Louisville, Colorado, July 15, 1998—Cable Television Laboratories Inc.(CableLabs®)will sponsor a one-day conference on July 30 in Denver to update voice and video over Internet protocol (IP) equipment suppliers with the current status of the cable industry's PacketCable™ initiative.

The cable television industry has been working closely with a group of equipment vendors over the past seven months to create the foundation for the PacketCable™ advanced services architecture. This conference will offer a comprehensive progress report on PacketCable™ to any vendor company that is building, or is interested in building, products relevant to the PacketCable™ initiative and that have signed the required Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with CableLabs.

"Building upon the success of the DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) cable modem specification effort, the cable industry is seeking to cooperate with leading vendors in a similar fashion to achieve the design of interoperable platforms for delivering advanced telecommunications services over high-speed cable data networks," said David Reed, Vice President of Strategic Assessment for CableLabs.

PacketCable™ is a CableLabs-managed initiative established to foster interoperability among cable-specific voice and video over IP solutions by developing key feature and interface specifications. The specifications are intended to foster a competitive environment whereby multiple vendors can supply PacketCable™ equipment to a cable operator without sacrificing interoperability or service integrity.

According to Luisa Murcia, Vice President of Technical Development at TCI.net and chairperson of the PacketCable™ technical working group, PacketCable™ is an overlay network that leverages the cable industry's DOCSIS cable modem infrastructure. The PacketCable™ architecture consists of multimedia clients, signaling and media gateways for multiple external networks, and multi-purpose servers for various features and interfaces to back office systems, she said.

Key areas of the PacketCable™ specification include basic feature descriptions, client characteristics, client-to-network signaling, QoS and security mechanisms, call management server inter-zone communications, and SS7 signaling architectures, Murcia added.

The PacketCable™ specification effort is focused primarily on profiling the H.323 umbrella standard to meet cable system requirements. In addition, the effort will create cable-specific H.323 extensions where appropriate to maximize the level of functionality available to cable operators.

More detailed information regarding PacketCable™ is available on the PacketCable™ website at www.packetcable.com. Equipment vendors interested in participating in the PacketCable™ initiative who have not yet applied for non-disclosure agreement (NDA) status may do so online through the main web page. For further information on the NDA, contact Kathy Mitts at CableLabs, 303-661-9100.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org and www.ebif.tv.

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