Complete Story
 

03/26/2009

Cable Show 2009: 'Broadband Nation' Touts Cable Tech

By: Todd Spangler, Multichannel News

Complete coverage of Cable Show 2009 from Multichannel News

 

Cable is everywhere.

That's the message the National Cable & Telecommunications Association wants to impart with Broadband Nation, a 22,000-square-foot exhibit that will be the centerpiece showcase at the Cable Show 2009 in Washington, D.C., next week.

The exhibit, featuring demos from more than 35 companies, is supposed to demonstrate how consumers in urban, suburban and rural areas are using cable's high-speed Internet services today -- and into the future.

"So much of what our member companies do goes beyond the home, so we thought we'd build a whole city," said Mark Bell, NCTA's vice president of industry affairs.

Cable Show 2009: Broadband NationThe goal with Broadband Nation, he said, is to "take a big technology story and boil it down to an exhibit."

With the Cable Show taking place in the nation's capital this year, the industry has the opportunity to get in front of policy makers and demonstrate the breadth of technology cable brings to consumers and businesses, NCTA vice president of communications Brian Dietz said.

One policy issue that's front and center this year: Congress has approved $7 billion for broadband-network buildouts as part of the larger economic-stimulus package.

"The messages are that broadband plays an important role in Americans' lives already," Dietz said. According to NCTA, more than 38 million consumers subscribe to broadband cable service.

Broadband Nation's eight different areas will be connected by a road running through the exhibit: a visitors' center, a cable network operations center, a coffee shop, an urban loft, a suburban home, a rural school, a rural clinic and an entertainment complex.

Comcast, the incumbent cable operator in the D.C. area, will provide a total of 100 Megabits per second of bandwidth dedicated to Broadband Nation, Bell said, via two 100-Mbps enterprise data circuits. In addition, Comcast will provide DOCSIS 3.0 50-Mbps downstream/10-Mbps upstream service to support the exhibit's videoconferencing demo.

Scripps Networks and HGTV will decorate and furnish the homes in the exhibit, which carries the theme "Main Street America." LG Electronics will provide more than 40 high-definition flat-screen TV and computer displays throughout it.

In the suburban home, Motorola is going to show multiroom DVR and media mobility. Cisco Systems, meanwhile, will outfit the urban loft with interactive TV and portable-media demos.

Other companies participating in the exhibit include Comcast Media Center, which will be showing a live demo of its hosted interactive TV applications service, HITS AxIS; Samsung Electronics and Advanced Digital Broadcast, with demos of tru2way-based set-tops; and Intel, which will show the Widget Channel's Internet-delivered on-screen information services like news and weather developed with Yahoo.

In addition, Broadband Nation will include a car outfitted with WiMax broadband wireless service, provided through Clearwire, which has been funded by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Sprint Nextel, Intel and Google. (A WiMax-connected laptop also will be featured in the coffee shop.)

A full list of partner demonstrations is available on the Cable Show site at www.thecableshow.com/broadbandnation.

Broadband Nation is being produced with Williams/Gerard Productions, which has produced the NCTA show's general session for the last several years.

 

Source: http://www.multichannel.com/article/190728-Cable_Show_2009_Broadband_Nation_Touts_Cable_Tech.php?rssid=20059

Printer-Friendly Version