Louisville, Colorado, September 26, 2002—The cable industry�s highly successful cable modem initiative has certified nine new DOCSIS™ 1.1 high-speed cable modems and re-certified one more during the recently concluded certification wave for DOCSIS testing. The 23rd wave of certification testing concluded September 20. There are now 42 CableLabs® Certified™ DOCSIS 1.1 modems. These products expand the supply of second-generation interoperable high-speed devices available to the cable industry.

Those companies receiving DOCSIS 1.1 certification status in the latest wave of testing (Certification Wave 23) are Arris, Askey, Belkin, Castlenet, Fujitsu, Hitron, LinkSys, and Thomson. Com21 achieved re-certification for its DOCSIS 1.1 modem. In some cases, vendors had more than one product certified. In addition, CableLabs qualified and/or re-qualified two DOCSIS 1.1 Cable Modem Termination Systems (CMTSs) from Motorola and Terayon. There are a total of 18 DOCSIS 1.1 CMTSs that have been qualified.

Rouzbeh Yassini, executive consultant to CableLabs and leader of the Broadband Access initiative at CableLabs, said that the success of the DOCSIS program speaks for itself. �To date, over 300 DOCSIS products have been certified and/or qualified. This phenomenal source of products has resulted in an ideal environment for operators and end-users alike. But the best is yet to come. CableLabs� open specifications, interoperability, and certification processes and strategy continue to be fundamental pillars of the cable industry's advance as the undisputed leader of broadband services, and are the basis for new Broadband IP services that the industry will deploy in the months and years to come," said Yassini, who also is CEO of YAS Broadband Ventures.

CableLabs is now entering its fourth year of conducting DOCSIS certification testing for high-speed cable modems on behalf of its cable system operator members. In that time, more than 11.7 million DOCSIS cable modems have been deployed in North America and millions more deployed around the world. CableLabs already has announced a new consolidated process for certification in 2003, expanding the successful cable modem test program to include devices that seek compliance with specifications for PacketCable™ and CableHome™.

This step will enable a test program in 2003 capable of evaluating a wide array of broadband products, including newly emerging products for cable Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) and for cable in-home networking, while still continuing the successful DOCSIS™ program for new (DOCSIS 2.0) and existing (DOCSIS 1.0, DOCSIS 1.1) cable modems, and CMTS equipment.

The 1.1 modems are compatible with existing DOCSIS 1.0 equipment and will work on cable systems along-side modems that will be certified under future versions of DOCSIS.

Strategically, DOCSIS 1.1 opens a technological doorway to augmented revenue streams for cable providers. It does so by enabling the existence of high-speed Internet service tiers, via techniques known as data fragmentation and concatenation. Those techniques allow cable providers to deliver high-speed Internet services simultaneously over the same plant with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS).

And, perhaps most importantly, equipment built to comply with the DOCSIS 1.1 specification becomes the foundation for expanding the list of advanced IP-based cable services offered by cable providers, including home networking through the CableLabs CableHome™ project, and packet telephony and multimedia services through the CableLabs PacketCable™ project.

As of Certification Wave 23, 224 DOCSIS 1.0 modems have been awarded certification and 28 CMTSs have been qualified by CableLabs. As of this certification wave, 12 cable modems from the following companies were awarded 1.0 certification or re-certification, in some cases for new products: Efficient Networks, Motorola, Netgear, Scientific-Atlanta, and Toshiba.

As part of Certification Wave 23, CableLabs concurrently performed three parallel practice certification runs for equipment built to support CableHome 1.0, DOCSIS 2.0, and PacketCable 1.0.

The vendor community is using the results of the practice run to refine their upcoming products that will be submitted for future certification waves.

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.

CableLabs® is a registered trademark of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. Other CableLabs marks are listed at http://www.cablelabs.com/certqual/trademarks. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.