiber-to-the-x. AFL’s “FTTH 

Made Easy” program consists of end-to-end system integration, 

incorporating a vast product portfolio that includes GPON, 

GEPON and point-to-point electronics with system integration 

and FTTx business modeling capabilities. 

A leading reseller of Tellabs’ GPON solution, AFL will exhibit 

with Tellabs in booth #206 during the FTTH Conference 

& Expo. Stop by to learn more about how we can meet 

your FTTx business needs. 

AMT 

www.amt.com 

Advanced Media Technologies 

Inc. (AMT) is 

the performance leader 

among CATV and 

broadband electronic equipment providers. As a value-added 

reseller of high-performance products from the world’s most 

recognized manufacturers, AMT targets emerging technology 

applications in broadband with a complete line of products for 

CATV, IPTV and FTTH. 

AMT’s offerings include products from leading manufacturers, 

such as Motorola, Amino, Blonder Tongue, Pacific 

Broadband Networks, EGT, RGB Networks, Adtec, Drake, 

Olson Technology and Emcore. 

AMT specializes in prebuilt headends that range from small 

DSS systems to fully digital, high-definition headends. 


Sponsors/Exhibitors 

Atlantic Engineering Group 

www.atlantic-engineering.com 

Atlantic Engineering Group 

(AEG), a Georgia corporation 

founded in 1996, designs and 

builds communications networks. 

In its 14 years of experience, 

it has completed more 

than 75 networks, including 22 fiber-to-the-premises projects. 

Clients include municipalities, utilities, cooperatives and 

government agencies. It is an “all in” service provider for fiber 

optic networks. 

Atlantic Engineering Group provides complete management 

of clients’ projects – project mapping, design, construction and 

materials control. The team includes skilled and experienced project 

managers and construction managers with in-house quality 

control personnel. Each project, large or small, receives the same 

management attention to minimize disruptions to the citizenry, 

to build in quality each and every day, to focus on safety for 

personnel and the public, and to provide each AEG client with a 

successfully completed project on time and on budget. 

Clearfield 

www.clearfieldconnection.com 

Booth #510 

Clearfield Inc. designs the Field- 

Smart fiber management platform, 

the only fiber management platform 

to be designed around a single architecture 

for the inside plant, outside 

plant and access network. Scaling from 12 to 1,728 ports, 

FieldSmart supports a wide range of panel and cabinet configurations, 

densities, connectors and adapter options, which 

are offered alongside an assortment of passive optical components. 

Clearfield provides a complete line of fiber and copper 

assemblies for inside plant, outside plant and access networks. 

Clearfield is a public company traded on NASDAQ: CLFD. 

Draka Communications, with more than 100 years of experience, 

is one of the world’s largest fiber producers and the number 

one multimode fiber producer. It is a leader in innovative 

optical fiber and cable solutions, with a portfolio of more than 

100,000 cables for indoor, indoor-outdoor and outdoor applications. 

Draka’s regional headquarters is located in Claremont, 

N.C., in the only colocated fiber and cable facility in North 

America. Its 128-acre campus is home to a world-class, 1.2 

million-square-foot manufacturing facility dedicated to the 

development, delivery and deployment of optical fiber and fiber 

cable networks. For more information, call 800-879-9862 

or visit www.draka.com/communications. 

Visit Draka at booth #506 to view the new portfolio of MDU 

and bend-insensitive products, Bendbright single-mode and the 

newest multimode fiber cables with MaxCap Bendbright. 

Fiber Instrument Sales 

www.fiberinstrumentsales.com 

Fiber Instrument Sales Inc. 

(FIS) was founded in 1985 

to fulfill the growing need 

in the communications industry 

for fiber optic cables 

and connectivity equipment. 

Today, FIS maintains one of the largest inventories of 

fiber optic products in the world. The company is international 

in scope, serving more than 11,000 customers worldwide. 

FIS is a manufacturer and distributor of hundreds of fiber 

optic products used in the telecom and datacom industries. 

Products include cable assemblies, connectors, test equipment 

and more. Its Security Division markets security cameras and 

innovative intrusion detection systems designed and manufactured 

by FIS. 

FIS is located with a number of affiliated companies at the 

FIS Research Park in Oriskany, N.Y. It has a workforce of 225 

skilled and dedicated employees who have helped the company 

achieve international success. 


www.corningcablesystems.com 

Booth #200 

Corning Incorporated, 

a global innovator and industry leader in optical networking 

product solutions, offers flexible, interchangeable 

fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) Evolant Solutions that adapt to the 

unique needs of any project. For help in designing, building 

or maintaining a system, choose Corning to stay ahead of network 

evolution. 

Draka Communications Americas 

www.draka.com/ 

communications 

Booth #506 

OFS 

www.ofsoptics.com 

Booth #220 

OFS is a world-leading designer, 

manufacturer and 

provider of optical fiber, 

optical fiber cable, FTTx, optical connectivity and specialty 

photonics products. Its manufacturing and research divisions 

work together to provide innovative products and solutions for 

many different applications as they link people and machines 

worldwide. Between continents, between cities, around neighborhoods 

and into homes and businesses of digital consumers, 

OFS provides the right optical fiber, optical cable and components 

for efficient, cost-effective transmission. 

OFS’ corporate lineage dates back to 1876 and includes 

technology powerhouses such as AT&T and Lucent 


Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent). Today, OFS is owned by 

Furukawa Electric, a multibillion dollar global leader in optical 

communications. Headquartered in Norcross, near Atlanta, 

Ga., OFS is a global provider with facilities in Avon, Conn.; 

Carrollton, Ga; Somerset, N.J.; and Sturbridge, Mass., as well 

as in Denmark, Germany and Russia. 

Primex 

www.primextelecom.com 

Booth #408 

Are all demarcation 

enclosures made 

equal They shouldn’t 

be. To be successful, enclosures must work with existing equipment 

and installation practices. You should never be forced to 

adapt to someone else’s standards. Primex enclosures conform 

to your specific requirements so you can focus on selecting the 

delivery system that best serves your customers. We Make EV- 

ERYTHING Fit so you don’t have to. 

Primex Telecommunications is a leader in designing and 

manufacturing enclosure solutions for the communications 

industry. It has 35-plus years of experience in creating customized 

and off-the-shelf enclosure solutions for demarcation, termination 

and cable management requirements. Its enclosures 

have been widely deployed by service providers and OEMs in 

telecommunications, cable television, satellite, wireless and 

FTTx networks throughout North America and international 

markets. Talk to Primex about creating a solution that works 

for your equipment and cabling requirements. 

Raisecom USA 

www.raisecom.com 

Raisecom manufactures next-generation access solutions. 

More than 5 million Raisecom products have been deployed in 

service provider networks worldwide. Raisecom has 1,600 employees 

and more than 10 years’ experience assisting telecommunications 

providers in meeting their business objectives. 

Raisecom products include Ethernet switches, Ethernet demarcation 

devices, media converters, TDM over IP, GEPON 

solutions, optical multiplexers, CWDM, SFPs and PDH/Ethernet 

over PDH. 

Raisecom’s carrier-class network management system, 

NVIEW, enables cost-effective implementation and management 

with flexibility in delivering end-user services. 

For additional information, see www.raisecom.com or 

contact info@raisecom.com or 866-816-4808 ext. 110. 

Seikoh Giken 

www.seikoh-giken.co.jp/en/ 

Global Solutions 

in Optical Precision: 

Since its 

establishment in 1972, the Seikoh Giken Company continues 


to expand and build upon core technologies – precision micromachining 

and optical processing – devoting itself to providing 

products that meet and exceed market needs. 

Today, Seikoh Giken’s Fiber Optics Product Division provides 

precision interconnectivity solutions for optical networks 

and manufacturing environments. For FTTx installations, the 

company supplies the Splice-On-Connector, premium patchcords, 

adaptors, attenuators, FerruleMate/HandiMate connector 

cleaners and the RepairMate restoration polisher. For OEM 

production, it offers ferrules, connectors, high-volume polishers, 

metalized/AR coated fibers and isolators. For additional 

information, contact Seikoh Giken USA Incorporated, e-mail 

sales@sg-usa.com or visit www.SeikohGiken.com. 

Suttle 

www.suttleonline.com 

Booth #409 

Celebrating its 100th 

anniversary, Suttle is 

widely accepted by the world’s largest service providers as delivering 

leading residential connectivity solutions. The company’s 

high-quality products are backed by best-in-class customer service, 

a 25-year warranty on certified systems and a free online 

training program. Suttle is an ISO 9001 and TL9000 registered 

communications company based in Hector, Minn. 

Suttle’s high-quality products include a complete line of 

DSL line conditioners, CorroShield corrosion protection products, 

TWiN Lock and SURE Lock video connectors, video 

splitters and amplifiers, SpeedStar modular jacks and faceplates 

and a wide array of structured wiring products, including the 

SOHO Access line of wiring enclosures and modules. 

Experience from the last century, innovation for the next. 

Transition Networks 

www.transition.com 


Inc. is an RUS-listed 

fiber access technology expert and global leader in the multiservice 

Carrier Ethernet market. Transition’s extensive portfolio 

of carrier products includes carrier-class switches, network 

interface devices, customer-premises equipment, provider edge 

devices and CWDM. All products are built to ensure that even 

the most stringent service-level agreement requirements are met. 

Whether the application is carrier access, edge, transparent services 

or mobile backhaul, Transition offers cost-effective solutions 

and world-class expertise to help carriers reduce opex and 

capex while ensuring superior service with increased reliability 

and uptime. Transition’s products are available both stand-alone 

and chassis-based, with multiple options such as fixed optics 

and SFP ports that can accommodate virtually any need. Transition 

also offers advanced features, such as 802.3ah Link OAM, 

802.1ag Service OAM, Y.1731 Performance Monitoring, 802.1Q 

VLANs, Bandwidth Allocation and Jumbo Frame support, for 

more efficient troubleshooting and less on-site maintenance. 


NEWS 


www.walkerfirst.com 

Booth #534 

Walker and Associates is the premier distributor of network 

products solutions, providing world-class supply chain management, 

network deployment kits, quality installation, expert 

systems integration and unsurpassed service to U.S. telecommunications 

service provider markets. 

Since its inception in 1970, Walker has remained an aggressive 

industry leader, offering products and solutions that support 

leading-edge technologies such as VoIP, Ethernet, FTTx, 

MSAP, Wi-Fi/WiMAX/LTE, wireless backhaul, optical transport 

and DSL. Walker provides these solutions to wireline and 

wireless service providers of all sizes. Walker continues to seek 

new products and technologies that will aid in building network 

infrastructure and allowing upgrades to the embedded base of 

equipment for higher speeds of broadband service delivery. 

Walker’s services help reduce costs associated with installing 

and maintaining equipment at the customer location. The 

company assists its customers in solving business challenges 

and increasing their ability to meet customer expectations 

from telecommunications service providers. 

News from Featured Exhibitors 

Draka Communications Americas 

New Cable Solution Simplifies Routing 

In MDU and MTU Environments 

Draka Communications 

Americas, one of the leading 

fiber optic cable manufacturers, 

announces the 

introduction of a new line 

of fiber cables designed 

for installation in residential 

multidwelling units 

(MDU) and commercial 

multitenant units (MTU). 

This riser-rated product is 

available in color-coded 

6-fiber or 12-fiber units and is intended for use with wallmounted 

conduit systems typically found in residential hallways 

or office corridors. 

The newest addition to the ezINTERCONNECT cable 

solution family, Draka Indoor Bundle Drop is part of a continuing 

expansion of MDU fiber cable products aimed at reducing 

the time and cost of fiber deployment in apartments, 

condominiums and retail centers. The Indoor Bundle Drop 

can provide the installer with time and cost savings by enabling 

efficient and rapid deployment to multiple locations on 

the same floor. 

Draka Communications Indoor Bundle Drop has undergone 

stringent qualifications to guarantee compliance with 

industry-standard performance requirements. This product 

has completed a comprehensive test program conducted by an 

accredited independent testing laboratory. 

Available immediately, Draka’s Indoor Bundle Drop incorporates 

several exceptional features and benefits to optimize 

performance and reduce installation complexity. This product 

leverages Draka’s unsurpassed bend-insensitive optical fiber 

technology including Ultra Bend Insensitive Fiber (UBIF) 

BendBright-Elite that provides low loss in radii as small as 

5 mm. The Indoor Bundle Drop may be preconnectorized 

for plug-and-play applications and fitted with a pulling sock 

to facilitate routing through wall penetrations. The product is 

lightweight and flame-retardant, and individual subunits are 

uniquely identified for traceability. 

“Draka continues to meet the growing challenges posed by 

FTTH MDU applications through an ever-expanding product 

portfolio. We constantly look for products and methodology 

to simplify the installation process and build on efficiencies 

of scale. The Indoor Bundle Drop provides a fast, simple and 

craft-friendly way to establish service connections for an entire 

building in short order,” states Dean Yamasaki, applications and 

technology manager for Draka Communications Americas. 

ADTRAN 

Frontier Communications Selects ADTRAN for 

Initial Deployment of Enhanced Broadband Delivery 

in New Properties 

ADTRAN Inc., a leading provider of next-generation carrier 

infrastructure solutions, announced its selection by Frontier 

Communications Corporation to provide fast-track broadband 

access solutions and turnkey services to many of the new 

markets Frontier acquired upon completion of its transaction 

with Verizon Communications. Frontier will use ADTRAN’s 

Total Access 5000 Multi-Service Access and Aggregation Platform 

(MSAP) and Total Access 1100 and 1200 Series Fiber-tothe-Node 

(FTTN) 

products to deliver 

universal broadband, 

new bundled 

services and enhanced 

technologies 

to customers across 

its expanded geographic 

footprint. 

Michael Golob, 

vice president of engineering 

and technology for 


Frontier, stated, “ADTRAN’s breadth of applications, including 

fiber to the home, FTTN and IP DSLAM, along with its 

turnkey services, will help us meet our ‘first 180 days’ targets. 

Our long-standing relationship with ADTRAN gives us confidence 

that it will help us get off to a fast start.” 

Frontier is committed to enabling subscribers in the new 

properties to enjoy advanced broadband services and to helping 

advance the goals of the National Broadband Plan. 

Broadband services such as high-speed Internet, business 

Ethernet and network upgrades will be of economic, health 

and cultural benefit to millions of new Frontier consumers, 

small businesses, universities and other institutions in 14 states 

across the West, Midwest and South. 

“ADTRAN is pleased to strengthen our strategic relationship 

with Frontier as a key supplier for its 14-state broadband deployment,” 

says P. Steven Locke, vice president, service providers, 

ADTRAN. “Our breadth of technologies and services will help 

Frontier meet the needs of this growing customer base.” 

AFL 

Introducing the OFL280 FlexTester 

AFL announces the introduction 

of the Noyes 

OFL280 FlexTester, a handheld, 

multifunction OTDR 

and loss test set offering incomparable 

flexibility and 

exceptional value. With unmatched 

combinations of fiber 

optic test functions, ease 

of use and portability, all 

OFL280 FlexTester models 

include an integrated singlemode 

1310/1550 nm OTDR 

with PON-optimized and 

standard test modes, optical 

power meter, 1310/1550 nm 

laser source and visual fault locator. 

The OFL280 FlexTester will replace or upgrade four existing 

OFL250/OFL280 models. (See chart below.) 

Operating at 1310/1550 nm, the OFL280-100 is suitable 

for certifying point-to-point or FTTx PON fibers by allowing 

the detection of macro bends. The OFL280-101 adds 1625 nm, 

allowing certification of the L-band for transport use. Testing 

at 1490 nm is required by some network operators to certify 


FTTx PONs, making the OFL280-102 the best choice. The 

filtered, three-wavelength OFL280-103 certifies dark fibers 

at 1310/1550 nm, fault-locates live FTTx fibers at 1625 nm, 

and measures FTTx power levels at 1490 nm and 1550 nm, all 

from a single test port. All OFL280 FlexTester models can test 

through FTTx PON splitters. 

As with all Noyes OTDRs, test results may be saved as industry 

standard .SOR files, which can be transferred to a PC 

for viewing, printing and analysis using supplied Windowscompatible 

software. 

The enhanced-capability OFL280 FlexTester will replace 

comparable OFL250 and OFL280 models with no price increases. 

For additional information, visit www.AFLtele.com. 


Transition Networks Launches 

New Line of Network Interface Devices 

Transition Networks Inc., the 

fiber access technology 

expert, a wholly 

owned subsidiary 

of Communications 

Systems 

Inc., announced 

the launch of its 

newest portfolio 

of ION Network Interface 

Devices (NIDs). The x2220, x3220 and 

x3230 families are specifically designed to help telecoms and 

cable providers generate and preserve revenues when delivering 

Ethernet services. With this announcement, Transition Networks 

expands its carrier-class and enterprise network product 

portfolios by expanding the ION Platform, an intelligent, 

high-density, multiprotocol system that supports a variety of 

network interface devices and media conversion modules. 

With the growing demand for Ethernet services, the new 

ION NID products enable service providers to offer tiered services 

with end-to-end service-level agreements while increasing 

customer satisfaction and keeping capital expenses to a 

minimum. These new ION NIDs create a clear demarcation 

point between the provider and customer network, as well as 

in carrier-to-carrier networks. ION NIDs can be used in conjunction 

with the ION Platform or as stand-alone devices. 

“Customers continue to put more demands on service providers 

for faster and cheaper Ethernet services, but they still 

AFL FlexTester Model Wavelengths, Range and Special Features Will Replace or Upgrade 

OFL280-100 1310/1550 nm, 34/32 dB OFL250 dual-wavelength 

OFL280-101 1310/1550/1625 nm, 34/32/30 dB OFL250 triple-wavelength 

OFL280-102 1310/1490/1550 nm, 34/32/32 dB Existing OFL280-102 

OFL280-103 

1310/1550/1625 nm, 34/32/30 dB with live fiber filter and Existing OFL280-103 

FTTx PON meter 


Transition ION 

NID Model 

Copper Port (1)10/100/ 

1000Mbps 

Fiber Port(s) (1) 1000Mbps 

*Fixed optic or SFP 

*SFP port is triple speed 

News 

C/S3230 C/S3231 C/S3220 C/S3221 C/S2220 

(1)10/100/ 

1000Mbps 

(2) Triple speed 

SFP ports 

(1)10/100/ 

1000Mbps 

(1) 1000Mbps 

*Fixed optic or SFP 

*SFP port is triple speed 

(1)10/100/ 

1000Mbps 

(2) Triple 

speed SFP 

ports 

802.3ah Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 

802.1ag / Y.1731 Yes Yes 

(1)10/100/ 

1000Mbps 

(1) 100Mbps 

*Fixed optic 

or SFP 

require service-level agreements,” says Patrick Schaber, director 

of marketing at Transition Networks. “These new ION Network 

Interface Devices provide a cost-effective way to meet 

these demands and address wide-scale deployment challenges 

while still providing the features service providers require, 

such as service OAM, link OAM, performance monitoring, 

C-TAG/S-TAG support, quality of service bandwidth allocation 

and remote diagnostics.” 

With key features such as link OAM and service OAM capabilities, 

Transition Networks’ ION NIDs ensure rapid detection 

and isolation of potential service-related problems. The 

ability to have trouble detection and resolution from a central 

network operations center dramatically reduces operating expenses 

and results in a quicker mean time to repair, with the 

end result being a happier customer. 

Product Features 

These ION NIDs support up to 10K jumbo frames and bandwidth 

allocation to limit upstream and downstream traffic. 

They offer complete Ethernet OAM support, including 802.3ah 

(link OAM). The x3230 series includes Ethernet OAM support 

for 802.1ag (service OAM) and Y.1731 (performance monitoring) 

to ensure visibility across the entire network. 

IEEE 802.1p quality of service is included on the latest 

ION NIDs to allow service providers to offer different classes 

of services to customers as well as full VLAN support, including 

double tagging (Q-in-Q). Service providers are also able to 

select the Ethertype of the S-TAG. 

Configuration, management and monitoring of the ION 

NIDs can be performed from a Web browser, command-line 

interface, via Telnet or the console port, or with a third-party 

SNMP system. 

Product Configuration 

Transition Networks’ Network Interface Devices are available 

as a chassis card for the ION Platform or as a stand-alone version. 

See the table above for more information about specific 

models. 

Product Availability 

Please contact Transition Networks at 800-526-9267 or 952- 

941-7600 for pricing and more information on the Transition 

Networks’ ION NID products, or visit www.transition.com 

for the latest information. 

Clearfield 

Clearfield Launches New Fiber Management 

Elements Optimized for Small-Count Deployments 

Clearfield Inc. announced its latest innovation in small-count 

fiber management, the FieldSmart Small Count Delivery (SCD) 

rack mount panel. Marketed without fiber, the FieldSmart SCD 

allows service providers to pick and choose from either the flexible 

Clearview xPAK or the highly scalable Clearview Cassette 

for their fiber connectivity needs. 

“Some of today’s latest fiber applications call for landing 

only a few fibers at a time. Utilizing a fixed panel or wall-mount 

enclosure designed for a typical telco installation is cost-prohibitive 

in these environments – yet the integrity of these fibers 

is just as important,” explains Cheri Beranek, president and 

CEO of Clearfield. “The FieldSmart SCD series is designed to 

provide optimal fiber protection when only a small number of 

fiber ports are initially required.” 

“The Clearview xPAK was designed for flexibility in application, 

allowing for user-defined applications requiring smallcount 

landed fiber,” explains Johnny Hill, chief operating officer 

for Clearfield. “The FieldSmart SCD panel is an immediate 

response to our customers’ request to use the Clearview xPAK 

in traditional relay rack or data cabinet environments for the 

provider or the end user.” 

With the FieldSmart SCD panel, service providers have the 

added convenience of scaling from two to 24 ports of fiber connectivity 

in a 1RU footprint and can upgrade from an xPAK 

device to a traditional Clearview Cassette when take rates or 

density demands dictate. 

Because the mounting plate can be used in either a 19-inch 

or 23-inch environment, service providers can standardize on 

the FieldSmart SCD for all panel requirements, using the same 

panel for a 23-inch frame mount as well as for 19-inch data 

cabinet applications. 

Suggested Application Environments 

The FieldSmart SCD rack-mount panel allows the service provider 

to deploy one or two integrated Clearview devices – the 

Clearview xPAK as well as the original Clearview Cassette. 

The application environments are limitless; initial deployments 

have included cellular backhaul, colo offices and small business 

networks. 

Small-count delivery of fiber doesn’t mean that density 

isn’t important. “In speaking with members of the MSO 


community, we discovered an unmet need within the industry 

for a high level of fiber protection within a footprint that could 

be housed in a 19-inch data cabinet or hut,” says Tom Warren, 

MSO market manager for Clearfield. “When loaded with two 

Clearview Cassettes, the FieldSmart SCD panel provides up 

to 24 ports of fiber management in a single 1RU panel with 

mounting brackets that enable convenient access.” 

Availability 

The FieldSmart SCD 1RU is shipping. It is the latest of a series 

of small-count enclosures designed around the Clearview 

xPAK, including the FieldSmart SCD Wallbox (Part#: FDPxWB1). 


Corning Cable Systems Introduces 

New Stimulus Advantage Program 

Corning Cable Systems LLC, part of Corning Incorporated’s 

Telecommunications segment, introduces the Stimulus Advantage 

Program, available to all recipients of U.S. government 

broadband stimulus program last-mile awards. For every dollar 

spent on Corning Cable Systems’ cable and hardware solutions, 

the program offers points that can be redeemed for splice 

equipment, training courses and much more. 

The Stimulus Advantage Program is open to U.S.-based organizations 

deploying last-mile projects that have been awarded 

broadband stimulus funds allocated by the U.S. federal government 

through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 

of 2009 Title I and Title VI. The eligible organization must be 

listed as an awardee on www.broadbandusa.gov. 

Awardees can apply for the Stimulus Advantage Program 

by submitting an application at www.corning.com/cablesystems/stimulus. 

Terms and conditions of the program, as well as 

additional program information, are available at this site. 

Fiber Instrument Sales 

FIS Introduces the Cheetah SOC 

The new Cheetah SOC is the quickest prepolished, factoryterminated 

pigtail to prepare, splice and install. The Cheetah’s 

25 mm splice-protection sleeve is encapsulated and protected 

by the strain relief boot, eliminating the need for splice trays, 

chips and extra cabinets. The universal holder allows for flexible 

use with the industry’s best fiber optic fusion splicers, such as 

Alcoa Fujikura (AFL), Sumitomo Electric and Fitel, ensuring 

low-loss splices. The fiber pigtail is less than 2 inches in length 

and is precleaved for direct insertion into a fusion splicer. It is 

available in single-mode, multimode and 10 Gig multimode 

fiber types. Simply remove the cleave protector, insert the SOC 

into the fusion splicer and splice. FIS offers 19 styles of SOCs 

to accommodate any solution. They conveniently fit onto tight 

buffered cable. SOCs come precleaved and ready to be spliced 

into any application necessary. 


OFS 

Fitel S123 Fusion Splicer Series 

Now Commercially Available 

Furukawa Electric 

Co. Ltd. (FEC) and 

the U.S.-based OFS 

Telecommunications 

Division are pleased 

to announce the commercial 

release to the 

global market of the 

latest clad alignment 

handheld fusion splicer 

FITEL S123 fusion 

splicer series. 

“The FITEL S123 fusion splicer brings both speed and durability 

for last-mile applications,” says Linda Dembowski, general 

manager, optical connectivity solutions. “With its rugged, 

compact design and improved heating time, the S123 fusion 

splicer is a front-runner in low-cost field splicing equipment.” 

Furukawa Electric and OFS offer a range of rugged, handheld 

fusion splicers that deliver speed, durability and low loss 

in smaller, lighter handheld designs. These include the highly 

precise FITEL S178 Hand Held Core Align fusion splicer 

and the midtier FITEL S153 Active Clad Align fusion splicer, 

which were both announced earlier in 2010, complemented by 

the new FITEL S123 Clad Alignment fusion splicer for lastmile 

applications. 

This new set of fusion machines is designed to endure harsh 

operating conditions, with rubber pads embedded on four 

corners of the splicer body providing improved shock and impact 

resistance. The FITEL fusion splicers also achieve water 

resistance compliant to IPX2 and dust resistance compliant to 

IP5X, allowing them to be used in demanding environments 

without compromising splicer performance. Along with its 

rugged durability, the S123 offers the added user convenience 

of an innovative, mirror-free alignment system that allows for 

simplified maintenance. 

S123 fusion splicer product features include 

• Canopy design, durable metal body frame and rubber protection 

corners that provide robust protection for demanding 

environmental conditions 

• Fast splicing (about 13 seconds) with low loss and fast heating 

(about 25 seconds) for a single fiber 

• 70 cycles (splicing and heating) with single FITEL series 

battery 

• Availability for all Metro, LAN and FTTx fibers, including 

ultra-bend-insensitive fibers such as EZ-Bend fiber 

• Splicer compatibility with Seikoh Giken and Diamond 

splice-on-connectors 

• Easy maintenance – Toolless electrode replacement along 

with a mirror-free alignment system 

• Easy software upgrade via the Internet 

• RoHS compliance. 


News 

Primex 

Primex Releases New P500 and P750 Enclosures 

Primex announced 

the release of two new 

enclosures tailored to 

the FTTH market. 

The P500 and P750 

have been designed 

from the ground 

up to be suited for 

complex fiber deployments 

and feature 

the same reliability 

and flexibility for which 

Primex enclosures are famous. 

“Our current business is deeply rooted in copper cable demarc 

enclosures,” explains director of sales Mahmud Harji, 

“but we know that fiber is the future of telecommunications. 

With that in mind, we developed the P500 and P750 to address 

many of the issues we know fiber installers are facing.” 

Building on the success of the P1000, P1500 and P2000 

platforms, the new boxes are just as suitable for rugged outdoor 

applications and are available with optional NEMA 4/4X rating. 

As with every Primex product, both enclosures are 100 

percent North American made. 

“The enclosures maintain everything our current customers 

love about Primex but are tailored to fiber,” says Harji. 

“The PVC exterior is durable, weatherproof and rustproof 

and the spacious internal compartment allows ample room for 

cabling.” 

Vice President Donovan Hammersley is extremely proud 

of the new enclosures. He says, “What we’ve been able to accomplish 

with these enclosures is to offer a full line of fibercompatible 

enclosures sized for any application. Not only do 

they feature the configurability and flexibility that our current 

customers demand, but they allow Primex to enter a brandnew 

market that’s growing larger every day.” 

The new enclosures are available for purchase now. To learn 

more about the specs and design of the P500 and P750, visit 

www.primextelecom.com. 


Mark Walker Elected to TIA Board of Directors 

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), which 

represents the manufacturers of broadband equipment, products 

and services for the information and communications 

technology industry, announced that it has elected Mark 

Walker, President of Walker and Associates Inc., to its board 

of directors. 

“On behalf of TIA, I wish to thank each new board member 

for agreeing to serve the ICT industry in this capacity,” says 

TIA president Grant Seiffert. “Each has long been engaged in 

working with TIA to promote the growth and well-being of 

our industry and has individually 

expressed a personal commitment 

to work diligently to 

help carve a path to prosperity 

in this time of regulatory and 

economic uncertainty.” 

As a new board member, 

Mark Walker will bring new 

perspective to an already rich 

and diverse body that now includes 

senior-level executives 

from ADTRAN, Alcatel-Lucent, 

ANDA Networks, AttivaCorp, 

Cisco Systems, Ericsson Inc., GENBAND Inc., Henkels 

& McCoy, ILS Technology, Intel Corporation, Intersect 

Inc., LGE, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks, 

OneChip Photonics, Openwave Inc., Panasonic Computer 

Solutions Co., Powerwave Technologies, Qualcomm, Research 

In Motion, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave Corporation, Tellabs, 

Tyco Electronics, Ulticom Inc. and Wirefree. Advisors to 

the board include FAL Associates and Telcordia Technologies. 

Mark Walker assumed his role of president of Walker in 

1998, following his leadership roles in other areas of the business, 

including the company’s former manufacturing facility, 

Evergood. 

April 26 – 28, 2011 




The Leading Conference on Broadband 

Technologies and Services 

“I’m not sure that I’m quite typical of most of the Summit attendees, in 

that as a consultant who is involved in the FTTH, MDU, local government 

and the stimulus, nearly all of the presentations are germane. I thought 

the conference was excellent and appreciated the opportunity to be 

there. The conference and the BBP magazine continue to get better all the 

time and that is saying something in this day and age. Reading the BBP 

magazine cover to cover is S.O.P., standard operating procedure!” 

– Terry Johnson, President 

Utility Communications Network 

To Exhibit or Sponsor, contact: Irene Prescott at 

irene@broadbandproperties.com, or call 505-867-2668. 

For other inquiries, call 877-588-1649, 

or visit www.bbpmag.com. 


BBP 

2010 


Leading Broadband 

Application Providers 

As broadband becomes widely available, more of our work and play 

moves to the Internet. These companies are making it possible. 

A BBP Staff Report 

Nobody wants broadband 

for its own sake. Everyone 

(or almost everyone) 

wants broadband for 

communication, information, 

commerce, entertainment, collaboration, 

productivity, health care, 

education, security, home automation 

… the list goes on. 

A decade ago, broadband offered a 

faster way to surf the Web, send e-mails 

and buy airline tickets from home. As a 

critical mass of broadband users developed, 

new applications and new devices 

appeared. Video has become an integral 

part of nearly every broadband experience 

and has fundamentally altered the 

way we use the Internet. We aren’t just 

watching TV shows on the Internet, 

though there’s plenty of that going on. 

We’re also using broadband video to 

take music lessons, attend webinars, stay 

in touch with family members and contact 

tech support. 

High-definition and 3-D video are 

opening up even more possibilities. Telemedicine 

is one thing when it’s a video 

phone call between a general practitioner 

and a specialist, and quite another 

thing when a remote examination of a 

patient is as good as, or better than, an 

in-person examination. 

Not all broadband’s benefits are related 

to video. Working with centralized 

software on centralized files, instead of 

sending files back and forth, helps us 

collaborate. With Web-based applications, 

we have more up-to-date information, 

fewer delays and fewer errors – not 

to mention higher productivity and, in 

some cases, energy savings. 

Another big change: With reliable, 

always-on broadband connections, 

many applications can operate unattended 

and notify us only when we need 

to know something. (Think about a security 

camera that turns itself on and 

streams video footage when an intruder 

About the Authors 

The 2010 Leading Broadband Application Providers list was researched by Kassandra 

Kania and Marianne Cotter under the supervision of editor Masha Zager. To alert us 

to new broadband applications, send an e-mail to masha@broadbandproperties.com. 

Leading Broadband Application 

Providers at a Glance 

IPTV Middleware and Supporting Applications ....................| 86 

Video Communications .............................................| 87 

Online Gaming Services and Solutions .............................| 89 

Over-the-Top Content Services and Solutions ......................| 91 

Social Networking Services and Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 92 

Remote Storage/Backup/Access Services and Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . | 94 

Online Collaboration Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 95 

Solutions for the Digital Home/Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 96 

E-Government and Web-Based 

Government Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 98 

Telemedicine Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 100 

Infrastructure as a Service and Cloud Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 102 

Smart-Grid Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 106 

sets off a networked sensor.) The “Internet 

of things,” in which most communication 

takes place between unattended 

devices, is expected to become far larger 

than the familiar people-based Internet. 

Walled Gardens 

or Dumb Pipes 

Many service providers have greeted the 

proliferation of broadband applications 

with alarm. These applications – and the 

subscribers who insist on using them – 

seem to threaten their network investments. 

Some providers have threatened 

to stop investing in their networks if 

they cannot control the use of highbandwidth 

applications. 

But perhaps the uncontrolled use of 

high-bandwidth applications is exactly 

what justifies investment in advanced 

networks. The more broadband applications 

there are, the more likely we are 



to find at least one irresistible enough to 

persuade us to subscribe to broadband. 

If the application is important enough 

to us, we might even pay a premium for 

higher speed or guaranteed quality of 

service. 

Yankee Group analyst Benoît 

Felten distinguishes between networkassociated 

applications, which rely on 

a network’s service platform and usually 

are offered by the network owner, 

and network-dissociated applications, 

which run on the open Internet and require 

only “dumb pipes” in the access 

network. Service providers tend to prefer 

network-associated applications, for 

which the value proposition is clearer, 

but both types are necessary. An attractive 

walled garden allows the service 

provider to retain as much revenue as 

possible. But walling the garden too securely 

locks out many potential users. 

This article features some applications 

that are offered only by service 

providers, others that are available only 

over the open Internet, and many that 

are available in both direct-to-consumer 

and white-label versions. Service providers 

can choose to resell the applications 

that have the widest appeal (whole-home 

DVR, for example) and profit from other 

applications by providing the “dumb 

pipes” that attract enthusiasts. 

Criteria for Listing 

Thousands of broadband applications 

and services are in use, and new ones appear 

every day. Deciding which of them 

to include on this list was difficult. 

To keep the length of this feature 

manageable, we focused on a few types 

of application providers: 

• Those whose applications drive 

growth in bandwidth demand. We 

selected certain categories, such as 

telepresence, because we believe their 

impact on bandwidth demand could 

be significant. 

• Those whose applications encourage 

construction of high-bandwidth networks. 

For telco deployers, IPTV is 

the primary application driving the 

buildout of high-speed networks. 

Applications specifically targeted to 

property owners, city officials and 

utilities are also listed because they 

influence these deployers’ decisions 

to construct fiber-to-the-home and 

other high-bandwidth networks. 

• Those that provide application platforms. 

For example, Facebook and 

Salesforce.com offer not only their 

own applications but platforms for 

integrating other applications; Synacor’s 

platform allows ISPs to deliver 

consumer broadband applications; 

Jamcracker enables the delivery of 

business broadband applications. 

Another criterion for the list was 

diversity of company size. Microsoft, 

Google, Netflix and Facebook are household 

words. But along with companies 

that have created new categories of applications, 

seized the lion’s share of a 

market or bought up dozens of independent 

software vendors, we also included 

an assortment of less familiar companies 

that offer innovative products. 

Finally, we focused on companies 

that operate in the North American 

market and have deployed their products 

commercially (though some are still 

in beta testing, a stage that once lasted a 

few weeks or months but now can take 

years). 

In addition to the companies we profile, 

many other broadband application 

providers appear in the category lists. 

However, even the category lists don’t 

come close to enumerating all the useful 

broadband applications now available. 

We encourage readers to continue exploring 

the applications that are becoming 

available every day – and to let us 

know about any they find particularly 

interesting. 

Broadband Applications 

by Category 

Video communications, including 

telepresence. Videoconferencing continues 

to gain ground as businesses 

come to accept that it reduces the need 

for travel. Industry analyst Frost & Sullivan 

found that the North American 

videoconferencing services market grew 

by 18 percent in 2009, reaching $184.2 

million. Between 2009 and 2016, Frost 

& Sullivan expects a compound annual 

growth rate of 18.4 percent, to $599.6 

million. 

According to Frost & Sullivan, increasing 

globalization and cost pressures, 

along with a growing focus on green initiatives, 

are driving videoconferencing 

adoption. As companies seek to establish 

What Is a Broadband Application 

An application is typically defined as “a computer program designed to 

perform a specific task, as opposed to the operating system program that 

runs the computer itself.” Unfortunately, this distinction is no longer clear, 

especially in a broadband network on which many layers of software are 

running on many types of devices. 

We’ve interpreted the term liberally to include not only software that 

“performs a specific task” but also software that enables new business 

strategies by making resources available via broadband. We include providers 

that occupy a variety of niches in the ecosystem – some license their 

software to users or resellers, others use their software (or others’ software) 

to provide services directly and still others provide platforms for distributing 

services. 

We also stretched the definition to include specialized devices where 

appropriate. Many application providers listed here provide integrated 

hardware/software solutions because they require specialized devices 

(meters, cameras, sensors) that few users are likely to own. 

On the other hand, even though file transfer could be considered the 

single most compelling reason to subscribe to broadband, we do not include 

services that simply facilitate transfer or sale of digital media files 

(YouSendIt, iTunes) without additional features that distinguish them from 

utility software or e-commerce sites. 



“The current challenge in the industry is 

the shift from the Internet to an array of mobile 

devices, set-top boxes and in-unit panels 

that change almost daily.” 

– Tushar Patel, CEO, Simplikate 

cost-effective and seamless communication 

with their customers, partners and 

suppliers, videoconferencing is moving 

beyond the enterprise firewall, creating 

interoperability issues. As this year’s company 

descriptions indicate, the industry is 

taking these issues seriously by migrating 

from a proprietary model to a more open, 

standards-based model to allow better 

communication among companies. 

Other factors affecting demand for 

videoconferencing include the enormous 

improvements in quality and ease 

of use at all levels, from the desktop to 

the executive suite, and the integration 

of collaboration tools such as document 

sharing. 

Telepresence, or immersive videoconferencing, 

got an unexpected boost 

last spring from the flight cancellations 

caused by Iceland’s volcanic eruptions. 

“My phone has been ringing off the 

hook – how fast can they add telepresence 

systems” Marc Trachtenberg, 

CEO of Teliris (one of our leading application 

providers) wrote in April. He 

added, “While not one of my customers 

originally deployed telepresence solely 

to address business continuity planning, 

many of them now surely must realize 

the unmatched advantage of having a 

telepresence system in every location.” 

ABI Research says telepresence is 

now at an inflection point, with combined 

sales of hardware, software and 

services growing to $567 million in 

2009 and projected to reach $2.7 billion 

by 2015. 

Videoconferencing is opening new 

opportunities for business and has become 

a key technology for telemedicine 

and distance learning. At the high end, 

it requires fast, reliable networks (most 

telepresence services are still delivered 

over managed networks, though this 

is changing), but users increasingly 

connect from their desktops over the 

public Internet. For these reasons, we 

profile a large number of companies in 

this field, including enterprise heavyweights 

Hewlett-Packard and Cisco, 

traditional videoconferencing leaders 

such as Polycom, telepresence pioneers 

such as Teliris and software-based companies 

such as Vidyo and Paltalk. 

In the last year the industry has experienced 

a great deal of consolidation; 

Cisco acquired Tandberg, Logitech acquired 

LifeSize and RADVISION acquired 

Aethra. This consolidation helps 

companies offer diversified product 

lines, increasing their competitiveness 

in a maturing market. 

One of the most exciting developments 

is the introduction of high-end 

home videoconferencing. Skype and 

Cisco are both planning TV-based, 

high-definition videoconferencing systems 

for consumers (Cisco refers to its 

offering as home telepresence), while 

other companies are offering home systems 

that will serve telecommuters as 

endpoints in enterprise systems. 

IPTV middleware. Pay TV, including 

both linear and on-demand programming, 

is the impetus for most telcos 

to build next-generation networks. 

The majority of telco video offerings 

are based on IPTV, or delivery of video 

over IP. Even Verizon, which chose RF 

overlay technology for linear programming 

on its FiOS TV network, adopted 

IPTV for video on demand and for its 

electronic program guide. 

IPTV subscriptions worldwide are 

poised to grow from 30 million in 2010 

to 68 million by the end of 2014, according 

to forecasts from analyst firm 

Strategy Analytics – a growth rate slower 

than most analysts were forecasting a 

few years ago but still healthy. 

Some of the rosy predictions for 

IPTV have been slow to materialize. 

IPTV has not yet leapt ahead of cable 

technology in terms of features, and 

targeted advertising is proving a tough 

nut to crack. However, the technology 

provides robust competition for cable 

and is even beginning to attract cable 

providers. It should continue to drive 

the buildout of next-generation telco 

networks over the next few years. 

IPTV middleware controls the user 

interface of the video offering – not 

only the program guide but also such 

features as navigation, parental controls 

and DVR operation. Usually, part of 

the IPTV software runs at the headend 

and part of it runs on the set-top box. 

We profile leading IPTV middleware 

vendors Microsoft, whose Mediaroom 

software powers AT&T’s U-verse service 

and many other Tier 1 telco TV 

offerings worldwide; Minerva, whose 

platform is used by nearly 200 service 

providers worldwide; Nokia Siemens 

Networks, whose IPTV software powers 

many small telcos in the United 

States; and Espial, which has also had 

some success in the rural telco market. 

Service providers are seeking to offer 

online and mobile video as adjuncts to 

traditional pay-TV offerings, following 

the three-screen or TV Everywhere strategy. 

In the last year, both IPTV vendors 

and online content publishing vendors 

(see the next category) have begun to offer 

three-screen solutions. In fact, it seems 

possible that these two categories – IPTV 

middleware and online content publishing 

solutions – may eventually merge. 

Over-the-top content services and 

solutions. The growth of online content, 

primarily video and music, has 

been surprisingly rapid, and so has the 

adoption of this technology. In June, 

a survey by the Pew Research Center’s 

Internet & American Life Project found 

that 69 percent of adult Internet users, 

or 52 percent of all U.S. adults, have 

used the Internet to watch or download 

video, and 14 percent have posted video 

clips to sites such as Facebook and You- 

Tube. Users now access Web content via 

game consoles, Internet-enabled TVs, 

Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, digital 

photo frames, home audio players, 



iPads, smart phones and many other devices 

in addition to PCs. 

Over the last five years, content and 

application providers have struggled 

to define workable business models for 

monetizing online content, but they face 

moving targets in terms of both technology 

and consumer behavior. 

Given the technology and consumer 

attitudes of mid-2010, it appears that: 

• Online video is not a threat to traditional 

pay TV overall. It may even 

increase engagement with pay-TV 

offerings by giving viewers new ways 

to catch up with missed episodes and 

evangelize for their favorite shows. 

• Online video is nevertheless moving 

up the distribution food chain, as 

evidenced by a recent deal allowing 

Netflix to stream some major movies 

ahead of their release dates to premium 

pay-TV channels. 

• Pay-TV providers can combine online 

video with their offerings in several 

ways, including the three-screen 

or TV Everywhere approach and 

the Google TV approach of making 

Web video and pay-TV content accessible 

through a single interface. 

• Viewers seem willing to accept several 

models for monetizing online 

content (both mainstream and niche 

content), including advertisements, 

subscriptions, rentals and purchases. 

• Niche and independent content providers 

can find online opportunities 

to distribute and profit from their 

content with little or no help from 

traditional pay-TV providers or other 

mainstream content distributors. 

• User-generated content is more valuable 

as an adjunct to social networking 

than as a commodity in its own 

right. 

Because the market is segmented 

and providers are still experimenting 

with business models, the diversity of 

product offerings is still very wide. The 

companies whose video offerings we 

profile have taken different approaches. 

Netflix streams long-form commercial 

video content to the PC and TV as a 

free add-on to its DVD-rental business 

(though the DVD business is beginning 

to look like an add-on to the streaming 

video business). Hulu provides similar 

content to the PC on an ad-supported 

basis, now supplemented by a subscription 

service. Google’s YouTube concentrates 

on short-form video, and the new 

Google TV will let pay-TV operators 

put their service and online video under 

a single umbrella. Blip.tv specializes in 

independent, made-for-Web video and 

shares advertising revenue with content 

creators. VUDU, which rents and sells 

movies and TV shows, abandoned proprietary 

television set-top boxes and began 

embedding its software in Internetconnected 

TVs. NeuLion, Brightcove 

and ExtendMedia help content owners 

monetize video in a variety of ways. Music 

services have taken similarly divergent 

approaches. 

Gaming. Electronic gaming has become 

one of the largest entertainment industries 

in the world. Increasingly, games 

are migrating to the Internet and adding 

Web-based features such as voice chat. 

Internet gamers, other than casual gamers, 

typically demand networks with high 

bandwidth and, especially, low latency. 

Subscription games such as World of 

Warcraft generated $2.8 billion in U.S. 

revenue in 2009, and stand to generate 

$5 billion by 2015, market research firm 

Pike & Fischer projects. The number of 

online gaming paid subscribers, which 

totaled approximately 19.4 million at the 

end of last year, will more than double to 

44.5 million by the end of 2014, according 

to P&F. P&F also says the increasing 

complexity of online gaming environments 

will heighten bandwidth demand, 

giving Internet service providers an opportunity 

to boost revenues by adding 

higher-speed tiers for intense gamers. 

The companies profiled here have 

adopted a variety of business models. 

Blizzard Entertainment, a division of 

Activision Blizzard, publishes and hosts 

popular MMPORGs (massively multiplayer 

online role-playing games) and 

offers both free and subscription-based 

services. Electronic Arts publishes 

games for a variety of online and offline 

platforms and operates a popular casual 

gaming site with both ad-supported 


Magazine 

Invites You to the 

Broadband Properties Summit 2011 


April 26 – 28, 2011 




WHO SHOULD ATTEND 

Real Estate Developers • Property Owners • Independent Telcos 

• Municipal Officials • Private Cable Operators • Town Planners 

• Economic Development Professionals • Architects and Builders 

• System Operators • Investors • Utility Organizations • System Integrators 

Visit www.bbpmag.com and secure your 

participation today, or call 877-588-1649. 



and paid games. Microsoft, maker of 

the Xbox game console, operates Xbox 

Live, an online gaming and entertainment 

service with both free and paid 

memberships. The cloud-based gaming 

service from start-up company OnLive 

promises to eliminate the need for costly 

consoles like the Xbox. 

Social networking. Although social 

networking isn’t inherently bandwidthintensive, 

many social networking sites 

now encourage the sharing and use of 

digital media and other bandwidthgobbling 

activities. In fact, many of 

them are organized around shared interests 

in music, games or video. MySpace 

is used as a promotional tool by thousands 

of musicians, who post MP3 files 

of their songs and videos of their live 

performances. Facebook, which started 

as a way for Harvard students to keep 

in touch with their friends, has created a 

platform that now hosts an astounding 

500,000 active broadband applications, 

including many of those on our list. 

Remote file access. The ability to access 

files from anywhere is key to collaboration, 

mobility and business continuity. 

Broadband enables access to 

files stored either on a central server or 

on a remote personal computer. Many 

providers now offer remote backup, 

storage and file management capabilities, 

some to consumers and small 

businesses and others to the enterprise 

market. Broadband service providers often 

resell both consumer and enterprise 

storage services. We profile consumer/ 

small business offerings from Box.net, 

which provides online file storage; Orb 

Networks, which enables users to access 

files on their own PCs via the Internet; 

Leaf Networks, which lets users create 

virtual private networks on the fly; and 

Sling Media, which makes video available 

remotely. Serving the enterprise 

market with a variety of flexible cloud 

storage solutions are Nirvanix and Amazon 

Web Services. 

Web-based collaboration. For 

real-time collaboration via the Internet, 

dispersed workgroups can use videoconferencing 

solutions with built-in productivity 

features such as presentation sharing 

and whiteboards. At the opposite 

extreme, shared online file storage can 

serve as a bare-minimum collaboration 

solution. But a third, middle-ground 

option is becoming increasing popular: 

Internet applications that facilitate asynchronous 

collaboration by providing 

not only file management but also basic 

productivity tools ranging from group 

calendars to spreadsheets. For example, 

Microsoft’s SharePoint Workspace allows 

workgroups to collaborate on files, 

as do the productivity applications included 

in Google’s Google Apps. Cisco’s 

WebEx subsidiary offers a variety of online 

collaboration tools, and 37signals, 

an independent vendor, offers software 

for contact management, project management 

and more. 

Salesforce.com, a customer relationship 

management (CRM) provider that 

championed the software-as-a-service 

(SaaS) model and created an online SaaS 

market and development environment, 

deserves much of the credit for the current 

acceptance and popularity of Webbased 

business software. In the last few 

years, nearly all enterprise application 

vendors have published versions of their 

software that run “in the cloud” rather 

than in the corporate data center. 

Infrastructure as a Service. A 

quarter-century ago, Sun Microsystems 

adopted the slogan, “The network is the 

computer.” Today, the entire Internet is 

the computer. Grid computing technology 

became popular several years ago 

as a research tool that enables scientists 

to process enormous datasets on multiple 

networked computers that act as a 

single supercomputer. Similar technologies 

migrated to the business world, and 

businesses can now access computing 

resources on demand without having to 

know much, if anything, about where 

they come from. Infrastructure as a service 

isn’t an application in the sense of 

performing a specific task, but it solves 

an important business problem – the 

need for scalable computing capacity. 

For example, a software developer stresstesting 

a new piece of software might 

need to quadruple its normal capacity 

for several days or weeks. 

Amazon and Google are making 

some of their vast computing power 

available to software developers in this 

way; we also profile Akamai, whose 

technology powers much cloud computing. 

Many other leading companies are 

actively working on this technology. 

Telehealth and telemedicine. 

Broad band offers opportunities for older 

and disabled people to live more independently 

than they otherwise could. A combination 

of in-home sensors and alerts, 

Web portals and video communication 

can help balance competing needs for 

care, safety, privacy and independence. 

Health insurance companies, slow to respond 

to these new technologies, are now 

beginning to encourage some of them. 

Research firm Parks Associates forecasts 

that the U.S. connected-care market will 

grow from less than $1 billion in 2009 to 

nearly $6 billion in 2013. 

Companies we profile in this space 

include 4Home, whose monthly subscription-based 

service includes sensors 

in the home and a multiparty portal that 

enables remote monitoring, and uControl, 

whose service includes remotely 

accessible sensors, live video feeds and 

pictures, and emergency pendants. 

Telemedicine – remote diagnosis and 

consultation without the medical monitoring 

component – is also emerging as 

a major application. Although community 

hospitals and clinics have accessed 

specialized medical resources via videoconferencing 

for years, telemedicine 

is now moving into shopping centers, 

workplaces, community centers and 

even homes. 

Cisco’s HealthPresence solution has 

been adopted by UnitedHealthCare, 

a leading health insurance provider, 

which intends to make telemedicine the 

“house call of the 21st century.” Med- 

Concierge provides medical concierge 

services, including video consultations, 

electronic health records and other 

services, through broadband service 

providers and property developers. Nu- 

Physicia focuses on telemedicine at the 

workplace and in remote locations. And 

ScriptPro uses a combination of video 

communication and robotic technology 

to power a tele pharmacy application. 

Building automation and security. 

In addition to monitoring residents’ 

health and safety, broadband applications 

can also monitor and control the 

operations of the buildings themselves 

and alert owners and managers when 



they need to take action. In-home sensors 

and alerts, Web portals and video 

communications offer opportunities to 

conserve energy and water, keep buildings 

secure and reduce the costs of 

building maintenance. 

Our list includes such companies 

as Crestron, uControl, LifeShield, 

4Home and Control4, whose applications 

provide varying combinations of 

energy management, home appliance 

control, home entertainment management, 

security and home health monitoring. 

Simplikate automates the kinds 

of concierge services that residents might 

expect to find in a luxury condo or hotel 

and provides an interface for third-party 

home automation solutions. 

Municipal applications. Local governments 

are rapidly moving beyond 

what the Public Technology Institute 

calls passive or informative e-government 

(websites that list the hours government 

offices are open) to transactional 

and participatory models that use the 

Internet to deliver services and involve 

citizens in government. Because municipal 

governments have been instrumental 

in encouraging and even building 

broadband networks and because they 

often serve as anchor tenants for such 

networks, municipal applications are 

more important than their bandwidth 

usage might indicate. 

Companies profiled in this space include 

Accela, which offers Web-enabled 

applications for licensing, inspecting, 

enforcing codes and performing similar 

governmental functions; VisionAIR, 

which specializes in public-safety applications; 

and Granicus, whose applications 

promote citizen engagement. 

Applications for utilities. Broadband 

has enormous potential for energy 

conservation, not just at the level of the 

individual building but at the level of 

the electric utility. Utilities can avoid 

having to build new plant and generate 

more electricity by working with their 

customers via broadband to conserve 

energy. As the CEO of the Glasgow 

Electric Plant Board puts it, “Broadband 

is electric power plant.” 

Because of the potential cost savings 

and conservation benefits of these applications, 

many utilities are building highspeed 

broadband links, including fiber 

optic links, to customers’ premises. Thus, 

utility applications, like municipal applications, 

are more important in terms 

of driving broadband construction than 

their bandwidth usage might indicate. 

We include profiles of Carina Technology, 

whose hardware/software solutions 

enable interactive GIS, meter data 

management and demand-response 

applications; muNet, whose WebGate 

technology allows utility companies to 

automate meter reading and other services; 

and Tantalus, which provides 

smart-grid communications solutions 

for advanced metering, demand response 

and distribution automation. 


Company Web Address Contact Broadband Applications 

37signals www.37signals.com email@37signals.com Collaboration software 

4Home www.4home.com 408-469-4222 Home automation, home health 

monitoring, energy management 

Accela www.accela.com 925-659-3200 E-government applications 

Adobe Systems www.adobe.com 800-833-6687 Web conferencing and collaboration, 

online video solution 

Akamai www.akamai.com 617-444-3000; Support for cloud computing 

877-425-2624 

Amazon Web Services http://aws.amazon.com 206-266-1000 Infrastructure as a service 

Blinkx www.blinkx.com 415-655-1450 Video search 

Blip.tv www.blip.tv info@blip.tv Online video service 

Blizzard Entertainment www.blizzard.net 310-255-2000 Online gaming 

Box.net www.box.net 877-729-4269 Content management and collaboration 

BrightCom www.brightcom.com 877-483-9737 Telepresence, videoconferencing 

Brightcove www.brightcove.com 617-500-4947 Platform for publishing online video 

Carbonite www.carbonite.com, 877-665-4466 Online backup service 

www.carbonitepro.com 

Carina Technology www.carinatek.com 866-915-5464 Smart-grid solutions 

Chatroulette www.chatroulette.com Random video-chat encounters 

Cisco Systems www.cisco.com 408-526-4000 Telepresence, videoconferencing, 

Web collaboration, telemedicine, 

energy management 

Control4 www.control4.com 888-400-4070 Home automation, energy management, 

security 

Crestron www.crestron.com 201-767-3400; Home automation, energy management 

800-237-2041 

Digital Video Enterprises www.dvetelepresence.com 949-347-9166 Telepresence 



Company Web Address Contact Broadband Applications 

Electronic Arts www.info.ea.com 650-628-1500 Online gaming 

Elluminate www.elluminate.com 866-388-8674 E-learning solutions 

Espial www.espial.com 613-230-4770 IPTV middleware 

ExtendMedia www.extend.com 617-332-5700 Multiscreen video software 

Facebook www.facebook.com 650-853-1300 Social networking 

Google www.google.com 650-253-0000 Infrastructure as a service, collaboration 

software, online video services, 

electronic health records, mapping 

Granicus www.granicus.com 415-357-3618 E-government applications 

Hewlett-Packard www.hp.com 800-752-0900 Telepresence, videoconferencing 

Hulu www.hulu.com 310-571-4100 Online video service 

Jamcracker www.jamcracker.com 408-496-5500 Software-as-a-service platform 

and marketplace 

Leaf Networks www.leafnetworks.net 800-805-9406 Network sharing 

Lifeshield Security www.lifeshield.com 484-645-1455 Security systems 

Logitech www.logitech.com, 510-795-8500 Videoconferencing 

www.sightspeed.com, 

www.lifesize.com 

MedConcierge www.medconcierge.com 781-953-9649 Telemedicine services 

MediaFriends www.mediafriendsinc.com 866-444-1968 Multidevice convergence 

Microsoft www.microsoft.com 800-642-7676 IPTV middleware, online gaming and 

entertainment service, business 

collaboration solutions, mapping 

Minerva Networks www.minervanetworks.com 408-567-9400; IPTV middleware 

800-806-9594 

muNet www.munet.com 781-861-8644 Advanced metering infrastructure, 

other utilities 

MySpace www.myspace.com Social networking 

Netflix www.netflix.com 408-540-3700 Online video service 

NeuLion www.neulion.com 516-622-8300 Online content delivery 

Nirvanix www.nirvanix.com 619-764-5650 Enterprise-class cloud-storage platform 

Nokia Siemens Networks www.nokiasiemens 972-374-3000 IPTV middleware 

networks.com/iptv 

Nuphysicia www.nuphysicia.com 713-358-9270 Telemedicine 

OnLive www.onlive.com 888-665-4835 Cloud-based online gaming 

Orb Networks www.orb.com 510-836-1000 Remote file access 

Paltalk www.paltalk.com 212-520-7000 Video chat 

Pandora www.pandora.com 510-451-4100 Personalized Internet radio 

Polycom www.polycom.com 800-765-9266 Telepresence, videoconferencing 

RADVISION www.radvision.com 201-689-6300 Videoconferencing 

RealNetworks www.realnetworks.com 206-674-2700; Online entertainment services 

800-254-7325 

Salesforce.com www.salesforce.com 415-901-7000 Hosted business applications, SaaS 

development platform and marketplace 

ScriptPro www.scriptpro.com 800-851-2364 Pharmacy automation and telepharmacy 

systems 

Simplikate www.simplikate.com 877-547-3415 Building concierge services 

Skype www.skype.com contactus@skype.net Videoconferencing 

Sling Media www.slingmedia.com 650-293-8000 Video place shifting 

Synacor www.synacor.com 716-853-1362 Internet portals 

Tantalus www.tantalus.com 604-299-0458 Smart-grid communications solutions 

Teliris www.teliris.com 212-490-1065 Telepresence 

uControl www.ucontrol.com 888-357-4214 Home security, home automation, 

home health monitoring 

Vidyo www.vidyo.com 866-998-4396 Videoconferencing 

VisionAIR www.visionair.com 800-882-2108 Public safety automation 

VUDU www.vudu.com 408-492-1010 Online video service 



“Independently produced Web shows are becoming sustainable and are 

permeating the culture. Brand advertisers have developed a major appetite 

for well-produced video, and we’re pairing that enthusiasm with shows that 

have built strong and faithful audiences. Our business – and Web video in 

general – has reached a major inflection point.” 

– Mike Hudack, CEO, blip.tv. 

37signals 

www.37signals.com 

email@37signals.com 

Key products and services: Collaboration software 

Supporting the virtual organization: Dispersed organizations 

can collaborate effectively over the Internet using Webbased 

productivity applications from 37signals. A privately 

held company based in Chicago, 37signals was founded in 

1999 as a Web design company and transitioned into a Webbased 

software company in 2005. 37signals’ first application 

was the project management system Basecamp, followed by 

Ta-Da List (to-do list), Backpack (business organizer), Writeboard 

(document sharing), Campfire (real-time communications) 

and Highrise (contact tracking). This suite of applications 

helps small groups manage projects, share information 

and coordinate the work of dispersed teams. The company was 

also responsible for launching the popular open-source Web 

application framework software Ruby on Rails, which it uses 

in its own applications. More than 3 million people and businesses 

in 70 countries use 37signals’ software. 

4Home 

www.4home.com 

408-469-4222 

Key products and services: Home control services 

At the forefront of the connected home: Home monitoring, 

media and entertainment management and home health and 

energy management are among the solutions 4Home (4H) offers 

to broadband service providers, utilities and OEM partners. 

The solutions enable a user to monitor and control home 

devices and media from a mobile phone, TV, computer or 

touch panel. 4H’s home health solution, a monthly subscription 

service that enables independent living for seniors, lets 

family members and caregivers see historical data, real-time 

status and proactive alerts about the health and well-being of 

the monitored elder. Through a strategic partnership with Sensus 

Metering Systems, 4H is developing demand-response solutions 

that track in-home power usage and communicate that 

information through a smart meter to utilities and consumers. 

Another new energy management solution lets consumers monitor 

and control energy usage by plugging a Marvell Sheeva- 

Plug plug computer into an electrical wall outlet. The company 

also announced a reference home management software 

platform optimized for the Intel Atom processor that enables 

the development of a variety of home networking products for 

connected-home services. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and formerly 

called 4HomeMedia, 4Home is venture capital funded. 

Accela 

www.accela.com 

925-659-3200 

Key products and services: Web-based and mobile 

e-government software applications 

Citizen access to government services: Accela’s Web-based 

and mobile software applications address issues critical to 

government success, such as transparency, shared services and 

citizen access. By automating workflow, tracking information 

and managing data from a centralized database, these solutions 

unify government departments and help them make services 

available 24/7. The software can be used by a single department 

or can manage the services of an entire jurisdiction. Accela’s 

flagship product, Automation, automates workflow, forms 

management, activity tracking and cashiering, as well as permitting, 

building, licensing, planning, public works, transportation 

and more. It offers modules for asset management, land 

management, licensing and case management, public health 

and safety and service requests. Add-on products include Citizen 

Access, GIS, IVR and the new Mobile Office, which extends 

processing capabilities into the field for inspections, code 

enforcement, work orders and service requests. Located in San 

Ramon, Calif., and employing more than 140 people, Accela is 

a privately owned company that boasts more than 500 deployments 

across the United States and overseas. Recent customer 

wins include a statewide e-permitting and licensing infrastructure 

for Montana and e-permitting structures for the California 

Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and 

the U.S. Department of the Treasury Alcohol and Tobacco Tax 

and Trade Bureau. 



Adobe 

www.adobe.com 

800-833-6687 

Key products and services: Web conferencing and 

collaboration, content delivery solution 

Summary: Founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, 

Calif., Adobe has set many of the most widely used standards 

for producing and delivering content on the Web. Adobe’s 

media player, Flash Player, is installed on more than 98 percent 

of connected computers and delivers about 80 percent of 

Web video. The Flash platform, which is used to create and 

deliver Web applications, content and even real-time communications, 

has been extended to Internet-connected televisions, 

set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players and other devices for the 

digital living room. Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is a Web communications 

solution that enables live, interactive Web meetings, 

virtual classes, on-demand presentations and courses and 

group collaboration. Adobe’s 2009 acquisition of Web analytics 

firm Omniture enables tighter integration of Web content 

with the analysis of viewer response to the content and has the 

potential to enhance the value of Web-based advertising. In 

2009, Adobe posted $2.9 billion in revenue. 

IPTV Middleware and 

Supporting Applications 

Company 

180SQUARED 


Cisco Systems 

Clearleap 

Digisoft 

Ericsson 

Espial 

Latens 

Microsoft 

Minerva Networks 

Move Networks 

Neptuny 

Nokia Siemens 

Networks 

Optibase 

Orca Interactive 

SeaChange 

Technicolor 

UT Starcom 

Conklin-Intracom 

Web Address 

www.180squared.com 

www.alcatel-lucent.com 

www.cisco.com 

www.clearleap.com 

www.digisoft.tv 

www.ericsson.com 

www.espial.com 

www.latens.com 

www.microsoft.com 

www.minervanetworks.com 

www.movenetworks.com 

www.contentwise.tv 

www.nokiasiemens 

networks.com/iptv 

www.optibase.com 

www.orcainteractive.com 

www.schange.com 

www.technicolor.com 

www.utstar.com 

www.conklin-intracom.com 

Akamai 

www.akamai.com 

617-444-3000, 877-425-2624 

Key products and services: Cloud-computing optimization 

services 

Ahead in the clouds: Akamai provides managed services for 

powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications 

online. After pioneering content delivery networks more 

than a decade ago, Akamai is now supporting the growth of 

enterprise cloud computing with its optimization services for 

cloud acceleration, business continuity, security and applications 

and storage. Its recent acquisition of Velocitude’s mobile 

services platform should boost Akamai’s strategic position in 

the mobile market and enable HD video and secure e-commerce 

on mobile devices. Akamai handles tens of billions of 

Web interactions daily for companies such as Audi, NBC and 

Fujitsu and for such organizations as the U.S. Department of 

Defense and NASDAQ. Offering an alternative to centralized 

Web infrastructure, Akamai’s global network of tens of thousands 

of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight 

and performance for businesses to succeed online. Based 

in Cambridge, Mass., Akamai has more than 1,750 employees; 

its total revenue for 2009 was $859.8 million. 

Amazon Web Services 

http://aws.amazon.com 

206-266-1000 

Key products and services: Infrastructure as a service 

Infinite computing capacity on demand: Amazon Web 

Services (AWS), launched in 2006 by the e-commerce giant 

Amazon, provides scalable computing infrastructure that allows 

organizations to requisition compute power, storage and 

other application services in the cloud. Because these services 

are available on demand, customers don’t need to control 

them, maintain them or even know where they are located. 

Customers access the services when they need them and pay 

for only what they use. The services are based on Amazon’s 

own infrastructure, which is one of the world’s most reliable, 

scalable and cost-efficient Web infrastructures. Within two 

years of its launch, AWS eclipsed Amazon’s global e-commerce 

sites in terms of bandwidth. AWS offerings include the Elastic 

Compute Cloud, Simple Storage Service, SimpleDB, Simple 

Queue Service, Flexible Payments Service, CloudFront and 

Elastic MapReduce. New services launched in the last year include 

the Relational Database Service, Virtual Private Cloud, 

Elastic MapReduce, High-Memory EC2 Instances, Reserved 

and Spot Instances, Streaming for Amazon CloudFront, and 

Versioning for Amazon S3. AWS also continued to expand 

its global footprint, adding new services in Europe and a new 

Northern California region and planning for a presence in the 

Asia-Pacific region in 2010. Amazon as a whole posted revenue 

of $24.5 billion in 2009. 



blinkx 

www.blinkx.com 

415-655-1450 

Key products and services: Video search 

Find it fast: Founded in 2004, blinkx operates the largest and 

most advanced video search engine on the market. The company 

has indexed more than 35 million hours of audio, video, 

viral and TV content and made it fully searchable and available 

on demand. Blinkx uses a combination of patented conceptual 

search, speech recognition and video analysis software to 

find online video. Users can search for video content, create 

video playlists or build customized video walls for their blogs 

or MySpace pages. In 2010, the company launched a public 

beta version of its product that is specifically designed for mobile 

access. Consumers can access the blinkx Mobile Video 

Search beta site from any phone with a Web browser that can 

play MP4s. Blinkx has headquarters in San Francisco and the 

United Kingdom. Revenue for 2009 was $33.6 million. 

blip.tv 

www.blip.tv 

info@blip.tv 

Key products and services: Online television network 

A venue for independent Web shows: Blip.tv says it is building 

the next-generation television network – one that is meritocratic, 

democratic and open to everyone. The company serves 

Video Communications 

(Companies on the Leading Broadband Application 

Provider list are shown in bold in this table and following tables.) 

Company Web Address Telepresence Standard Desktop 

Videoconferencing Videoconferencing/ 

Web conferencing 

Adobe www.adobe.com ü 

Apple www.apple.com ü 

Avaya www.avaya.com ü ü 

Avistar www.avistar.com ü 

BrightCom www.brightcom.com ü ü ü 

Chatroulette www.chatroulette.com ü 

Cisco Systems www.cisco.com ü ü ü 

Digital Video 

Enterprises www.dvetelepresence.com ü 

DimDim www.dimdim.com ü 

Elluminate www.elluminate.com ü 

Emblaze-VCON www.vcon.com ü ü 

Hewlett-Packard www.hp.com ü ü 

Ilinc www.ilinc.com ü 

Iocom www.iocom.com ü ü ü 

Logitech www.logitech.com, ü ü 

www.sightspeed.com, 


MegaMeeting.com www.megameeting.com ü 

Microsoft www.microsoft.com ü 

OpenCo www.openco.org ü 

Paltalk www.paltalk.com ü 

Polycom www.polycom.com ü ü ü 

RADVISION www.radvision.com ü ü 

Skype www.skype.com ü 

Sony www.sony.com ü ü ü 

Team Apart www.teamapart.com ü 

Telepresence Tech www.telepresencetech.com ü ü 

Teliris www.teliris.com ü 

Vidyo www.vidyo.com ü ü 

VSee Labs www.vsee.com ü ü 

Watchitoo www.watchitoo.com ü 



“While enterprise data growth continues unabated at 30 percent and higher 

per year, IT budgets are not [growing at the same rate]. So cloud storage 

is an essential tool in controlling escalating data storage costs and giving 

businesses more flexibility and options in retaining, sharing and managing 

the content and data they generate on a daily basis.” 

– Geoff Tudor, cofounder and senior vice president of 

product strategy and business development, Nirvanix 

95 million video views per month, with a roster of more than 

50,000 original Web shows that range from scripted sitcoms 

and dramas to news and how-to programs. More than 85 percent 

of the video views are of high enough quality to accept 

major brand advertising, and the company has attracted advertising 

from such brands as PepsiCo, Chevrolet, Samsung 

and Starbucks. Blip.tv not only hosts the shows but also syndicates 

them to iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo, AOL Video, Verizon 

FiOS, TiVo, Sony Bravia, the Roku Digital Video Player and 

Facebook. The company provides advertisers with advanced 

analytics, impromptu campaign optimizations and a range 

of creative services; it splits all advertising revenues with show 

creators 50-50. Blip.tv has operated since 2005 and is venture 

capital funded. 

Blizzard Entertainment 

www.blizzard.com 

310-255-2000 

Key products and services: Free and subscription-based 

online gaming services 

Massively multiplayer games: Blizzard Entertainment’s free 

online game service, Battle.net, is one of the largest in the 

world, with millions of active users. It provides an online arena 

for players of Blizzard’s best-selling franchises, Diablo, Warcraft 

and StarCraft, to chat, challenge opponents and initiate 

multiplayer games. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, a subscription-based 

service, is the world’s leading massively multiplayer 

online role-playing game franchise, with several million subscribers. 

The company also sells PC-based games. A division 

of Activision Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment has offices in 

Irvine, Calif. Activision Blizzard posted revenue of $4.3 billion 

in 2009. 

Box.net 

www.box.net 

877-729-4269 

Key products and services: Content management and 

collaboration 

Collaboration made easy: Box.net’s cloud content management 

platform gives small businesses the same ability to access, 

manage and share content that Fortune 500 companies have. 

Box serves as a central online hub for all types of business content 

and can be extended through the OpenBox platform to 

partnering services such as Google Apps, salesforce.com and 

NetSuite, as well as to devices such as the iPhone and iPad. 

Users share content securely in collaborative workspaces, and 

IT departments can see how content moves within and beyond 

their organizations. Recently, Box.net launched Box Sync, a 

platform extension that synchronizes users’ desktops with their 

Box.net files. Another new feature is instant content viewing 

for all file types in the Box environment. Box.net was founded 

in 2005 with the goal of making it easy for people to access and 

share all their content, wherever they are. Cofounders Aaron 

Levie and Dylan Smith, along with Box’s team of 100 employees, 

have since established Box.net as the leading cloud content 

management solution for more than 4 million users and 

businesses. Box.net is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and is venture 

capital backed. 

BrightCom 

www.brightcom.com 

877-483-9737 

Key products and services: Telepresence and 

videoconferencing solutions 

Alternatives to business travel: Established in 2005, 

BrightCom offers a range of options to connect people and 

content from home offices, mobile devices, desktops or conference 

rooms. The company designs and manufactures highdefinition 

and standard-definition telepresence and videoconferencing 

solutions integrated with complete Web conferencing 

for business communications. BrightCom’s Visual Collaboration 

System provides a powerful conferencing infrastructure for 

real-time interactive data sharing, and its Lumina Telepresence 

provides an immersive environment for natural collaboration 

and conversation. Its ClearView Conferencing solutions support 

video and audio communication from conference rooms, 

mobile carts or desktops. 



Brightcove 

www.brightcove.com 

617-500-4947 

Key products and services: Platform for publishing online 

video 

Online publishing for media heavyweights: Brightcove’s video 

publishing platform is used by many of the world’s largest 

news and entertainment media companies. The platform’s features 

include video publishing (content management, customizable 

video players, analytics), community management (video 

sharing, uploads), distribution (partnering with affiliates, video 

search engine listings, broadcast control) and advertising (campaigns, 

ad controls, ad server integration). Founded in 2004 

and employing about 260 people, Brightcove is headquartered 

in Cambridge, Mass., with offices across North America, Europe 

and Asia. Customers include AOL, Showtime, The New 

York Times, Condé Nast, Turner Broadcasting, Virgin Media 

Group, Financial Times, Gannett, Fox Entertainment Group, 

Rainbow Media, Discovery Communications and many others. 

Brightcove-powered sites reach more than 135 million 

unique viewers every month. In the past year, Brightcove has 

Online Gaming Services and Solutions 

Company Web Address Service Solution 

Acclaim www.acclaim.com ü 

AddictingGames www.addictinggames.com ü 

Bigpoint Games us.bigpoint.com ü 

Blizzard Entertainment www.blizzard.net ü 

Electronic Arts www.info.ea.com ü 

Exent Technologies www.exent.com ü ü 

Gaikai www.gaikai.com ü 

Gametap (Turner www.gametap.com ü 

Broadcasting) 

Jagex www.jagex.com ü 

Microsoft www.microsoft.com ü ü 

MySpace www.myspace.com ü 

NCsoft www.ncsoft.net ü ü 

Nexon www.nexon.net ü 

Nintendo www.nintendo.com ü 

OnLive www.onlive.com ü 

Otoy www.otoy.com ü 

Playcast Media Systems www.playcast-media.com ü 

RealNetworks www.realnetworks.com ü ü 

Sony Online www.soe.com ü 

Entertainment 

StreamMyGame www.streammygame.com ü ü 

Yahoo www.yahoo.com ü 

Yummy Interactive www.yummy.net ü 

Zen Entertainment www.zenentertainment ü 

Network 

network.com 

Zynga www.zynga.com ü 

doubled its customer base across 48 countries and continued 

to expand international operations, including launching operations 

in France with a new office in Paris. Recently, Brightcove 

introduced solutions for delivering video on iPhone, iPad 

and Android mobile devices and rolled out new monetization 

features that include support for online video advertising standards 

and for HTML5, enabling distribution of ad-supported 

content on devices such as the iPad. 

Carbonite 

www.carbonite.com, www.carbonitepro.com 

877-665-4466 

Key products and services: Online backup service 

Never lose data again: Carbonite’s Windows- and Maccompatible 

online backup service provides unlimited backup 

space to consumers and small businesses for a flat rate. The 

service is available through Carbonite’s website, major U.S. 

retailers and international distributors. Since 2006, the company 

has backed up more than 39 billion files and restored 

more than 3.2 billion lost files for its customers. Currently, 

it backs up more than 100 million files every day to high-redundancy 

storage servers in its Boston 

and Somerville, Mass., data centers. 

In February, the company introduced 

Carbonite Pro, a small-business backup 

solution that enables users to centrally 

manage backups of multiple computers. 

Carbonite also recently launched mobile 

applications for iPhone, iPod Touch and 

BlackBerry smart phones. 


www.carinatek.com 

866-915-5464 

Key products and services: 

Broadband energy information 

solutions, integrated software platform, 

IP-enabled endpoints, managed 

services, real-time demand response, 

prepaid energy 

Visibility into the grid: The integrated 

energy intelligence solutions from 

Carina Technology give energy providers 

full visibility into the grid along with 

tools for proactive management and revenue 

generation, such as interactive geographic 

information systems, meter data 

management and intelligent demand 

response. Interoperability with existing 

systems and vendors is central to Carina’s 

design philosophy. Solutions include 

the CarinaPoint hardware platform and 



CarinaXchange, a Web-based user interface for controlling and 

monitoring equipment in remote areas over communications 

platforms that include digital cellular, FTTH and Wi-Fi. Carina’s 

solution suite, which enables automation of both home and 

utility operations, can yield tremendous energy savings through 

demand response and prepaid energy. The company recently 

partnered with HD Supply Utilities, North America’s largest 

electric utilities distributor, to distribute Carina’s Energy Intelligence 

Solution to electric utilities in most areas of the United 

States. In addition, the Middle Tennessee Electric Membership 

Corporation recently deployed Carina’s Universal Metering 

Device for energy data collection, management, and control. 

Carina is privately owned and based in Huntsville, Ala. 

Chatroulette 

www.chatroulette.com 

Key products and services: Random video-chat encounters 

Strangers in the night: Chatroulette randomly introduces 

website visitors to one another. A visitor can chat by video, 

audio and text with the stranger presented on the screen or 

click on “Next” to initiate another random connection. Players 

receiving too many “Nexts” are blocked from the site to 

discourage objectionable behavior. According to news reports, 

Chatroulette was created by Andrey Ternovskiy, a Russian 

high school student. The site launched in the fall of 2009 and 

by December it was reported to have 50,000 visitors per day. 

In March 2010, Ternovskiy estimated the site had around 1.5 

million users, about a third of them from the United States. 

By May 2010, the Web traffic measurement service Alexa.com 

reported that Chatroulette was the 1,500th most visited site in 

the world. The site uses Adobe Flash to display video and access 

the user’s webcam; Flash’s peer-to-peer network capabilities allow 

almost all video and audio streams to travel directly between 

user computers without using server bandwidth. In July, 

Chatroulette began offering an experimental localized version 

that pairs users by state. 

Cisco Systems 

www.cisco.com 

408-526-4000 

Key products and services: Telepresence, videoconferencing, 

Web collaboration, telemedicine, online video platform, 

energy management 

Enabling collaboration: Much of the Internet runs on hardware, 

software and services from Cisco Systems. Founded in 

1984 by computer scientists from Stanford University, and 

headquartered in San Jose, Calif., the company now has about 

68,000 employees worldwide and had $36.1 billion in revenue 

for 2009. In the last several years, Cisco has increasingly focused 

on enabling the collaboration that the Internet makes possible. 

The TelePresence platform, launched in 2006, allows immersive 

videoconferencing experiences. HealthPresence combines 

TelePresence with call center technology and a secure telemetry 

network to deliver medical services remotely. Other Cisco solutions, 

including the popular WebEx, enable connectivity with 

video telephony and desktop videoconferencing. A new television-based 

“home telepresence” product was slated to be fieldtested 

this year with Verizon and France Telecom. Cisco Eos 

is a social entertainment software platform that enables media 

and entertainment companies to monetize digital content. Cisco 

has also recently entered the smart-grid and smart-building 

arenas with technologies for monitoring and managing energy 

consumption in homes and businesses, including an easy-to-use 

interface for the home environment. In April, Cisco acquired 

the Norwegian videoconferencing vendor Tandberg and incorporated 

its product line into the TelePresence portfolio. 

Control4 

www.control4.com 

888-400-4070 

Key products and services: Platform for whole-home 

automation 

Home control at one’s fingertips: Control4 solutions manage 

electronic systems and devices that include A/V, multiroom 

music systems, lighting, temperature control and security. Although 

most home automation systems are designed for new 

construction, Control4 designs its system with standardsbased, 

wired/wireless installation capabilities to make it suitable 

for retrofits as well. Homeowners can start with a basic 

system and add functionality over time or install a whole-house 

system from the outset. Interface options include remote control, 

LCD keypad, touch screens of various sizes, iPhone, iPod 

touch and iPad. Other hardware includes amplifiers and speakers 

for audio systems as well as wireless dimmers and switches 

for lighting. The company’s energy management systems enable 

utilities to provision, manage and upgrade in-home energy 

devices across a network of households. Control4 technology 

also automates hotels, bars, restaurants, sports venues, conference 

rooms and boardrooms. Control4 has deployed the largest 

installed IP control system at the ARIA Resort & Casino at 

CityCenter in Las Vegas. Other commercial clients include the 

Mandarin Oriental and Planet Hollywood, also in Las Vegas. 

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, 

Control4 sells its solutions through a network of dealers in 53 

countries. 

Crestron 

www.crestron.com 

201-767-3400; 800-237-2041 

Key products and services: Control, automation and energy 

management for residential and commercial buildings 

One touchpad to rule them all: Crestron’s advanced automation 

systems control audio, video, computer, IP and environmental 

systems for corporate boardrooms, conference rooms, 



classrooms, auditoriums and homes. Crestron solutions are 

also found in gaming establishments, government agencies and 

luxury MDU buildings. The company’s Green Light initiative 

is a line of energy-efficient environmental controls for HVAC, 

Over-the-Top Content Services and Solutions 

(not including services operated by content owners or broadcast networks) 

Company Web Consumer Online User-Generated Enterprise-Level 

Address Content Service Content Content Publishing 

Publishing 

Solution 

5min www.5min.com ü ü 

Active Video Networks www.activevideo.com ü 

Adobe Systems www.adobe.com ü 

Amazon www.amazon.com ü 

BestTV www.best-tv.com ü 

Blip.tv www.blip.tv ü ü 

Blinkx www.blinkx.com ü ü 

Break Media www.break.com ü 

Brightcove www.brightcove.com ü 

Cisco Systems www.cisco.com ü 

Dailymotion www.dailymotion.com ü ü ü 

Delve www.delvenetworks.com ü 

ExtendMedia www.extend.com ü 

Heavy www.heavy.com ü ü 

Hulu www.hulu.com ü 

Joost www.joost.com ü ü 

Justin.tv www.justin.tv ü ü 

Kaltura corp.kaltura.com ü 

KIT Digital www.kit-digital.com ü 

Kyte www.kyte.com ü 

Last FM www.last.fm ü 

LongTail Video www.longtailvideo.com/ ü 

Metacafe www.metacafe.com ü ü 

MEVIO www.mevio.com ü ü 

Microsoft www.microsoft.com ü ü ü 

Move Networks www.movenetworks.com ü 

MySpace www.myspace.com ü ü 

Netflix www.netflix.com ü 

NeuLion www.neulion.com ü 

Next New Networks www.nextnewnetworks.com ü 

Ooyala www.ooyala.com ü 

Pandora www.pandora.com ü 

RealNetworks www.realnetworks.com ü ü 

Revver www.revver.com ü ü 

Roxio www.roxio.com ü 

Slacker www.slacker.com ü 

Sling Media www.sling.com ü 

thePlatform www.theplatform.com ü 

Twistage www.twistage.com ü 

Vimeo www.vimeo.com ü ü 

VMIX www.vmix.com ü 

VUDU www.vudu.com ü 

Vuze www.vuze.com ü 

Yahoo www.yahoo.com ü ü 

YouTube (Google) www.youtube.com ü ü 

ZillionTV www.zilliontv.tv ü 



“As evidenced by the increased funding by the federal government and 

investment by health care providers and private communications service 

providers, telemedicine is fast becoming a leading application over 

high-speed broadband networks. Telemedicine is at the center of health 

care reform as consumers, not only in rural areas but also in communities 

across the country, demand improved access to doctors and health care 

professionals to help them make informed, personal health care 

decisions for their families and improve the quality of their lives.” 

– Rob Scheschareg, president, MedConcierge LLC 

lighting and shade/drape control for commercial and residential 

applications. Crestron systems offer both manual control and 

customized levels of automation for advanced features such as 

daylight harvesting and load shedding. Users can control the 

systems from a variety of interfaces, including a Web browser. 

Mobile control is provided by an iPhone app as well as a new 

iPad app. Based in Rockleigh, N.J., Crestron is a privately owned 

company with 2,500 employees. 

Digital Video Enterprises 

www.dvetelepresence.com 

949-347-9166 

Key products and services: 

Telepresence solutions 

Meetings with holograms: For nearly 

a decade, Digital Video Enterprises 

(DVE), based in Irvine, Calif., has provided 

telepresence solutions to enterprises, 

universities, Hollywood studios 

and financial firms. Today, it designs, 

develops and deploys telepresence systems 

for corporate, defense, government, 

health care and distance learning 

initiatives worldwide. The company has 

been at the forefront of new codec technology, 

with most of its installations 

featuring true DVD and HD quality. 

DVE was instrumental in developing 

the first digital HDTV telepresence system, 

which is now used to link a major 

financial firm’s executives in London 

and New York. Its Huddle Room 70, a 

group telepresence system, presents remote 

participants in life size and high 

definition, with cameras hidden behind 

the images for eye-level perspective 

and improved eye contact. This year, DVE debuted the Immersion 

Room, which displays 3-D, holographic-appearing 

images of people and presentations in a luxury meeting room. 

(You can see an impressive demo at www.dvetelepresence.com/ 

room/home.htm.) 

Electronic Arts 

www.info.ea.com 

650-628-1500 

Social Networking 

Services and Solutions 

Company Web Address Service Solution 

Bebo (AOL) www.bebo.com ü 

BlackPlanet (Radio One) www.blackplanet.com ü 

FriendFeed www.friendfeed.com ü 

Groupsite www.groupsite.com ü ü 

Facebook www.facebook.com ü ü 

Forterra www.forterrainc.com ü 

GoingOn www.goingon.com ü 

Hi5 Networks www.hi5networks.com ü 

KickApps www.kickapps.com ü 

Linden Lab www.lindenlab.com ü ü 

LinkedIn www.linkedin.com ü 

MySpace www.myspace.com ü 

Ning www.ning.com ü 

ONEsite www.onesite.com ü 

Orkut (Google) www.orkut.com ü 

RightNow www.rightnow.com ü 

SelectMinds www.selectminds.com ü 

Tagged www.tagged.com ü 

Twitter www.twitter.com ü 

Voig www.voig.com ü 

Xanga www.xanga.com ü 



Key products and services: Video games 

Games galore: Electronic Arts Inc. is a leader in the global video 

game industry. It develops, publishes and distributes software 

worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless 

devices and the Internet. EA Mobile is now the top mobile 

game publisher, offering a wide selection of sports, simulation, 

racing and puzzle games. In fiscal 2010, EA had 27 titles that 

sold more than 1 million copies and five 4-million sellers (FIFA 

10, Madden NFL 10, Need for Speed SHIFT, The Sims 3 and 

Battlefield: Bad Company 2). Headquartered in Redwood City, 

Calif., EA has more than 8,000 employees worldwide. In fiscal 

year 2010, it posted net revenue of $3.6 billion. 

Elluminate 

www.elluminate.com 

866-388-8674 

Key products and services: E-learning solutions 

Education moves online: Elluminate’s Web-based video, audio 

and social networking tools make possible real-time online 

learning, teaching and collaboration. The Elluminate Learning 

Suite supports the entire instructional cycle – including what 

happens before and after the class sessions. More than 7 million 

people in 170 countries use its technology; the company’s roster 

of academic and corporate clients includes ADP, Apple, California 

State University, Florida Virtual School, Georgetown University, 

K12 Inc., London Knowledge Lab, Los Angeles Unified 

School District, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Novell, 

Queen’s University, Red Hat, Royal Veterinary College and 

many more. Last year, Elluminate acquired Edtuit, the company 

that developed the Elluminate-sponsored LearnCentral 

social learning network. LearnCentral combines asynchronous 

social networking with Elluminate’s real-time online communication, 

collaboration, and education environment. Elluminate 

is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, and Pleasanton, Calif. 

Espial 

www.espial.com 

613-230-4770 

Key products and services: IPTV middleware, VoD, TV 

browser 

Solutions for pay TV: Espial supplies TV software and solutions 

to service providers in the cable, telecommunications 

and hospitality industries. Its middleware, video-on-demand 

and browser solutions accommodate a variety of pay-TV business 

models. More than 7 million licenses of its software are in 

use across the world. Its browser products are also deployed in 

automobiles, mobile devices, TVs and other devices. Espial is 

headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, and has offices in the United 

States, Europe and Asia. Customers include NTT Communications, 

Com Hem, Tele2 Netherlands, SFR, FastWeb 

and Comstar Direct, as well as many small rural telcos. Espial, 

which has about 100 employees, reported $12 million in revenue 

for 2009. 

ExtendMedia 

www.extend.com 

617-332-5700 

Key products and services: Multiscreen video software 

The key to TV Everywhere: The three-screen solution is this 

year’s holy grail for video providers, and ExtendMedia wants to 

be the one to provide it. Its enterprise-class, multiscreen video 

software and solutions are centered on OpenCASE, which 

manages video content from ingest to monetization and across 

IPTV, Web and mobile services in ad-supported and paid 

media business models. OpenCASE Publisher, introduced in 

August 2009, enables service providers to build and deploy 

TV Everywhere video offerings. The company is integrating 

the OpenCASE platform with devices and frameworks that 

include iPhone, Android, PS3, Oregan Onyx and Yahoo! TV 

Widgets. Founded in 1991, ExtendMedia is headquartered in 

Boston with production facilities in Toronto. Customers include 

communications and media companies such as AT&T, 

Bell Canada, Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi/UB Cross, MTS, 

SanDisk, Onet.pl and Thales. 

Facebook 

www.facebook.com 

650-853-1300 

Key products and services: Social networking 

The new global village: Facebook calls itself a social utility that 

makes it easy for people to communicate with friends, family 

members and coworkers. That’s a bit of an understatement – 

the site has more than 500 million active users, half of whom 

log on at least once each day. More than 150 million users actively 

access Facebook through mobile devices. The Facebook 

platform allows developers to integrate their applications; there 

are now more than 500,000 active applications. The new Facebook 

Connect facility extends the platform to other websites, 

more than 15,000 of which have implemented it. A sampling 

of companies that have developed applications or integrated 

with Facebook Connect includes Jukebox, FreeDrive, Skype, 

YouTube, Palm, Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Second Life and Blizzard’s 

World of Warcraft. In May, Facebook and Zynga, publisher 

of the popular Farmville and other games, announced a 

five-year strategic relationship. Also new is Facebook’s strategic 

relationship with PayPal to facilitate payment for ads and credits. 

Over the past year, the company has aggressively addressed 

privacy concerns, introducing more powerful privacy controls 

for sharing personal information. Founded in 2004, Facebook 

is a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., 

with more than 1,400 employees. Reuters estimates Facebook’s 

2009 revenue at close to $800 million. 



Google 

www.google.com 

650-253-0000 

Key products and services: Online video service, 

collaboration applications, Google Earth, electronic health 

records, social networking, infrastructure as a service 

Organizing the world’s information: Google’s search engine 

tamed the Web, making information easy to find. In the last 

decade, Google has introduced dozens more products and features 

that further its mission to “organize the world’s information 

and make it universally accessible and useful.” Many, including 

the search engine, are accessible to users with any sort 

of Internet connection. Others are specifically broadband applications, 

for example: YouTube enables users to upload, share 

and watch video clips. (YouTube recently announced it would 

support ultra-high-definition video formats.) Google Apps, a 

Remote Storage, Backup and 

Access Services and Solutions 

Company 


Asigra 

Box.net 

Carbonite 

Caringo 

Corevault 

Digitalbucket.net 

Dropbox 

File-Works 

FilesAnywhere 

GigaTribe 

iBackup 

K2B 

Leaf Networks 

Mezeo 

Microsoft 

Monsoon Multimedia 

Mozy (EMC) 

Nirvanix 

Onehub 

Orb Networks 

ParaScale 

Radmin 

Sling Media 

SoftLayer 

StashSpace 

Storagepipe Solutions 

Vembu 

Xythos 

Web Address 

aws.amazon.com 

www.asigra.com 

www.box.net 

www.carbonite.com 

www.caringo.com 

www.corevault.com 

www.digitalbucket.net 

www.dropbox.com 

www.file-works.com 

www.filesanywhere.com 

www.gigatribe.com 

www.ibackup.com 

www.tv2me.com 

www.leafnetworks.net 

www.mezeo.com 


www.monsoon 

multimedia.com 

www.mozy.com 

www.nirvanix.com 

www.onehub.com 

www.orb.com 

www.parascale.com 

www.radmin.com 

www.slingmedia.com 

www.softlayer.com 

www.stashspace.com 

www.storagepipe.com 

www.storegrid.com 

www.xythos.com 

suite of Web-based productivity applications, is used by more 

than 2 million businesses. Google Earth is a tool for viewing the 

entire Earth – and even portions of the sky – using satellite imagery, 

maps, terrain and 3-D building images. Google Health 

is an electronic medical-records application for which Google 

has developed partnerships with pharmacies and health care 

providers. Google PowerMeter is an online energy monitoring 

tool that uses information provided by smart meters and energy 

monitoring devices. Orkut is a social networking application. 

The Google App Engine enables software developers to build 

and host Web apps on the same systems that power Google applications. 

The just-announced Google TV will enable consumers 

to search for traditional pay-TV programming and Internet 

video from a single interface. Headquartered in Mountain View, 

Calif., Google reported $23.7 billion in revenue for 2009. 

Granicus 

www.granicus.com 

415-357-3618 

Key products and services: Cloud platform and suite of 

applications for government agencies 

Broadband for citizen engagement: With the Granicus solution, 

a government agency can create a digital public record 

that includes streaming media, minutes, agendas, staff reports 

and legislative information. All the information is cross-linked, 

searchable by keywords and available on the agency’s website. 

Granicus’ software, hardware, infrastructure, integrated 

streaming media and other engagement tools are all aimed at 

enabling citizen communications. The Granicus platform, delivered 

via the cloud, supports solution suites for government 

transparency, citizen participation, meeting efficiency, legislative 

management and training management. Agencies can start 

small, paying only for what they use, and scale up over time. 

Granicus solutions have been adopted by almost 700 government 

agencies – federal, state and local – of all sizes and in all 

50 states, including Prince William County, Va.; Access Montgomery; 

the Arizona State Legislature; the Tennessee General 

Assembly; the city and county of San Francisco; and the city 

of Los Angeles. Founded in 1999, Granicus is a privately held 

corporation based in San Francisco. 

Hewlett-Packard 

www.hp.com 

800-752-0900 

Key products and services: Telepresence, videoconferencing 

Enterprise-level telepresence: Headquartered in Palo Alto, 

Calif., HP is one of the world’s largest IT companies, with 

revenue of $114.6 billion for 2009. The company’s technology 

solutions include IT infrastructure and services, business and 

home computing, and imaging and printing. It has approximately 

304,000 employees and serves more than 1 billion cus- 



“Performance-based government is no longer just a vision, it’s an economic 

necessity. Government agencies today – whether federal, state or local – 

are looking for new ways to improve their operations and deliver better 

services, while citizens increasingly expect access to government services 

day or night. Technology that synthesizes the needs of administrators, 

workers and the public is the future of effective e-government.” 

– Maury Blackman, president and CEO, Accela 

tomers in more than 170 countries. The HP Halo Telepresence 

Solutions, designed in partnership with DreamWorks Animation, 

are collaboration technologies that run on the Halo Video 

Exchange Network (HVEN), a private network designed specifically 

for video collaboration. HP Halo Webcasting allows 

companies to produce high-quality webcast content – live and 

on demand – directly from Halo telepresence endpoints and 

stream the content to audiences around the world. Last year, 

HP and Microsoft announced a strategic global initiative to 

deliver unified communications and collaboration solutions. 

In 2010, HP and Vidyo, a software-based videoconferencing 

solution provider, announced an agreement to expand the HP 

Halo portfolio to include conference room and desktop endpoints 

on enterprise networks. 

Hulu 

www.hulu.com 

310-571-4100 

Online Collaboration 

Applications 

(not including videoconferencing) 

Key products and services: Online streaming video service 

Movies and TV, anytime: This online, on-demand video service 

was founded in 2007 by content providers NBC Universal 

and News Corporation, which own the company along with 

The Walt Disney Company, Providence Equity Partners and 

the Hulu team. More than just an outlet for its owners’ content, 

Hulu offers upward of 2,600 show and movie titles from 225 

other major content providers and makes these titles available 

not only on its own site but also through more than 40 distribution 

partners. Until this summer, all content was free and adsupported; 

recently, the company added a subscription service 

called Hulu Plus, whose $10 monthly fee (along with advertising) 

pays for premium, high-definition content and mobile 

access from iPads, iPod touches and iPhones. In the coming 

months, Hulu Plus will also be available on Sony PlayStation 

3 and eventually on Samsung connected TVs and Blu-ray Disc 

players. Although Hulu allows users to share videos and embed 

them on other sites, video cannot be uploaded or downloaded. 

At present, copyright restrictions allow Hulu content to be 

viewed only within the United States. Based in Los Angeles, 

the company has offices in New York, Chicago and Beijing. 

As of December 2009, comScore measured 43 million users 

for Hulu. 

Company 

37signals 

Central Desktop 

Citrix 

Google 

GroveSite 

HyperOffice 

Microsoft 

Onehub 

Salesforce.com 

WebAsyst 

WebEx (Cisco) 

WorkZone 

Zoho 

Glasscubes 

Web Address 

www.37signals.com 

www.centraldesktop.com 

www.citrix.com 

www.google.com/apps 

www.grovesite.com 

www.hyperoffice.com 


www.onehub.com 

www.salesforce.com 

www.webasyst.net 

www.weboffice.com 

www.workzone.com 

www.zoho.com 

www.glasscubes.com 

Jamcracker 

www.jamcracker.com 

408-496-5500 

Key products and services: Infrastructure for delivering 

business applications online 

Serving up business applications: Service providers aiming 

to offer Internet-based applications to their business customers 

can go to market quickly with dozens of preintegrated cloud services 

from the Jamcracker Service Delivery Network (JSDN)’s 

wholesale catalogue. The catalogue includes every type of application 

from backup and e-mail services to collaboration and 

productivity solutions. Hundreds of service providers, cloud 

providers and enterprises around the world use the Jamcracker 

Platform to deliver private and public cloud services. Compa- 



nies such as Telstra, Telus, eircom, AB&T, Cisco, BroadSoft, 

Nokia Siemens Networks and DHL are among those unifying 

cloud services delivery and management with Jamcracker. 

Jamcracker is a privately held company headquartered in Santa 

Clara, Calif., with operations in Bangalore, India. 

Leaf Networks 

www.leafnetworks.net 

800-805-9406 

Key products and services: File sharing, virtual private 

networking, embedded on-demand VPN 

On-the-fly networking: With Leaf Networks’ desktop software, 

users can set up secure, private networks on the fly without 

configuring firewalls. Essentially, Leaf Networks’ software 

creates Internet-based bridges between networks without the 

need for intermediaries. Customers can share files and other 

network resources, centralizing content without having to 

upload it to a central location – thus avoiding the need for 

Solutions for the Digital 

Home/Building 

(Includes broadband-enabled systems for security, 

medical monitoring, energy management, media 

management, home and building automation) 

Company 

Web Address 

4Home 

www.4home.com 

AMX 

www.amx.com 

Control4 

www.control4.com 

Crestron 

www.crestron.com 

Delta Controls 

www.deltacontrols.com 

Echelon 

www.echelon.com 

Exceptional Innovation www.life-ware.com 

Fike 

www.fike.com 

Home Automation Inc. www.homeauto.com 

HomeLogic (Elan) 

www.homelogic.com 

iControl Networks 

www.icontrol.com 

In2 Networks 

www.in2networks.com 

Intamac 

www.intamac.com 

Johnson Controls www.johnsoncontrols.com 

Leviton 

www.leviton.com 

LifeShield Security www.lifeshield.com 

On-Q/Legrand 

www.onqlegrand.com 

Philips Medical 

www.healthcare. 

philips.com 

Robert Bosch Healthcare www.vitelcare.com 

Siemens 

www.building 

technologies.siemens.com 

Simplikate 

www.simplikate.com 

Telkonet 

www.telkonet.com 

uControl 

www.ucontrol.com 

additional hardware. Users can easily add members to their 

networks and choose which content and devices they want to 

share, whether those are folders for business documents, drives 

for media storage or game consoles for head-to-head gaming. 

In January 2010, Leaf Networks was acquired by NETGEAR 

(which had embedded Leaf technology in its firmware since 

2008) and relocated to San Jose, Calif., where it will continue 

to operate as Leaf Networks. Now that Leaf is part of the 

NETGEAR family, more new and interesting embedded applications 

are expected to appear on NETGEAR devices. 

LifeShield Security 

www.lifeshield.com 

484-645-1455 

Key products and services: Security systems 

Portable security: LifeShield Security, formerly InGrid Home 

Security, is a professional-grade and professionally monitored 

wireless security system with easy-to-set-up, “plug and protect” 

installation. An affordable alternative to traditional analog 

security systems, LifeShield Security offers a broadbandenabled, 

user-installable, portable security service for homes and 

small businesses. After installing sensors on windows, doors or 

cabinets, users can manage the system and receive alerts via e- 

mail, cell phone or PDA. Multiple sites can be linked through 

LifeShield’s servers, enabling parents and students, for example, 

to monitor each other’s systems. Because the system is not permanently 

installed, it can be moved to a new residence, making 

it economical for renters or for students living in dorm rooms. 

With multiple control points and no master control panel, 

the Lifeshield system has no single point of vulnerability and 

cannot easily be defeated. LifeShield offers 24/7 monitoring 

through Guardian Protection Services. The company is headquartered 

in Yardley, Pa., and holds 20 U.S. patents. 

Logitech 

www.logitech.com, www.sightspeed.com, 


510-795-8500 

Key products and services: Videoconferencing devices and 

software 

Videoconferencing for all platforms: Logitech’s hardware and 

software support digital navigation, music and video entertainment, 

gaming, social networking, audio and video communication, 

video security and home-entertainment control over 

multiple computing, communication and entertainment platforms. 

Founded in 1981, Logitech International is a Swiss public 

company. Its 2008 acquisition of desktop videoconferencing 

provider SightSpeed led to the introduction of Vid, an all-inone 

video calling service packaged with all Logitech webcams. 

Powered by the SightSpeed network, Vid provides a simple but 

high-quality video calling experience designed to allow users 



“We’re on the verge of a massive shift as IT departments across 

businesses of all sizes look to cloud-based services as secure, low-cost 

and user-friendly alternatives to traditional enterprise software solutions. 

This change is being driven by a workplace that has exploded beyond the 

office walls and a workforce that needs anytime, anywhere access to 

crucial business content across all kinds of applications and devices. 

FTP sites, file servers and overly complex SharePoint deployments are no 

longer cutting it; cloud-based content management solutions are offering 

user-friendly, secure alternatives that are disrupting and redefining what 

has traditionally been a fragmented and cost-prohibitive market.” 

– Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO, Box.net 

to connect quickly. In 2009, Logitech acquired LifeSize Communications, 

the equipment vendor that first introduced highresolution 

videoconferencing. Logitech expects the acquisition 

to drive growth in business video communications by leveraging 

the two companies’ technology synergies, including camera 

design, firewall traversal, video compression and bandwidth 

management. In 2009, Logitech achieved sales of $2 billion. 

MedConcierge 

www.medconcierge.com 

781-953-9649 

Key products and services: Broadband-enabled telemedicine 

services 

Personalized health care from home: Responding to consumer 

demand for better access to health professionals and personalized 

tools to help manage chronic diseases, service providers 

and property managers are using MedConcierge’s system 

to offer telemedicine services in the home and workplace. The 

company’s services include real-time videoconference consultations 

with health care providers and wellness experts, personal 

health records, vital-sign and health monitoring, educational 

videos, and wellness coaching. Communities can use the system 

to differentiate themselves by bringing quality, affordable, 

personalized health care services to residents, and service providers 

can increase uptake of their high-speed offerings and 

generate incremental revenues. One-to-one videoconferencing 

also helps bring medical care to rural areas with physician 

shortages, as well as to urban and suburban areas with overloaded 

hospitals and clinics. Headquartered in Sarasota, Fla., 

and privately owned, MedConcierge is available in all 50 states 

and is currently live in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, 

Oklahoma and Illinois. 

MediaFriends 

www.mediafriendsinc.com 

866-444-1968 

Key products and services: Multidevice convergence, 

including social media and SMS-based experiences 

A new generation of experiences: MediaFriends aims to free 

communications from specific devices and define a new generation 

of social media and SMS-based experiences on TVs, 

PCs and mobile phones. To help customers stay connected 

no matter what devices they are using, MediaFriends blends 

real-time communications and social media into personalized 

communities that are spread across the multidevice world. The 

company’s early products, such as Caller ID on TV and Caller 

ID on PC, have been supplemented by applications such as 

MediaFriends Chat and MediaFriends TXT, which support 

instant messaging and text messaging on the TV and PC 

screens. The MediaFriends platform is compatible with IPTV, 

cable and mobile operator networks; complies with EBIF and 

ETV standards; can be seamlessly integrated into future IMS 

and tru2way environments; and requires no truck rolls or new 

in-home hardware. MediaFriends’ platform has been deployed 

by more than 40 cable and IPTV customers in North and 

South America, including Tier 1 operators, and its prepackaged 

converged services are deployed with IPTV and cable 

operators that include VTR, Videotron, Knology and WOW. 

MediaFriends is a privately owned company headquartered in 

Woburn, Mass., with more than 50 employees. 

Microsoft 


800-642-7676 



Key products and services: IPTV middleware, online 

gaming and entertainment, business collaboration 

solutions, mapping 

Windows on the world: Ever since the introduction of MS- 

DOS in 1981, Microsoft software has been synonymous with 

personal computing. The company, based in Redmond, Wash., 

operates worldwide. It has more than 88,000 employees and 

posted revenue of $62.5 billion in fiscal year 2010. Today Microsoft 

software runs on multiple devices and platforms and 

supports a wide variety of applications. Among the many Microsoft 

applications designed to run on broadband networks are 

the following: Mediaroom is IPTV middleware that includes 

an electronic program guide, whole-home DVR control and 

fast channel changes. The latest version of Mediaroom includes 

cloud digital video recording, interactive applications, delivery 

of operator-hosted content to multiple devices and access to 

externally hosted content. Xbox LIVE is an online entertainment 

network integrated through the Xbox 360 game console. 

It offers access to multiplayer games, game demos, video chat, 

music videos, TV shows and movies to its 25 million subscribers. 

Windows Live offers an assortment of online productivity 

tools for consumers and small businesses. Bing Maps provides 

highly detailed bird’s-eye-view maps as well as 3-D photosynths. 

Microsoft Cloud Services, delivered by Microsoft and 

its retail partners to more than 20 million businesses, offers 

hosted versions of familiar Microsoft software, including e- 

mail, Web conferencing, document sharing, database management 

and customer relationship management. 

Minerva Networks 

www.minervanetworks.com 

408-567-9400; 800-806-9594 

E-Government and Web-Based 

Government Applications 

Company 

Web Address 

Accela 

www.accela.com 

CivicPlus 

www.civicplus.com 

CRW 

www.crw.com 

Diamond Municipal Solutions www.diamond 

municipal.com 

eGovernment Solutions www.mygovonline.com 

E-Gov Link 

www.egovlink.com 

GovPartner 

www.govpartner.com 

Granicus 

www.granicus.com 

IBM 

www.ibm.com 

MyGov 

www.mygov.us 

VisionAIR 

www.visionair.com 

Key products and services: IPTV middleware 

Next-gen IPTV: Minerva Networks provides open-platform, 

carrier-class solutions for delivering broadband television services. 

More than 190 network operators worldwide use Minerva 

IPTV solutions. Minerva’s iTVManager platform, which 

runs on set-top boxes made by ADB, Amino, Cisco and Entone, 

supports features such as network DVR, whole-home 

DVR and widgets. Its operations and management module includes 

a suite of tools for running IPTV services cost-effectively. 

Last year, Minerva introduced a widget engine that enables 

blended Internet and TV service. Widget applications include 

RSS news feeds, stocks, weather and traffic information, visual 

voice mail, caller ID and Web 2.0 services. Minerva has expanded 

its international presence with new sales and support 

offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Milan, Italy, complementing 

the company’s existing presence in Detroit; Atlanta; 

Valdivia, Chile; Como, Italy; and Dubai. A privately held 

corporation with about 100 employees, Minerva Networks is 

headquartered in Alviso, Calif. 

muNet 

www.munet.com 

781-861-8644 

Key products and services: Advanced metering 

infrastructure, IP- and ZigBee-based electric meters, 

remote meter disconnect, direct load control 

Automating the grid: WebGate technology from muNet lets 

utilities automate meter reading and other services via IP-based 

broadband networks. Utilities can connect residential or commercial 

electric meters to automate meter readings, monitor 

voltage and perform remote connects and disconnects from a 

central office. Customers include Clarksville Department of 

Electricity in Tennessee, Tacoma Power in Washington, Glasgow 

Electric Plant Board in Kentucky, Grundy Center Municipal 

Utilities in Iowa, Spencer Municipal Utilities in Iowa 

and Scottsboro Electric Power Board in Alabama. Based in 

Lexington, Mass., muNet is a privately held company with 22 

employees. 

MySpace 

www.myspace.com 

Key products and services: Social networking service 

A space for personal expression: MySpace aims to connect 

people through personal expression, content and culture. To 

experience the Internet through a social lens, users share personal 

profiles, photos, videos, messaging, games and music. 

MySpace is the site for musicians, who can upload up to six 

songs in MP3 format; fans can create playlists and archive 

songs from many popular artists. New products for musicians 

include a music video hub, an analytics dashboard, iTunes purchasing 

integration, streaming music via Google search and a 



global events and calendar platform that lets users purchase 

tickets to events while on MySpace. In 2009, the company acquired 

social music discovery service iLike. It added a platform 

for third-party applications in 2008 and now provides additional 

benefits to technology partners with its games lab and 

developer services program. MySpace launched in 2003 and 

was acquired by News Corp. in 2005; it is headquartered in 

Los Angeles. Google signed a $900 million deal in 2006 to 

provide a search facility and advertising on MySpace between 

2007 and 2010. Total U.S. advertising revenues for 2009 were 

estimated by eMarketer at $465 million. 

Netflix 

www.netflix.com 

408-540-3700 

Key products and services: Online video subscription service 

Instant movie rentals: Netflix began as an online video rental 

service that delivered DVDs by mail. In January 2007, it added 

unlimited streaming of movies and TV-show episodes as a part 

of its subscription service. With the streaming service, customers 

use the same online queuing system they use for DVDs, and 

they have access to DVD-like functions, including fast-forward, 

rewind, pause and restart. Today, more than 60 percent of the 

company’s 15 million subscribers use the video streaming service. 

Users can watch streaming video on a PC or tablet computer; in 

addition, Netflix has partnered with a number of device manufacturers 

to stream its content to the TV. Netflix-compatible devices 

now include the Roku Neflix Player, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 

and Sony’s PS3 game consoles and Nintendo’s Wii console, Bluray 

Disc players and TiVo DVRs. In July, Netflix announced 

a partnership with Relativity Media to stream recent theatrical 

releases, bypassing the traditional pay-TV window that normally 

sends post-theatrical releases directly to premium channels such 

as HBO, Showtime and Starz. This deal advances Netflix’s goal 

of expanding its breadth of content – and was viewed by many 

as an indication that online video has now become a significant 

channel for movies. Established in 1997 and headquartered in 

Los Gatos, Calif., Netflix has more than 2,000 employees and 

posted 2009 revenue of $1.67 billion. 

NeuLion 

www.neulion.com 

516-622-8300 

Key products and services: Multiplatform IPTV content 

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“We’re witnessing an unprecedented convergence of the broadband and 

energy industries, coupled with a sharp global focus on the detrimental 

long-term effects of conducting ‘business as usual’ in energy. It is apparent 

that the companies and utilities that are willing to look outside the box for 

smarter, faster, sustainable networks and solutions will emerge as winners.” 

– Mike Smalley, vice president for business development, Carina Technology 

solution delivers content to PCs, televisions, mobile devices, 

tablets and other IP-enabled devices. Content providers can offer 

subscriptions via the Internet and make use of NeuLion’s 

video and Web tools, fan-centric Web platform, e-commerce, 

ticketing solutions and hosting service. NeuLion has partnerships 

with hundreds of professional and collegiate sports 

properties (NHL, NFL, MLS, NCAA Division I schools and 

conferences) as well as hundreds of international television 

channels from more than 40 countries. NeuLion has about 

240 employees. Its principal offices are in Plainview, N.Y., and 

Sanford, Fla., and additional offices are in Toronto, Vancouver, 

London and Shanghai. 

Nirvanix 

www.nirvanix.com 

619-764-5650 

Key products and services: Enterprise-class cloud-storage 

platform 

Telemedicine Application 

Providers 

Company 

AMD Global Telemedicine 

American Well 

Cisco Systems 

GetWellNetwork 

Global HouseCall 

InTouch Health 

MedConcierge 

NuPhysicia 

PharmaTrust 

Philips Medical 

ScriptPro 

Reach Call 

Vidyo 

Web Address 

www.amd 

telemedicine.com 

www.americanwell.com 

www.cisco.com 

www.getwellnetwork.com 

www.globalhousecall.com 

www.intouchhealth.com 

www.medconcierge.com 

www.nuphysicia.com 

www.pharmatrust.com 

www.healthcare. 

philips.com 

www.scriptpro.com 

www.reachcall.com 

www.vidyo.com 

Industrial-strength data storage: Enterprises with large 

quantities of data may find Nirvanix’s Storage Delivery Network 

(SDN) faster to deploy, less expensive and more flexible 

than an in-house solution. Nirvanix’s global cluster of storage 

nodes stores, delivers and processes storage requests in multiple 

locations. Because multiple file copies can be stored in different 

places, data is always available. Recently, Nirvanix introduced 

a hybrid service called hNode that combines public cloud storage 

with private cloud storage, allowing companies to protect 

data to a degree not possible in the public cloud. Nirvanix, 

a privately held company based in San Diego, Calif., has 31 

employees; this spring, it received another round of financing 

from its original venture-capital investors. Customers include 

Fortune 50 companies, leading media and entertainment companies 

and Web 2.0 leaders. Nirvanix also provided cloud storage 

for NASA’s recent Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. 

Nokia Siemens Networks 

www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/iptv 

972-374-3000 

Key products and services: IPTV middleware 

IPTV with bells and whistles: Nokia Siemens Networks’ IP 

video platform, commercially deployed since 2000, is a standards-based 

solution that includes client personal video recording, 

HDTV, pause live TV, video on demand, on-screen Caller 

ID, favorites and reminders, and customizable Web portal capabilities. 

The company also provides a set-top box client and 

a back-office system for managing advanced IP video services. 

Founded in 2007, Nokia Siemens Networks is a joint venture 

of the former networks division of Nokia and the carrier division 

of Siemens; it markets a variety of hardware and software 

for wireline and wireless networks. The company recently announced 

its intention to acquire $1.2 billion worth of wireless 

network infrastructure assets from Motorola, in a deal that 

should be completed by the end of this year. Recent customer 

wins for the IPTV solution include HickoryTech, a Minnesota-based 

integrated communications provider. Headquartered 

in Espoo, Finland, the company has about 60,000 employees 

worldwide and had net sales of about 12.5 billion euros ($17.9 

billion) in 2009. 



NuPhysicia 

www.nuphysicia.com 

713-358-9270 

Key products and services: Telemedicine services 

Bringing the doctor to the patient: Based in Houston, Texas, 

privately held NuPhysicia is a medical services solutions provider 

that delivers advanced remote health care, using concepts 

first developed by the University of Texas. The solutions include 

remote consultations with physicians by means of video 

technology and remote diagnostic devices. NuPhysicia offers 

three product lines: Medicine at Work (on-site health care for 

workplaces of all sizes), InPlace Medical Solutions (for offshore 

and remote locations) and NuPhysicia Technology (devices 

and consulting for remote medical care). 

OnLive 

www.onlive.com 

888-665-4835 

Key products and services: Cloud-based online gaming 

Gaming without consoles: A spin-off of technology incubator 

Rearden founded by tech entrepreneur Steve Perlman (WebTV, 

QuickTime), OnLive spent seven years in development before 

introducing the world’s first video game on-demand platform, 

the OnLive Game Service. Video compression technology and 

cloud computing allow OnLive to deliver high-end games directly 

to a TV (via a MicroConsole) or to a personal computer, 

eliminating the need for expensive, high-powered game console 

equipment. The PC and Mac versions of the game service 

began rolling out to consumers in June 2010, with AT&T as 

the official partner. OnLive is supported by many of the top 

names in the video game industry, including Electronic Arts, 

Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive Software, Warner Bros. Interactive 

Entertainment, THQ Inc., Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive 

and Codemasters. The company is headquartered in 

Palo Alto, Calif. 

Orb Networks 

www.orb.com 

510-836-1000 

Key products and services: Digital media streaming for inhome 

and remote applications 

Access your own content anywhere, anytime: Orb Networks 

helps users connect with their digital media how, when and 

where they want to. Users can view or play photos, music, videos, 

live television and other content stored on home PCs from 

any Internet-connected device or share selected content with 

friends over the Internet. Inside the home, Orb lets users play 

media files on networked devices – for example, music files on 

the PC can be heard through any speakers in the home. Orb 

Live lets users stream personal content, live TV and Internet 

TV streams from the home PC to a mobile device. Orb Live 

works with Android phones, iPhones, iPad and iPod touch devices 

over Wi-Fi, 3G and EDGE networks. As well as being 

available directly to consumers, the Orb platform is available on 

a white-label basis to content providers and service operators. 

Based in Oakland, Calif., Orb Networks has 30 employees. 

Paltalk 

www.paltalk.com 

212-520-7000 

Key products and services: Video chat 

Chat with 1,000 of your closest friends: Launched in 1998, 

Paltalk provides video and chat capabilities that facilitate virtual 

face-to-face interactions between individuals and between 

groups. It is the only provider that can support hundreds of 

thousands of users simultaneously, including thousands of 

people in a single chat room. The software, which supports IM 

pals on many platforms, is available in both free and premium 

versions. Paltalk has 4 million members and averages more 

than 100,000 simultaneous users on any given day – not only 

individuals looking to sing karaoke, argue about politics or find 

romance but also corporations that need to address audiences 

in real time or enliven e-commerce. Paltalk has a large patent 

portfolio covering core technology for multiplayer online video 

games and videoconferencing. 

Pandora 

www.pandora.com 

510-451-4100 

Key products and services: Personalized Internet radio 

They’re playing our song: Users of Pandora’s music discovery 

and Internet radio service can create radio stations that conform 

to their personal tastes. The more information listeners 

enter about the music they like and dislike, the more personalized 

their stations become. The service is powered by the Music 

Genome Project, a technology platform with a database of 

more than 250,000 songs, all analyzed by teams of professional 

musicians. Listeners can register for either free ad-supported 

accounts or fee-based, ad-free subscriptions. Though music 

downloads are not allowed, users can easily click through to 

Amazon.com or iTunes to purchase songs they like. Pandora, 

which has 60 million registered listeners, is available only within 

the United States. The Music Genome Project was founded in 

2000 in Oakland, Calif., and Pandora was made publicly available 

in 2005 as a browser-based application. Since that time, 

Pandora applications have been released for smart phones, car 

dashboards and more than 100 consumer electronic devices. 

Today, 50 percent of all music streamed from Pandora is sent to 

mobile devices. The company is privately owned and has about 

200 employees. 



“Across the country, agencies are seeing lower tax revenues and shrinking 

budgets, while citizens are demanding better services. As a result, 

companies that offer governments a low-cost way to take advantage of the 

operational efficiency that SaaS has offered the corporate world over the 

past few years will find a welcome niche.” 

– Tom Spengler, CEO and cofounder, Granicus 

Polycom 

www.polycom.com 

800-765-9266 

Key products and services: Telepresence, video and voice 

communications 

Interoperability is key: Founded in 1990, Polycom is a global 

leader in telepresence, video and voice communications solutions 

that allow geographically dispersed workforces to communicate 

from desktops, meeting rooms, classrooms and 

mobile settings. Polycom’s key initiative for 2010 is its Open 

Collaboration Network strategy – an effort to integrate its 

equipment with that of the major unified communications 

vendors so they can provide complete UC solutions. As part of 

the Open Collaboration Network strategy, Polycom recently 

added the Open Telepresence Experience (OTX) 300 to its 

telepresence portfolio. All Polycom telepresence solutions use 

the H.264 High Profile format, which requires only half the 

bandwidth of traditional high-definition video. Polycom is 

Infrastructure as a Service 

and Cloud Platforms 

headquartered in Pleasanton, Calif., and has 2,700 employees. 

Revenue for 2009 was $967 million. 

RADVISION 

www.radvision.com 

201-689-6300 

Key products and services: Videoconferencing systems 

Unifying visual communications: Founded in 1992, RAD- 

VISION provides products and technologies that enable the 

delivery of unified visual communications. Products include 

in-room videoconferencing systems, mobile video solutions and 

scalable video-enabled desktop platforms on IP and emerging 

next-generation networks. A recent product developed jointly 

with Samsung is a desktop videoconferencing device that integrates 

high-definition videoconferencing into a high-resolution 

multimedia LCD monitor. This year, RADVISION acquired 

the intellectual property and technology for Aethra’s highdefinition 

videoconferencing endpoint systems. RADVISION 

plans to integrate Aethra’s HD video endpoint technology with 

its video network infrastructure and desktop solutions to offer 

a full portfolio of videoconferencing solutions. RADVISION 

has offices and development centers throughout the Americas, 

Europe and Asia Pacific. Revenue for 2009 was $80.9 million. 

Company 

3Tera 

Akamai 


Citrix 

GoGrid 

Google 

IBM 


Savvis 

SimTone Corporation 

SoftLayer 

Surgient 

Terremark 

VMware 

Web Address 

www.3tera.com 

www.akamai.com 

aws.amazon.com 

www.citrix.com 

www.gogrid.com 

www.google.com 

www.ibm.com 


www.savvis.net 

www.SIMtone.net 

www.softlayer.com 

www.surgient.com 

www.terremark.com 

www.vmware.com 

RealNetworks 

www.realnetworks.com 

206-674-2700; 800-254-7325 

Key products and services: Digital entertainment delivery 

Music, video, games and more: One of the earliest movers 

in Internet-based media delivery, RealNetworks now supplies 

digital entertainment products and services to broadband and 

mobile operators, network service providers and content owners. 

Operators can choose to purchase hosted services (music on 

demand, video on demand, ringback tones, games and more) or 

to install the Helix Media Delivery Platform, a software suite 

for encoding, delivering, managing and playing back digital 

audio and video. The company also offers digital music and 

gaming services directly to consumers. In June 2010, RealNetworks 

announced a major business reorganization, consolidat- 



ing its technology products and solutions and media software 

and services business units into functional teams and streamlining 

its management structure. Based in Seattle, RealNetworks, 

which has more than 1,400 employees, posted revenue 

of $562 million in 2009. 



415-901-7000 

Key products and services: Web-based customer relationship 

management application, online marketplace for softwareas-a-service 

applications, platform as a service 

Ecosystem for cloud-based enterprise computing: Salesforce 

CRM was one of the first successful enterprise solutions built 

and run on a real-time cloud computing infrastructure. It includes 

the Sales Cloud 2 (sales and marketing automation) and 

Service Cloud 2 (a customer service solution integrated with social 

networking and other online community applications). In 

the past several years, salesforce.com has focused on building an 

entire ecosystem for cloud-based enterprise computing. Force. 

com, its enterprise cloud computing platform, enables developers 

to create and deliver business applications without buying hardware 

or software and even run their websites in the cloud. To 

date, customers and partners have built nearly 160,000 custom 

applications on the Force.com platform. The AppExchange 2, 

an online market for buying and deploying cloud computing 

applications that build on salesforce.com applications, features 

more than 1,000 business applications and service listings in 

categories such as analytics, finance, administration, financial 

services, human resources, IT management and marketing. All 

applications are tightly integrated with salesforce.com. New 

this year is Salesforce Chatter, a real-time collaboration tool 

that supports profiles, status updates, feeds, groups and collaborative 

content and is available through the Force.com platform 

to all salesforce.com customers, developers and partners. Headquartered 

in San Francisco, salesforce.com has more than 4,000 

employees. In 2009, it posted $1.3 billion in revenue. 

ScriptPro 

www.scriptpro.com 

800-851-2364 

Key products and services: Pharmacy automation and 

telepharmacy systems 

Bringing services to remote towns: Residents of small towns 

that cannot support full-time pharmacists must often drive long 

distances to pick up medications. A telepharmacy staffed by a 

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“The world is changing. There is a fundamental paradigm shift in the way 

people watch and consume entertainment. People want freedom of choice, 

huge variety of content and a customized experience on any device.” 

– Chris Wagner, executive vice president for marketplace strategy, NeuLion 

paraprofessional can provide a local alternative. One of the technology 

leaders in this field is ScriptPro, based in Mission, Kan., 

which provides state-of-the-art, robotics-based pharmacy management, 

workflow and telepharmacy systems. The company’s 

solutions, which include video communications links, enable 

pharmacies to conduct remote operations with the levels of quality, 

safety and efficiency they require. A pharmacist can serve 

distant customers while maintaining accountability and control 

over all prescriptions dispensed at the remote pharmacy. Script- 

Pro is dedicated to helping pharmacies lower operating costs, 

reduce dispensing errors and maximize customer satisfaction. 

Simplikate 

www.simplikate.com 

877-547-3415 

Key products and services: Amenity software for residential 

communities, shopping malls, stadiums and theme parks 

Concierge service available 24/7: Located in Dania Beach, 

Fla., Simplikate is the technology arm of First Service Residential, 

the largest property management company in the United 

States. Simplikate’s technology, powered by its techcierge software 

platform, is installed in more than 6,000 communities 

with 1.2 million units and reflects the best practices of thousands 

of luxury communities. The techcierge on-site concierge 

module allows residents or guests to communicate with staff 

using iPhone, BlackBerry or Android smart phones, in-home 

touch panels, Internet-connected PCs or set-top boxes. The 

24/7 third-party concierge option ties directly into point-ofsale 

systems of partners that include Open Table, Papa John’s 

Pizza, taxi and limo services, pet care and other services. Real 

estate developers use Simplikate’s techcierge Sales Center Program 

to promote and market their developments through applications 

on the iPad and mobile devices. In March, Verizon 

announced its Verizon Concierge Service, powered by Simplikate, 

for residential and commercial properties with FiOS 

services. The software automates tasks for property managers 

while allowing residents and tenants to manage home or office 

services from smart phones or FiOS set-top boxes. 

Skype 

www.skype.com 

contactus@skype.net 

Key products and services: Video and voice calling service 

Video calls from the living room: Skype is one of only a few 

companies whose name has entered the language as a verb. (“To 

Skype” means to place a video call over the Internet using the 

Skype service, which carries not only video calls but also voice 

calls, instant messages and file transfers.) Calls within the Skype 

service are free; calls to landline and mobile phones can be made 

for a fee. In the fourth quarter of 2009, Skype users made 36.1 

billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls, more than a third of 

which were video calls. This year, Skype announced support for 

PC-based video calls in 720p high definition, as well as Skype 

software embedded into Internet-connected widescreen televisions. 

Its HDTV video calling service will allow people to communicate 

from their living rooms, depending on the availability 

of broadband and an HD webcam. This service will deliver familiar 

Skype features, including free Skype-to-Skype voice and 

video calls, calls to landline or mobile phones, voice mail and 

the option to receive inbound calls. Founded in 2003, Skype is 

based in Luxembourg with offices in Europe, the United States 

and Asia. In November 2009, Skype’s former owner, eBay, sold 

a 70 percent stake in the company to a private investor group for 

$1.9 billion. 

Sling Media 

www.slingmedia.com 

650-293-8000 

Key products and services: Video place shifting 

The original TV Everywhere solution: Sling Media’s Slingbox 

began as a do-it-yourself place shifting solution for consumers 

and has added offerings for service providers. The company, 

now owned by EchoStar, manufactures a family of products 

that place shift television programming via broadband and 

3G wireless networks. The original Slingbox Classic, launched 

in 2005, allowed customers to shift TV programming to a 

computer either inside or outside the home. Since then, the 

product line has expanded to support standard-definition and 

high-definition set-top boxes and mobile applications. In 2009, 

the company announced the the first set-top box with place 

shifting built in, which is deployed in the United States by 

DISH Network. Four new place shifting products introduced 

this year – Sling Receiver 300, Sling Monitor 150, Slingbox 

700U and the Sling Touch Control 100 – are aimed at helping 

manufacturers and television service providers build Sling 

Media into their offerings. Founded in 2004 and headquartered 

in Foster City, Calif., with offices in New York, London 



and Bangalore, India, Sling Media employs about 250 people 

worldwide. EchoStar as a whole had revenue of $1.9 billion 

in 2009. 

providers as Time Warner Cable, Mediacom and RCN and 

telcos such as SureWest, TDS and GVTC. Founded in 2001, 

Synacor is headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y. 

Synacor 

www.synacor.com 

716-853-1362 

Key products and services: Web portal with premium 

content and services 

Personalizing the Web: Synacor’s white-label Internet platform, 

premium content and services, and digital marketing 

solutions help broadband service providers develop new revenue 

streams and keep customers engaged. Service providers 

use the platform to create Internet portals that subscribers can 

personalize, a content management and delivery system and a 

branded video player and toolbar. Content and services available 

through Synacor include educational resources, financial 

data, movies, major-league sports, gaming services and more. 

Synacor expects to expand soon into operating TV Everywhere 

services. The company is looking to power TV Everywhere 

products that are hosted on a provider’s portal and also to authenticate 

subscribers for broadband video sites operated by 

programmers. Synacor counts among its customers such cable 

Tantalus 

www.tantalus.com 

604-299-0458 

Key products and services: Smart-grid communications 

solutions 

Smart energy management: Tantalus’ communications solutions 

for utilities focus on smart-grid applications, such as 

advanced metering, demand response and distribution automation. 

Its flagship product, the Tantalus Utility Network 

(TUNet), is a monitoring and control system for data-intensive 

smart grids that require rapid, reliable and secure communications 

with every endpoint. Endpoints may be electricity, water 

or gas meters; load control devices; smart thermostats or utility 

distribution equipment. TUNet runs on a self-initiating, 

self-healing wireless LAN and supports multiple backhaul options 

(wireless RF220 MHz or broadband, including fiber or 

Wi-Fi). Together, these networks form an end-to-end system 

that works as well in densely populated urban centers as in 

high-demand industrial areas and rural territories. This year, 



Tantalus added several new utility customers, particularly in 

the Tennessee Valley, where the TVA is working with its electricity 

distributors to implement smart-grid solutions. Morristown 

Utility Systems and several other distributors in the area 

have added Tantalus’ smart-grid functionality to their existing 

FTTH networks. Tantalus is a private company founded in 

1989 and headquarted in Vancouver, British Columbia. 

Teliris 

www.teliris.com 

212-490-1065 

Key products and services: Telepresence solutions 

Realistic online meeting spaces: Teliris aims to realistically 

replicate the human dynamics of live meetings with its managed 

telepresence collaboration solutions. The company’s systems 

are deployed in more than 50 countries, and it has a large 

installed base of Global 2000 companies, including Unilever, 

British American Tobacco, Lazard, Pearson plc, GlaxoSmith- 

Kline, Royal Bank of Scotland and Merck. Privately held and 

headquartered in New York and London, Teliris emphasizes 

end-to-end integration, a 99 percent-plus availability guarantee 

and interoperability with all traditional videoconferencing, 

telepresence and unified communications solutions. In 2009, 

the company launched its sixth-generation platform, which 

delivers telepresence over general-purpose networks, and this 

year, it launched a home solution that will extend telepresence 

to remote workers using any compatible display and a simple 

broadband connection. Other new products include a 3-D 

telepresence solution, a 3-D collaboration tool and a desktop 

panoramic telepresence solution with a curved display design. 

Smart-Grid Applications 

Company 

4Home 


CURRENT Group 

Echelon 

eMeter 

EnerNOC 

General Electric 

Gridpoint 

Home Automation Inc. 

IBM 

iControl Networks 

Itron 

muNet 

Tantalus 

Telkonet 

Tendril Networks 

Web Address 

www.4home.com 

www.carinatek.com 

www.currentgroup.com 

www.echelon.com 

www.emeter.com 

www.enernoc.com 

www.ge.com 

www.gridpoint.com 

www.homeauto.com 

www.ibm.com 

www.icontrol.com 

www.itron.com 

www.munet.com 

www.tantalus.com 

www.telkonet.com 

www.tendrilinc.com 

uControl 

www.ucontrol.com 

888-357-4214 

Key products and services: Home security, monitoring and 

automation solutions 

Accelerating adoption of home automation: Founded in 2006, 

uControl provides broadband-enabled home security and automation 

solutions. The uControl Home Security, Monitoring and 

Automation (SMA) platform enables broadband service providers 

to deliver the next generation of services for the connected 

home: security, energy management, health monitoring and 

connected-home services. Using an open, technology-agnostic 

infrastructure, the SMA TouchScreen combines an alarm system, 

communications gateway and home automation platform 

into a single device. A privately owned company based in Austin, 

Texas, uControl aims to maintain the most open platform possible 

and make it accessible to multiple device manufacturers, 

content providers and other partners to help accelerate the adoption 

of SMA to the broadest market. Customers include Comporium, 

NewWave and Massillon Cable. 

Vidyo 

www.vidyo.com 

866-998-4396 

Key products and services: Software-based 

videoconferencing solutions 

Video communication over general-purpose networks: 

Vidyo’s VidyoConferencing solutions are the first to take advantage 

of the latest enhancement to the H.264 standard for 

video compression, Scalable Video Coding (SVC). Use of SVC, 

an adaptive codec that can ensure reliable video on best-effort 

networks, allows Vidyo to deliver high-definition, low-latency, 

error-resilient, multipoint video communications over generalpurpose 

IP networks – even 3G and 4G wireless networks. 

This year, Vidyo introduced VidyoHealth, an affordable, scalable 

telemedicine videoconferencing suite, and announced an 

agreement with HP to expand the Halo telepresence portfolio 

to include conference-room and desktop endpoints. The HPbranded 

solution will include the complete VidyoConferencing 

product line running on HP servers. Vidyo is based in 

Hackensack, N.J. A privately held, venture-funded company, 

it has raised $63 million. 

VisionAIR 

www.visionair.com 

800-882-2108 

Key products and services: Public-safety automation 

Fighting crime via the Internet: VisionAIR’s public-safety 

software solution allows agency officials to manage the assets 

and activities associated with public safety and criminal justice 



“Online video continues to represent a significant and fast-growing business 

opportunity for broadcasters and media organizations throughout the 

world. A robust online video platform makes it easy for these organizations 

to expand the volume of premium video content available to consumers 

on the Web and on mobile devices and introduces a host of new possibilities 

for expanding audience reach and growing online communities.” 

– Jeff Whatcott, senior vice president, marketing, Brightcove 

services. VisionAIR’s Public Safety Suite supports computeraided 

dispatch, law and fire records management, law and 

fire mobile data, inmate management, field-based reporting, 

geographic information systems and Web-based data sharing. 

VisionAIR’s joint solution with Neverfail, which combines 

VisionAIR’s Public Safety Suite with Neverfail’s Continuous 

Availability technology, ensures that 911 dispatch centers always 

stay up and running and that operators and public safety officials 

have access to critical information to respond to emergencies. 

In March 2010, VisionAIR announced a partnership with 

CrimeReports, creators of the National Crime Map, to provide 

citizens with near-real-time crime information 

in their communities. Founded 

in 1989, VisionAIR is a privately held 

company with 100 employees, located in 

Castle Hayne, N.C. Customers include 

the city of Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Orange 

County, Calif.; LaCrosse County, 

Wis.; Charlotte County, Fla.; and Lake 

County, Ill. 

VUDU 

www.vudu.com 

408-492-1010 

Key products and services: Movies on 

demand 

Instant access to movies: With its software 

built into a growing number of 

broadband-ready TVs and Blu-ray Disc 

players, VUDU provides instant access 

to thousands of movies and TV shows. 

A customer with broadband Internet access 

and an Internet-ready TV or Blu-ray 

Disc player can rent or purchase movies, 

usually in high definition, without 

a connected computer or a traditional 

pay-TV subscription, and begin watching 

instantly. Licensing agreements with 

nearly every major movie studio and dozens of independent 

and international distributors have given VUDU a library of 

16,000 movies. New this year is VUDU Apps, a platform 

that delivers hundreds of streaming Internet applications and 

services to Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray Disc players. 

VUDU has partnered with some of the leading names in Internet 

and media entertainment, including Facebook, Flickr, 

Twitter, The New York Times and The Associated Press, to offer 

applications on its platform. In February, VUDU was acquired 

by Walmart. It will continue to operate independently 

out of its Santa Clara, Calif., offices. 

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GOOGLE TV 

What Google TV Means for 

Service Providers 

Should video service providers work with Google TV, compete with it, 

discourage it or just hope it goes away 

Last spring, a distinguished 

lineup from the consumer 

electronics industry – 

Intel, Sony, Logitech, 

Best Buy, DISH Network 

and Adobe – announced support for 

Google TV, an open Web-to-TV platform 

based on Android and using the 

Chrome Web browser. 

Google TV will combine pay-TV 

content, Web content and users’ personal 

content under a single search umbrella. 

Streaming video from Netflix, 

Amazon Video On Demand, YouTube 

(of course) and other Internet video providers 

will be supported, as will apps 

from the Android Market. To help users 

navigate all this content, Google TV 

will provide integrated search, a picturein-picture 

layout and tools to organize 

and personalize the viewing experience. 

(At the outset, some features will be 

available only with DISH.) 

Google TV is not the industry’s first 

attempt to bring Internet content to 

the television. Earlier attempts, such as 

Apple TV, have met with disappointing 

results. Will Google do any better 

The Google Ecosystem 

One key difference between Google and 

earlier entrants is that Google worked 

hard to create an entire ecosystem before 

introducing its product. The company 

hopes its partnerships with CE companies 

will create a whole new category 

of living-room devices. The new Intel 

Atom processor CE4100 will enable the 

platform to offer home theater–quality 

audiovisual performance, and both 

Sony and Logitech promise Atom-based 

products for Google TV. 

Sony’s new products will include a 

stand-alone TV and a set-top box that 

incorporates a Blu-ray Disc drive. Logitech 

will introduce a companion box 

that integrates with existing HDTVs 

and set-top boxes and incorporates keyboard 

and remote-control capabilities. 

Logitech will also introduce an HDTV 

camera and video chat for Google TV, 

along with apps that turn a smart phone 

into a remote control for the Google TV 

setup. Retail partner Best Buy will sell 

all these devices nationwide and support 

them with its Geek Squad. 

Finally, DISH worked with Google 

for more than a year on a joint trial with 

400-plus beta users and fine-tuned the 

product based on feedback from the 

trial. 

Google is also counting on applications 

from third-party developers to create 

the same buzz for its TV platform that 

they have done for the iPhone and Android 

phones. The company is releasing 

TV-specific application programming interfaces 

and will eventually open-source 

the whole platform, hoping to draw in as 

many developers as possible. 

The Service Provider Response 

Service providers can respond in one of 

several ways: First, they can negotiate 

with Google to bring Google TV to their 

subscribers. This is what Google would 

like them to do because their cooperation 

is likely to drive use of the platform. 

This strategy offers potential revenues 

for the service providers and potential 

advantages for their subscribers (for example, 

early access to new features). 

Second, service providers can compete 

with Google TV by offering similar 

or better features on their own platforms 

– as many are already doing. For 

example, Cox Communications just announced 

a deal with TiVo to integrate 

linear TV, VoD and Web content; some 

IPTV solutions, such as Mediaroom, 

also provide the capability to offer similar 

features. The go-it-alone strategy obviously 

allows providers to retain more 

control over the quality of their subscribers’ 

experience. 

Third, providers can price their services 

to discourage subscribers from 

using the television for anything other 

than pay-TV services. Although this 

can work in the short term, it may be a 

losing strategy in the long run, driving 

subscribers to other Internet providers 

or even other communities. 

Finally, service providers can ignore 

Google TV and hope it goes the way of 

earlier efforts to integrate Internet video 

with cable TV services. In some ways, 

this is the easiest strategy, but even if 

it succeeds today, it risks simply deferring 

the problem until a later date, when 

either Google or some other company 

comes up with a winning product. 

What providers decide will depend 

on how popular they expect Google TV 

to be and on the costs to develop competing 

offerings. This calculus may well 

vary from market to market. 

Industry observers are divided about 

Google TV’s likelihood of success. In 

the following pages, we present opinions 

by two well-known analysts – one 

cautiously optimistic and the other what 

might be called cautiously pessimistic. 

Will Google TV be the next iPhone 

App Store, or is it a solution in search of 

a problem Read these two articles and 

decide for yourself. 


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GOOGLE TV 

Why Google TV Can Succeed 

In Spite of the Cable Companies 

The apps that Google TV enables may prove enticing enough to draw 

consumers to the product. And if consumers are drawn to it, cable TV 

companies will be, too. 

By Bill Niemeyer ■ The Diffusion Group 

The announcement of 

Google TV has certainly 

gotten a lot of attention. 

I think it could (maybe) 

gain a good deal of consumer, 

developer, advertiser and network 

traction. Google TV could even 

be a game changer. 

While my 10 years in the advanced 

TV/video business have taught me to be 

a curmudgeon about “Net Meets TV” 

efforts, and there are many devils in the 

details that will affect chances for success, 

I find myself being somewhat optimistic 

about Google TV. Welcome to 

2010 – things have changed. 

With many Google TV topics to discuss, 

I’m going to focus on one here: Can 

Google TV get market traction without 

any cable, satellite or telco IPTV operator 

cooperation beyond the deal it now 

has with DISH 

I’m going to say yes. Why I believe 

there are three classes of apps that can be 

deployed on Google TV, with only one of 

them dependent on operator cooperation. 

And the remaining two classes can represent 

significant market opportunities. 

The three classes of apps are: 

• tightly TV-coupled apps 

• loosely TV-coupled apps 

• non-TV-coupled apps. 

customer tunes his STB to The Weather 

Channel. The box communicates the 

channel change to Google TV, which 

launches a Weather Channel app with 

local weather info in a live graphic feed 

at the bottom of the screen (this could 

easily carry targeted ads as well). 

Loosely TV-coupled apps are Google 

TV apps that directly relate to what’s on 

TV but don’t have the benefit of communication 

with an operator STB because 

Google and the operator haven’t done the 

business side deal or because of technical 

challenges or whatever other reason. 

How would a loosely TV-coupled 

app work Using The Weather Channel 

app example, there are two ways. 

One is via technology. Google TV 

picks up information encoded in the 

TV feed from the network and identifies 

what’s being viewed. It’s an old technique. 

Over 10 years ago, WebTV and 

other platforms supported analog TV 

in-signal information encoding called 

ATVEF (TDG’s Colin Dixon was on 

the Microsoft WebTV team). On a 

modern HD signal, it could be done via 

metadata or watermarking. 

But there’s another way that’s proven 

to be technically feasible and simple to 

deploy. I’ll call it HLTA, for Human 

Launches The App. I change the channel 

to The Weather Channel with my 

cable remote, pick up my Google TV remote 

and launch The Weather Channel 

app. It’s definitely nonoptimal, but how 

much harder is that than launching any 

iPhone, Android or PC desktop app 

If a loosely TV-coupled app provides 

enough utility, I’ll pick up two remotes 

to use it. And once the app is launched, 

it can be tightly synced to the TV program 

via the Internet and cloud-based 

servers. This isn’t new tech, either. Ten 

years ago, I was part of the team at a 

VC-funded tech start-up named Spiderdance 

that did exactly that, syncing PC 

game-show apps with programs on networks 

that included NBC and MTV. 

Non-TV-Coupled Apps 

These are apps that have nothing to 

do with what’s on a TV channel and 

that use the HD big screen simply as 

an output device – a very big, colorful, 

compelling output device. To me, 

one of the first best fits is social games. 

If you are one of the 35 million daily 

players of Farmville (the very popular 

Facebook game and cash cow for developer 

Zynga), wouldn’t you like to spend 

some of your hours and hours and hours 

playing it sitting in front of the biggest 

display in your house, the one that’s in 

front of your comfiest sitting spot and 

attached to your best sound system 

TV-Coupled Apps 

Tightly TV-coupled apps are apps that 

directly relate to what’s on TV at that 

moment and depend on communication 

between Google TV and the operator’s 

set-top box (STB). For example, a DISH 


Bill Niemeyer is a senior analyst with The Diffusion Group, an analyst and market 

strategy firm focused on the emerging digital media ecosystem. This piece is reprinted 

with permission from the TDG Opinions blog on www.tdgresearch.com. 


GOOGLE TV 

Although Zynga has not announced 

plans to support Android, it would be 

hard to believe it’s not on their product 

roadmap, at least for the mobile market. 

(Zynga did just announce a June launch 

for an iPhone Farmville client.) And 

Google TV will include a Flash player 

(the PC Farmville client is Flash-based). 

But non-TV-coupled apps are not 

just for social games. They could include 

any PC or mobile device activity that 

could be considered leisure time and 

benefit from a very nice big display. 

So back to my original question: Can 

Google TV gain market traction without 

an operator deal beyond the current 

one with DISH With two out of three 

app categories not requiring operator settop 

box integration, I say “yes.” 

And there probably won’t be another 

Google TV-operator deal, at least for 18 

months, judging by what’s happened 

with Google TV Ads (Web-based buying 

and reporting for linear TV commercials). 

Past the deal Google had in 

place with DISH at the launch of Google 

Market success for Google TV may well drive even 

the largest cable operators to do integration deals 

with Google. Five years ago, the mobile carriers 

had a very cable-like view of the world. Now, they 

have had to loosen up their walled gardens. 

TV Ads in 2008, there haven’t been any 

major operator deals since. The Fear Of 

Google is quite strong. 

What of the TV networks’ own 

Fear Of Google standing in the way of 

loosely TV-coupled apps Two thoughts. 

First, some loosely TV-coupled apps 

(TV-related social media, for example) 

likely will not need network deals as 

long as they can successfully manage 

copyright infringement issues. Second, 

it will take only a few early adopter networks’ 

having success with Google TV 

apps at driving viewing and engagement 

for other networks to move in and try 

it. There’s an expression I first heard applied 

to new technology in the oil industry 

that works for TV networks as well: 

“Nobody wants to be first and nobody 

wants to be third.” 

I’ll leave you with one more thought: 

Market success for Google TV may well 

drive even the largest cable operators 

to do integration deals with Google. 

Five years ago, the mobile carriers had 

a very cable-like view of the world. But 

with market success for the iPhone 

and Android, and now a robust mobile 

app market (Steve Jobs said earlier this 

month that Apple has paid $1 billion to 

iPhone app developers), mobile carriers 

have had to loosen up their walled gardens. 

Google TV may lead cable operators 

to follow suit. 


GOOGLE TV 

Searching for Success 

Google TV may be a solution without a problem. Pay-TV providers can 

already offer easy search, diverse content and interactive services without 

Google’s help. 

By Kurt Scherf ■ Parks Associates 

For over a year now, Parks 

Associates has been categorizing 

all the different 

solutions that are specially 

designed to bring Web content 

and applications to a “connected 

TV.” We put the term in quotes in this 

context because there will be different 

ways to experience connectivity between 

the Internet and the display other than 

an embedded solution. For example: 

• Connected game consoles: In the 

United States, penetration of Internet-connected 

game consoles 

jumped 38 percent between 2008 

and 2009. These devices are now in 

about 30 million households, and 

usage of the console as a set-top box 

is prevalent, with more than onethird 

of Microsoft Xbox 360 users 

watching video on at least a monthly 

basis. We believe that online video 

revenues at the game console alone 

brought Microsoft and Sony more 

than $500 million in 2009. 

• Connected TVs: Penetration is quite 

limited to date, but we expect that 

unit sales worldwide will exceed 130 

million by 2014. In short, built-in 

Web connectivity will soon be standard 

in most televisions. 

• Connected Blu-ray Disc players: Just 

bought a flat-panel TV and don’t feel 

like replacing it for a Web-connected 

set For a smaller investment, many 

Blu-ray Disc players come equipped 

with many of the same content services 

found on the high-definition 

displays. 

• Networked digital media players: 

Devices such as Apple TV, the Roku 

player and others provide a relatively 

lower-cost option to connect a TV to 

online video services. Parks Associates 

is projecting a quick sales peak in the 

United States, followed by a steady 

decline, as manufacturers embed 

online video access into consumer 

electronics products, thus closing the 

gap in this market. However, alternative 

set-top box platforms may have a 

more lasting presence in international 

markets, where they may be branded 

by broadband and pay-TV operators. 

The market potential for Webconnected 

consumer electronics is signifsuch 

as ActiveVideo Networks and Clearleap 

argue that Web services and interactivity 

can be delivered with transcoding 

done in the headend. Further, companies 

such as Vuze indicate that the PC in 

the home is capable of transcoding and 

serving as an intermediary to the television. 

So there’s plenty of room for debate 

about which are the right solutions. 

Google is entering the market at a time 

where there is much indecision about the 

ideal technology solution – one that will 

benefit TV manufacturers, content own- 

Google is entering the market at a time when 

there is much indecision about a solution that will 

benefit TV manufacturers, content owners and 

advertisers. There’s plenty of room for debate 

about which are the right solutions. 

icant, with annual worldwide shipments 

nearing 300 million units by 2014. 

In light of this opportunity, 30-plus 

technology companies are all aiming to 

bring Web services to consumer electronics. 

Companies in the connectedtelevision 

OS area that are working to 

build applications and Web services directly 

into the TV itself include Accenture, 

DivX, Google, IBM and Yahoo. 

In addition to the companies advocating 

an embedded solution, companies 

ers and advertisers. Google’s presence in 

Web advertising, including delivery and 

analytics, provides it with a huge potential 

for scale. One problem that has been 

troubling to the television manufacturers 

is how big their share of any potential revenue 

for online content might be. 

To date, the business models between 

television manufacturers and content 

providers or aggregators have involved 

revenue sharing based on online video 

orders. As a result, the TV manufacturer 


Kurt Scherf is vice president and principal analyst for Parks Associates, where he 

studies developments in home networks, residential gateways, digital entertainment 

services, consumer electronics and digital home technical support services. He can be 

reached at scherf@parksassociates.com. 


GOOGLE TV 

may get a few pennies per VoD order. 

Online video revenues on connected CE 

devices other than game consoles will be 

around $180 million in 2010, reaching 

$800 million by 2014, so it won’t be a 

huge revenue stream. Therefore, a deal 

with Google that can add advertising 

revenue to transactional monies would 

be a gain for manufacturers. 

Is Search Really a Problem 

Although Google comes armed with a 

business model, has it developed a solution 

for a problem that is not as dire 

as it indicates After all, Google leads 

its explanation video about Google TV 

by discussing why it is difficult for consumers 

to find the content they want on 

TV. Really We might quibble about 

the benefits or detriments of the various 

electronic program guides (EPG) in use 

today, but overall the EPG is doing an 

increasingly effective job of allowing for 

search and discovery. 

In addition, if the Google TV use 

model means users need a Logitech 

keyboard to type in search entries, that 

use case may not be attractive to many 

folks. Granted, the keyboard in the living 

room is going to be unnecessary for 

most people, as smart phones, tablet 

computers and other interfaces allow for 

more text entry, but I’m just not sold on 

search (as Google presents it) as the killer 

app here. The television service providers 

are innovating every day with their own 

program guides that have search, discovery 

and recommendation features. I 

don’t think anyone will be lacking for 

decent search options for the TV. 

Where Are the Content Partners 

Another issue with Google is how much 

high-quality content it will bring to 

the table. Google’s main content partner 

today is Sony. It will need to bring 

a number of major content players into 

the fold to have a successful solution. 

Premium content is driving demand for 

connected TVs. How much high-quality content 

will Google bring to the table It will need to 

bring a number of major content players into 

the fold to have a successful solution. 

Figure 1 – Incentives for TV-Internet Connectivity 

Best Buy will probably offer up Roxio 

CinemaNow content, but offerings will 

have to expand beyond that to attract 

large numbers of consumers. 

Premium content is driving the demand 

for connected TVs, as the results 

from our recently completed Digital 

Media Evolution II study indicate. 

Providing premium video-ondemand 

content is an area where the 

pay-TV providers will continue to excel. 

A couple of weeks ago, I had some time 

to catch up on my video on demand. 

With credits available on my VUDU account, 

I tried that platform first. What I 

quickly found is that my Verizon FiOS 

service had the same movies, and the 

high-definition versions were available a 

whole lot quicker than the download for 

VUDU’s HDX format. 

The Wall Street Journal is reporting 

that the studios and the operators are in 

discussions to reduce the window between 

the theater and pay-TV availability. 

This move makes sense. Interactive 

digital TV services are already in more 

than 40 percent of U.S. households. By 

2014, they will be in more than 60 percent 

of U.S. households. That huge scale 

is an advantage for the pay-TV operators. 

What are the online services going 

to offer that’s any better 

Is the Walled Garden Really 

the Evil Empire 

Related to this point, Google’s foray 

into a very open Internet approach is 

promoted as a way of throwing off the 

shackles of the walled gardens set up by 

TV service providers and today’s connected 

CE offerings. Parks Associates’ 

latest round of consumer research indicates 

that desire for open Internet access 

isn’t what’s driving consumers to a 

connected TV. They want good content, 

and they want it to be easy to find. 

Based on Figure 1, consumer desire 

for an open Internet experience on the 

TV for calendaring, music, photos, and 

commerce is not that strong. Tailored applications, 

including tru2way, EBIF, and 

LUA-based interactive features (available 

today from more and more pay-TV operators), 

are going to bring the interactivity 

of the Web without the “Wild West” 

component of misguided searches, text 

entry and reliance on the back button. 

If the walled-garden approaches can 

deliver services in a controlled environment 

that doesn’t overwhelm the average 

user and helps a provider deliver the 

high est-quality content, they could undercut 

consumer demand for a browserbased 

approach in connected TV. 


GOOGLE TV 

In fact, comparing the revenue potential 

between the online and pay-TV 

worlds makes clear that operators will 

still control the lion’s share of revenues 

for video services and interactive advertising. 

The revenues in the online world 

are certainly nothing to sneeze at, but 

the operators don’t have to cede control 

to Google in order to pocket some serious 

revenues in the next few years. 

Will Service Providers Care 

DISH Network is a partner, but will 

Google find additional service providers 

to join One question is, what’s in it for 

the providers For DISH, a current lack 

of good interactive applications would 

Figure 2 – VoD and Online Video Revenues 

be a reason for joining the fold. But 

will you see the cable industry, AT&T 

or Verizon knocking on Google’s door 

anytime soon These companies are already 

developing their own interactive 

applications and services. 

Multiplatform Measurement 

Google’s entrance should help define 

how providers of online assets will work 

with consumer electronics companies to 

implement more multiplatform content 

and multiscreen audience measurement. 

Measurement and reporting are two important 

areas where some work is needed. 

The more that content providers, online 

companies and CE manufacturers can 

work together to build consistent reporting 

and feedback mechanisms into their 

products, the more effective they will be 

in monetizing their Web services and attracting 

more premium partners. 

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Application News in Brief 

A roundup of recent news stories about broadband applications, 

including several new offerings targeted to smaller service providers. 

Vloop Keeps TV Viewers in the Loop – and Providers, Too 

It’s official: We’ve become a nation 

of multitaskers. According 

to In-Stat, 65 million Americans 

use their PCs while they 

watch television. A new application, 

Vloop (still in beta testing), appeals 

to the multitaskers among us by 

letting viewers talk with one another 

and connect with providers, broadcasters, 

producers and advertising services 

while they’re watching TV. 

Viewers can see what their friends are 

watching, invite friends to watch shows 

with them, chat with other fans of their 

favorite programs and even play games 

related to the shows. Listings help them 

find what’s on television and what kind 

of feedback each show is getting. 

Vloop is a free, entertaining social 

gadget for end users, but it’s a valuable 

market-research tool for the parties involved 

in video distribution. Content 

providers and producers can poll viewers 

with live questions about content 

(“Who’ll be voted off the island next”) 

and see feedback on programs by monitoring 

viewer chat. 

Because Vloop is available through 

the Internet, mobile devices and hybrid 

broadband/broadcast televisions, content 

providers can reach varied audiences, 

monitor their conversations and 

even change content to meet viewer demands. 

It’s a more efficient way to get 

viewer feedback than text, website polls 

or Twitter. 

If service providers allow Vloop users 

to report technical problems in real 

time, they can troubleshoot issues immediately. 

To make systematic improvements, 

providers can identify trends in 

viewer complaints and develop reports, 

including analyses by geographic location 

and program. 

Advertisers can leverage the Vloop 

platform to deliver interactive, multidimensional 

ads, targeted based on 

viewer conversations and feedback. 

Marc A. Todd, founder and CEO 

of Vloop, says, “Using Vloop, content 

and service providers greatly benefit by 

connecting directly with viewers about 

their experience and by asking them 

what they’re watching and why. With 

that valuable information, providers can 

make informed business decisions that 

directly impact their ability to deliver 

exceptional quality of service and quality 

of experience.” 

Todd is also the CEO of IneoQuest, 

Vloop’s parent company. IneoQuest 

specializes in quality and service assurance 

solutions for both legacy video networks 

and leading-edge offerings such as 

switched digital video, IPTV and VoD. 

Its automated systems, which monitor 

performance at all video endpoints – not 

just televisions but any devices to which 

video can be delivered – complement the 

user-generated quality-of-service reports 

that Vloop makes possible. 

Cloud-Based Subscriber Portal for Small Service Providers 

To keep subscribers engaged, many 

service providers offer online portals 

with free personal Web applications. 

One popular portal is Laszlo Systems’ 

Webtop, which includes voice mail, e- 

mail, address books, a calendar, instant 

messaging, videoconferencing, photo 

sharing and social networking. Like 

many enterprise applications, however, 

Webtop is scaled for large businesses 

and is difficult and expensive for smaller 

providers to deploy. Recently, Laszlo 

announced a cloud-based version that 

extends this Web 2.0 capability to companies 

of all sizes. 

Laszlo’s cloud-based platform supports 

services from any browser-enabled 

device. End users can access their applications 

from a Web-based environment 

that lets information follow the user 

from one device to another. Because 

information is shared across multiple 

applications, contacts entered in one 

application can be used in another, and 

actions such as marking favorite TV 

shows or purchasing event tickets can 

automatically create appointments in a 

user’s calendar. 

Webtop Cloud also integrates with 

existing back-end systems and extends 

easily to new service offerings or applications 

as demands change. 

George Shahid, CEO of Laszlo Systems, 

explains, “We give [service providers] 

a white-label offering to help them 

compete with over-the-top application 



providers. Providers are happy with 

the application because it reduces their 

churn and call center costs. Formerly … 

they typically required support because 

they were running old systems in siloed 

compartments. Now, they can mix and 

match applications. … They can roll 

out revenue-generating services, test the 

market and see if people are interested 

in them. They can also monetize their 

services through video advertising.” 

The new cloud-based platform, Shahid 

says, was conceived to help smaller 

providers with no IT budget or staff. Such 

providers typically choose fully hosted 

services. However, larger providers are often 

interested in outsourcing some subset 

of their portal applications to the cloud. 

The Year of the Connected Home 

For the last several years, we’ve been 

told the connected home would arrive 

any day. Well, that day has finally come, 

says Fred Taylor, a senior marketing 

manager at Broadcom, whose chipsets 

and software power many connectedhome 

devices. 

The connected home involves more 

than just connectivity, Taylor says; it’s 

about delivering information in an easyto-use 

environment. A bewildering array 

of standards for connectivity have 

been developed over the years, but they 

are finally converging, making it easier 

for people to access any content on any 

device. Broadcom, which participates 

in all the industry forums that develop 

and promote the various standards, has 

been working to make this convergence 

a reality. 

“A lot of credit goes to the content 

and the content providers,” Taylor says. 

“There’s just more information in the 

cloud that people want access to. Previously, 

the features have been there, 

but there was no compelling reason for 

people to use them. Now, it’s moving 

rapidly. The projection is that 91 percent 

of IP traffic will be video by 2013. I can 

believe it will be true.” 

This year, Broadcom has set up connected-home 

demos at trade shows to illustrate 

how easy setting up a multimedia 

network can be. Taylor says, “In the 

past, we were demoing something that 

needed an expensive professional installer. 

Today, we’re getting to the point 

where an average guy can buy a couple 

of NAS servers, put in Wi-Fi or Ethernet 

connections and back up data from anywhere. 

You can play back content from 

the hard drive or from the Web, and it 

will follow you around the house.” 

Most new consumer electronics 

devices come with native support for 

DLNA, which enables easy interconnectivity. 

More than 7,500 devices have 

now obtained DLNA Certified status. 

DLNA-enabled televisions can search 

on their own for other devices that may 

have playable content – such as PCs or 

Blu-ray Disc players – and pull in content 

from those devices. Mobile phones 

can be used as remote controls; they 

find devices on the network and let users 

select content to be moved from one 

device to another. “It’s pretty intuitive,” 

Taylor says. 

Because Microsoft Windows 7 includes 

DLNA, a PC user with the new 

operating system can hook up his or her 

computer to an Ethernet or Wi-Fi network, 

turn on the PC and see a device 

list that includes the TV. The user can 

push video or photos to the television as 

if copying to another drive. 

“There’s a groundswell going on,” 

Taylor says. “I like to think it starts small, 

Shahid says, “A lot of service providers 

might want to control the messaging part 

but outsource e-mail, social networking 

and advertising. … We have folks with a 

very strong passion about hosting e-mail 

and others … that want to outsource it. 

It has a lot to do with the legacy of service 

providers and where they’ve put their investment 

in the past.” 

like [using the TV to watch] Netflix, and 

the next thing you know you’re seeing a 

list of devices. … Then you realize there’s 

a little more going on in the device. A lot 

of it is coming to them as a gift.” 

Which Device to Use 

Once consumers can run any application 

or any content on any device, how will 

they decide which device to use Taylor 

has some hunches. He believes people 

will use televisions mainly for viewing 

shared content – watching movies with 

the family, say, rather than reading e- 

mail – and will use smaller, connected 

devices as adjuncts to the television. 

He comments, “A lot of people tried 

to make the television the whole room 

center, but most people don’t watch TV 

that way. You don’t want to surf the Web 

on the TV.” 

Taylor adds, “I like to think there’s 

another screen in the house – a tablet or 

a handheld – that becomes the preview 

screen. You could just pause [the TV 

show] and surf on the TV, but it’s better 

to bring the handy-dandy tablet and 

surf on the Web, then transfer the new 

stream to the TV and watch it there, 

or purchase something you saw in the 

commercial. 

“The devices are linked from an Internet 

standpoint, so you can do various 

things like change channels or preview 

channels. You can use the tablet or the 

phone as a guide, and when you find 

something, you preview it on the tablet, 

then throw it up on the TV. The TV 

becomes the big screen for sharing what 

you’ve discovered.” This doesn’t require 

the handheld device to actually play the 

content (other than in preview mode); 

rather, it just establishes the connection 


and possibly acts as the controller. 

Taylor envisions that people will 

keep their tablet devices with them all 

the time and using them for a variety of 

functions – for example, power management 

or other types of home automation. 

“You’ll have the ability to look and 

see what’s on and off, how much power 

you’re using at any time during the day. … 

In the last few years, Microsoft Mediaroom 

has become a favored IPTV platform 

among Tier 1 telcos worldwide, 

including AT&T in the United States. 

However, it was not designed with small 

telcos in mind. Now, Alcatel-Lucent has 

downsized Mediaroom with a turnkey, 

compact, single-rack solution designed 

for networks of between 1,000 and 

100,000 set-top boxes. 

Alcatel-Lucent also announced its 

first customer for the solution – Cinergy 

MetroNet, a competitive fiber-tothe-home 

provider in Indiana. Cinergy 

is using the solution to deliver IPTV 

in six Indiana cities with about 50,000 

potential subscribers in total. “We want 

to provide our customers superior service 

and access to such capabilities as 

WholeHome DVR, interactive applications 

and over-the-top content,” explains 

John Cinelli, CEO of Cinergy 

MetroNet. “Alcatel-Lucent’s IPTV solution 

fits our business needs and gives us 

a powerful, flexible, and differentiating 

tool to deliver IPTV-based services to 

our customers.” 

“Operators who support from 1,000 

to 100,000 set-top-boxes are underserved 

when it comes to IPTV and next-generation 

multimedia services,” says Geeta 

Chaudhary, vice president of Alcatel- 

Lucent’s Multimedia Integration Services 

group. “To address this need, we created 

an optimized IPTV solution that is preintegrated 

and lab tested, minimizing 

the technical and commercial risks associated 

with launching IPTV services.” 

Some key features of the new microarchitecture 

follow: 


Better than having the refrigerator order 

food [when it’s getting empty] is having 

it summarize its status somewhere 

– then you take the tablet or the mobile 

phone to the grocery store.” 

Will all these connected devices require 

armies of tech-support workers to 

help us configure them No more than 

we have today, Taylor says. Most of these 

Alcatel-Lucent Launches IPTV Solution 

For Smaller Providers and MDUs 

new devices recognize each other without 

being introduced, set themselves up 

and dial in for automated tech support 

when they sense problems. “There’s been 

a big difference in the year between 18 

months ago and six months ago,” he 

says. “Now, you don’t need proprietary 

software. It’s all just self-contained. 

They just start to play.” 

• A unique design integration more 

than triples the number of set-top 

boxes supported in each single deployment 

and reduces the number of 

servers needed. Alcatel-Lucent used 

Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization 

technology, which makes each physical 

server appear to be eight or nine 

logical machines. 

• Deploying the solution on the HP 

BladeSystem with HP Virtual Connect 

technology further optimizes it 

by reducing the complexity of the architecture 

and increasing flexibility 

to respond to changes in workload 

demands. Virtual Connect, by placing 

a layer of abstraction between the 

servers and external networks, greatly 

reduces the number of physical cables 

needed to connect the IPTV servers 

to the aggregation switch. 

• The small physical footprint allows 


Magazine Congratulates 

For more information on Cox Communications, visit www.cox.com. 

You are cordially invited to come see Cox Communications at the upcoming 

April 26 – 28, 2011 






For becoming the 

Lanyard Sponsor at the 

2011 Broadband 

Properties Summit. 




Nonprofit broadband provider One- 

Community is working with Cisco to 

transform northern Ohio. Its pilot programs, 

part of Cisco’s Smart+Connected 

Communities effort, aim to enhance 

quality of life, spur economic development 

and reduce the cost of government 

operations. The programs will focus on 

workforce retraining, public safety, access 

to health care and public services. 

Cleveland was once the center of a 

wealthy manufacturing region; although 

it fell behind in the post-industrial economy, 

it still retains many world-class 

institutions developed during its glory 

days. Public and private-sector leaders 

are now trying to develop a regional 

economy based on health care, education 

and technology. As part of this 

transition, OneCommunity and Cisco 

are working with local governments to 

share their digital infrastructure and capabilities 

for dedicated citizen services 

and public safety programs. 

The revitalization programs include 

• Public Wi-Fi and workforce training. 

OneCommunity is launching an ambitious 

digital literacy program with 

more than a dozen training partners. 

This consortium will provide digital 

literacy training and technical 

support to 30,000 households over 

the next two years. Many of these 

households are located in OneCommunity’s 

Cisco Mesh cloud, which 


a more energy-efficient deployment 

with reduced overall energy and operating 

costs. Power and cooling can 

be reduced by a factor of six. 

• Pretesting in Alcatel-Lucent’s laboratories 

reduces technical risk and 

improves time to market by as much 

as 30 percent. The solution can be 

ready to go in 60 to 90 days. 

• Microsoft added a software layer between 

Mediaroom and third-party 

OSS/BSS software, giving service 

providers an end-to-end solution 

that includes both middleware and 

integration. This makes synchronizing 

Mediaroom with existing operational 

software much less onerous. 

Chaudhary expects to find several 

markets for the new IPTV solution. 

The primary market, of course, is smallfootprint 

telcos that never expect to have 

more than 150,000 video subscribers. 

This includes both operators that have 

not previously offered IPTV and those 

looking to migrate to Mediaroom from 

other IPTV platforms. 

In addition, larger operators may 

use the micro-architecture either as a 

permanent solution for hard-to-reach 

rural areas of their footprints or as a 

Cisco and OneCommunity Launch Pilot Programs For 

Smart+Connected Communities 

provides free public Wi-Fi to lowincome 

neighborhoods. 

• Connected incident response. To 

improve citizen safety, Cuyahoga 

County is using the OneCommunity 

Service Delivery Platform to assemble 

multidisciplinary emergency 

response teams regardless of location 

or communications media. Using 

the 3,000 Cisco Unified IP Phones 

deployed in Cuyahoga County, fire, 

police, medical and hazardous-materials 

teams and other first responders 

can come together quickly, with 

the right expertise, potentially saving 

lives. OneCommunity’s deployment 

of Cisco Unified Communications 

in Cuyahoga County also enables 

seamless communications between 

responders and government agencies. 

Municipalities are now piloting 

the shared service as well. 

In addition, the city of Akron 

is collaborating with Cisco and 

OneCommunity to provide enhanced 

wireless communications services to 

police officers in the field. With wirelessly 

connected squad cars, officers 

responding to an event have instant 

access to graphics or maps. Video 

feeds transmit suspects’ pictures in 

real time, potentially reducing capture 

time and increasing citizen safety. 

• Online health care education and 

telemedicine. Cisco is working with 

temporary solution while they scale up 

to full IPTV deployment. The microarchitecture 

is no longer economical 

once the deployment exceeds about 

150,000 set-top boxes. 

Finally, because the new solution 

makes IPTV deployment feasible for as 

few as 500 homes (assuming two set-top 

boxes per home), it can be deployed by 

amenity providers in multifamily communities, 

new single-family developments 

or even in the hospitality market. “We’ve 

been approached by several developers 

who want to get into this,” Chaudhary 

says. “They’re very viable candidates.” 

OneCommunity to deliver health 

care education to local schools. 

These programs will take an aggressive 

approach to disease prevention 

and reduce the need for future care, 

treatment expenses and absences due 

to illness. 

OneCommunity will also provide 

Cisco TelePresence, Health- 

Presence and WebEx services to 

schools and colleges to support remote 

doctor visits conducted by 

video. This will make possible regular 

assessments of students’ health 

and allow experts to address classes 

remotely. 

• Online community services. The city 

of Akron is using Cisco’s networkdriven 

collaboration technologies to 

deliver community services via advanced 

online portals. Citizens will 

be able to access incident reports from 

a Web-based portal; the system will 

automatically send an e-mail report to 

a victim or witness if the police officer 

is provided with an e-mail address. 

Akron will also be able to schedule 

community activities in more 

than 100 facilities at new Community 

Learning Centers operated 

outside school hours. Akron is rebuilding 

every public school as a 

Community Learning Center, with 

17 schools already completed and 

many more in the pipeline. 


BROADBAND 

PROPERTIES 

Marketplace 

To reserve space in this section and LEVERAGE the power of your advertising via print, digital, and multimedia exposure in 

the global market, contact Irene Prescott at 316-733-9122 or email irene@broadbandproperties.com. 

Verizon FiOS: 

Top-rated broadband service in America. 

Period. 

USTCi 

Your direct sales and marketing choice. 

INCREASE YOUR SALES TODAY! 

Find out if FiOS is available for your multifamily community. 

Contact Verizon Enhanced Communities 

866.638.6066 

www.verizon.com/communities 

Verizon FiOS services not available in all areas. ©2009 Verizon. 

1.888.499.1658 

www.ustci.com 

USTCi 

US Telecommunications, Inc. 

Everyone benefits when 

you’re wired for DIRECTV. 

Whether you’re a property owner or 

a tenant, find out why over 50 million 

Americans enjoy DIRECTV every day! 

For more information on 

why your building should 

have DIRECTV, call 

888-342-7288. 

® 


Ad Index 

Calendar 

Advertiser Page Website 

AFL Telecommunications 15 www.afltele.com/go/closures 

Adesta 39 www.adestagroup.com/broadband5 

Adtran 19 www.adtran.com/stimulus 

Advanced Media Technologies 99 www.amt.com 

Alpha Technologies 17 www.alpha.com 

Atlantic Engineering Group 105 www.aeg.cc 

AT&T Connected Communities 119 www.att.com/communities 

Broadband Properties Summit 2011 1–7, 38, 77, 81, www.broadbandproperties.com 

107, 117, 120 

Clearfield 29 www.clearfieldconnection.com 

Comcast 21 www.comcast.com 

Corning Cable Systems Back Cover www.corning.com/cablesystems/ 

stimulus 

Connexion Technologies 44 www.cnxtech.com 

DirecTV 119 www.directv.com 

Draka 111 www.draka.com/communications 

FTTH Council 60 www.ftthcouncil.org 

Fiber Instrument Sales 57 www.fiberinstrumentsales.com 

Great Lakes Data 35 www.glds.com 

Multicom, Inc. 119 www.multicominc.com 

OFS 13 www.ofsoptics.com 

Primex 11 www.primextelecom.com 

Raisecom 35 www.raisecom.com 

RVA, LLC 58, 59, 119 www.RVALLC.com 

Seikoh Giken 103 www.seikohgiken.com 

Suttle 114 www.suttleonline.com 

TelcoTV 109 www.telcotvonline.com 

Transition Networks Inside back cover www.transition.com 

USTCi 119 www.ustci.com 

Verizon Enhanced Communities 119 www.verizon.com/communities 

Walker & Associates 9 www.walkerfirst.com 

MARK YOUR 

CALENDAR 

Get Connected at the Summit 

April 26 – 28, 2011 



“BBP has done a great job planning and executing so many different speakers and topics with the flow of a much 

larger conference. The speakers gave a very comprehensive overview of what technology is capable of delivering and 

how it can be molded to work in communities. I would recommend the Summit because it’s a great opportunity to 

hear how the providers have advanced and how we, as consumers, can benefit.” 

– Laura Sheldon, Administrative Project Assistant 




For other inquiries, call 877-588-1649, or visit www.bbpmag.com 

September 

12 – 15 

Comptel Plus 

Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center 

Dallas, TX 

877-978-7083 

www.comptel.org 

12 – 16 

FTTH Conference & Expo 

Venetian Resort Hotel & Casino 

Las Vegas, NV 

613-226-9988 

www.ftthconference.com 

12 – 16 

BICSI Fall Conference & Exhibition 

MGM Grand Hotel & Convention Center 

Las Vegas, NV 

813-979-1991 

www.bicsi.org 

October 

18 – 21 

WCAI 2010 

McCormick Place 

Chicago, IL 

202-452-7823 

www.wcai.com 

18 – 21 

4G World 

McCormick Place 

Chicago, IL 

617-259-2300 

www.4gworld.com 

November 

9 – 11 

TelcoTV 2010 

Venetian Resort & Casino 

Las Vegas, NV 

800-441-8826 

www.lightreading.com 

14 – 16 

NMHC Apartment Operations & 

Technology Conference & Expo 

Hilton Anatole 

Dallas, TX 

202-974-2318 

www.nmhc.org 

April 2011 

26 – 28 

Broadband Properties Summit 



877-588-1649 

www.bbpmag.com 


Don’t Let Vendor Selection Slow You Down…Carpool with Corning. 

Corning Cable Systems wants to reward you for all the hard work you put into the Broadband Stimulus 

application process. The Corning Cable Systems Stimulus Advantage Program offers you points for every 

dollar you spend on our innovative cable and hardware solutions for your last-mile deployment. 

Points can be used for splicers, tool kits, extended warranty, training and much more. 

Let Corning Cable Systems lead the way to Stimulus success. 

www.corning.com/cablesystems/stimulus 

Evolant ® 

Solutions 

Everytime. Everywhere. Evolant. 

© 2010 Corning Cable Systems LLC

505-867-2668 - Broadband Properties

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