June/July 1995 -- Volume 7 Number 5
Contents:
The International Telecommunications Union study group responsible for setting world standards in cable television has adopted three regional transmission standards employing the 64-quadrature-amplitude-modulation (QAM) approach for digital television deployment by cable television internationally. The 64-QAM standards were recommended by cable industries in the U.S., Japan, and Europe.
The unanimous action came at the spring meeting of Study Group 9. The Working Party of Study Group 9 that prepared the recommendations is chaired by Dr. Richard R. Green, president and CEO of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs). The group also approved the evolution of the North American digital transmission standard for cable to higher orders of modulation.
Recent field experimentation using a 64-QAM receiver with equalization was carried out in Japan where quasi error-free operation with this modulation format was confirmed.
"This is a very important step for the cable industry in North America," said Green. "It marks the first time that the ITU has enacted a standard for cable transmission. It improves the position in the worldwide hardware marketplace for North American equipment companies and cable operators," he indicated.
Representing the U. S. at this meeting were Laurence A. Young of Ameritech, Charles J. Sindelar and Richard Citta of Zenith Electronics, and Dr. Richard Prodan and Claude T. Baggett of CableLabs. Representing the U.S.
State Department was John B. Hitchcock from the U.S. Geneva mission.
CableLabs and the California Cable Television Association (CCTA) are making progress toward establishing a list of participants and demonstrations for CableNET `95 at the Western Cable Show, November 29 to December 1, in Anaheim, California.
In 1993 and 1994, CableLabs and the CCTA co-sponsored CableNET demonstrations, in which many companies worked together to produce a working exhibit of the national information infrastructure. The display showed the capability of the hybrid fiber/coax cable network to provide new and varied services to the customer, and to demonstrate its strengths as the future link to the home.
In addition to being interconnected by a cable network, the demonstrations involved linking via cable to booths outside the CableNET booth, as well as with other sites external to the Anaheim Convention Center. Both demonstrations were quite successful and achieved their goals.
The 1995 demonstration is more focused on services and applications that cable suppliers and cable systems may provide to the customer within the first half of 1996.
"In 1995, we felt that we should focus on what cable customers will see in their homes, offices, schools, and elsewhere in the very near future," said CableLabs President and CEO Dr. Richard R. Green. "CableLabs continues to work hard to ensure interoperability. It is a key theme of each of our work projects, including requests for proposals," he said.
CCTA President Spencer Kaitz indicated that once again the CableLabs-CCTA demo would be a highlight of the convention. "The Western Cable Show continues its tradition as the only forum to review and showcase policy, technology and programming issues in our industry. We welcome CableNET participants and clearly, the growing number of participants in CableNET is evidence of its success," Kaitz said.
The demonstration will occupy 5,000 square feet in the Anaheim Convention Center. CCTA Vice President C.J. Hirschfield and CableLabs Vice President, Communications Mike Schwartz are coordinating the demonstration.
The cable industry took its case to the interactive multimedia community when several members of CableLabs took part in Digital World, one of the most visible events of the year for digital entertainment and broadband networking.
Tom Ringkamp, product manager/multimedia for Cox Communications; Tony Werner, vice president/engineering for TCI; and Ron Wolfe, director of plant engineering, Time Warner Cable joined Scott Bachman, CableLabs vice president/operations technology projects, on a CableLabs-sponsored panel "The Power to Deliver: The Evolving Broadband Network". Discussing their companies' activities, the panelists exemplified the cable industry's progress toward networks supporting a wide range of high bandwidth applications.
The session focused on the commercial environment in which new applications would be deployed, rather than their underlying technology, reflecting cable operators' increasing concern with near-term payback for investments in the network infrastructure. Panelists described a number of marketable, feasible applications, posing a number of questions about the marketplace any operator must answer before deciding to adopt them.
The four speakers in the CableLabs session described the diversity of broadband applications available to the cable community and the wide range of business plans they can inspire. Bachman began with a description of advanced cable architectures and the role of CableLabs in their design. Ringkamp of Cox Cable discussed data applications; Wolfe of Time Warner Cable, talked about multimedia applications, and Werner of TCI, introduced a business model accommodating both high-speed data services, such as TCI's @Home( network, and other services such as wireless telephony.
Ringkamp, reporting on the progress of Cox Cable's ECNet trial in Phoenix of high-speed data applications, listed a number of elements such services must have to become commercially successful. Among them were adequate security, a market with critical mass and a verified willingness to pay, special training for small businesses, and high standards of reliable service for commercial customers. His company concluded, Ringkamp said, that this market will be driven not by video applications, but by telecommuting, extended local area network services, and Internet access. Telecommuting, he said, could support charges of $100 to $300 a month, with $30 a month for Internet access.
Wolfe discussed the specific broadband architectures that Time Warner is deploying in order to support the wide-scale rollout of the full-service network, as well as other services. He stressed that the broadband platform, when combined with appropriate switching and terminal device technologies, would support virtually any type of broadcast or transactional service, including multimedia applications, telephony service, data communications, and video on demand.
Werner presented the field of possible networking environments his company faces, from advanced cable network applications such as video and near video on demand, to wired and wireless telephony. Each has its own economic profile, and will mature in the marketplace at a different rate, making it difficult to make decisions about one based on experience with the other. Among them, only video on demand, he said, must wait for new technologies.
All speakers stressed the importance of enterprise-level network management to the emergence of these markets. "We advocate an enterprise-management strategy that allows cable operators to combine and share information for greater ease and cost-effectiveness, but most of all for synergies between different sets and types of information," Bachman said.
CableLabs sponsored a 1-1/2 day conference on the concept of enterprise management in mid-June, bringing together engineers and information systems managers from member companies to discuss integrating business and operations support systems.
Speakers from various vendor and consultant companies addressed topics ranging from implementation of enterprise management in a cable network (physical configuration management, monitoring and controlling devices on a hybrid fiber/coax network, and the integration of customer care and workforce management) to the basics of information systems architecture (data and process modeling and entity relationships).
Armed with the conceptual tools and technical perspectives this program delivered, member companies might develop information systems by combining data from different functions, for example, using information gathered by the billing process for a different, unrelated and often unforeseen purpose such as marketing or strategic planning, the speakers said.
Reengineering business operations through information technology could be a major benefit of a new enterprise network, according to keynote speaker Frank Koelsch, senior vice president and founding partner of the Gartner Group/Canada. "All applications ( and all managers) must have access to all corporate information if it is to become a strategic tool. A cable company is one business activity not fifty disjointed events," he said. "A new enterprise network is not just a better way to do the same old job. It is the only way to survive in the new marketplace," Koelsch said.
Here is a brief description of the seminar's sessions.
Telecommunications Management Architectures
Information Systems Concepts
Computer-Aided Systems Engineering
Network Management Standards
Monitoring and Controlling Hybrid Fiber/Coax Devices
The Enterprise Data Warehouse
Physical Configuration Management (AM/FM/GIS)
Integrating Customer Care & Work Force Management
CableLabs members: For copies of conference proceedings and audio tapes,
please contact CableLabs' Lyne Yohe, 303 661 9100 or l.yohe@cablelabs.com.
Copyright © 1995 Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Design basics for an effective enterprise management system. Discussion of
complementary management architectures ( the Telecommunications Management
Network (TMN) and OMNIPoint (and their applicability in the cable television
environment. Information flow between network elements and service management
applications, and the need for open interfaces, both vertically and
horizontally, between management applications and modules.
Basic primer on information systems, the processing and storage of data.
Relational, distributed, and object databases, and the industry query standard
for relational database management systems (RDBMS), structured query language
(SQL).
Enterprise modeling; the process for planning, building, and managing multiple
integrated information systems. Why it is essential for system integration.
Systems engineering notations, and specific examples of cable system business
process descriptions, and how enterprise modeling impacts system operations.
Remote management of the devices in a cable network and the protocols that
define the format, structure, commands, and content of the messages.
Bellcore's transaction language 1 (TL1); the Internet's simple network
management protocol (SNMP); the common management information protocol (CMIP).
The need for open, non-proprietary information transmission protocols.
The remote configuration of devices in the cable operator's network. Status
monitoring equipment as a proxy agent to accommodate a variety of proprietary
protocols and to translate the protocols to a standard interface.
The need for more intelligence (i.e., SNMP agents) in network devices to aid in
remote monitoring and control.
Data warehousing as the central core of enterprise management systems. Basic
architectures and concepts to allow flexibility in design and deployment of
information systems. Collecting, converting, and migrating data between
existing environments and new ones such as a data warehouse. The process of
integrating data from multiple sources in the migration to full
telecommunications networks.
Automated mapping and facilities management and geographical information
systems (AM/FM/GIS) are evolving as core physical configuration tools,
integrated with other enterprise management systems in a competitive
environment. Migration and conversion techniques from traditional,
paper-based physical configuration management (i.e., CAD) to management via
AM/FM/GIS.
The integration of customer care and work force management systems with other
cable operations information systems to ensure accurate, proactive customer
service. The role of enabling technologies such as computer and telephony
integration (CTI) in reducing overall operations costs. The impact of customer
care and work force management data on other information systems.