CableLabs Achieves Industry `First' With Certification for DOCSIS 2.0.

Business Editors

LOUISVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 19, 2002

Attaining another industry "first" in its award-winning cable modem program, CableLabs(R) today announced that it has awarded certification and qualification status for Data over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS(TM)) 2.0 to five companies during the recently completed round of certification testing.

DOCSIS 2.0 modems from Motorola, Scientific-Atlanta, Terayon, Texas Instruments and Xrosstech were certified and a cable modem termination system (CMTS) from Terayon received DOCSIS 2.0 qualification.

DOCSIS 2.0 gives cable operators the ability to offer speeds up to 600 times faster than are available through standard dial-up telephone modems. This enables cable networks to carry so-called peer-to-peer and business services that require high-speed two-way capability. DOCSIS 2.0 is backward compatible with earlier versions of DOCSIS products, fully supporting advanced Internet Protocol (IP)-based cable services. It adds advanced digital modulation capabilities to cable modems and headend equipment enabling cable companies to increase by a factor of three the speed of the return (or upstream) path of their networks as compared to DOCSIS 1.1, or a factor of six as compared to DOCSIS 1.0.

"This is another historic moment for our industry. We truly could not have had this kind of accomplishment so quickly without the help of a great community of supplying companies and the strong support of the cable operators," said CableLabs President and CEO Dr. Richard R. Green. "We will continue our push to add to our family of DOCSIS specifications as new technologies warrant," Green added.

"We completed the 2.0 specifications at the beginning of this year, and now have certified product by year end," said Rouzbeh Yassini, executive consultant to CableLabs and head of its Broadband Access group. "That kind of efficiency for getting products into a marketplace shows how effective the cable industry's DOCSIS process, which brings vendors, members and CableLabs together, has become," added Yassini.

There are now more than 350 cable high-speed Internet access devices that have received certification or qualification status in the last three and a half years of CableLabs testing. DOCSIS 1.0 modems were optimized for high-speed Internet access. DOCSIS 2.0 is backward compatible with DOCSIS 1.1, which opens a technological doorway to augmented revenue streams for cable providers 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(TM) project, and packet telephony and multimedia services through the CableLabs PacketCable(TM) project.

As of Certification Wave 24, a total of 291 DOCSIS modems have received certification, including 64 1.1 modems; 51 CMTS have gained qualified status, including 22 1.1 CMTS. Twenty-one modems received DOCSIS 1.1 certification in Wave 24 from: Ambit, Arris, Askey, Broadxent, Com21, Kinpo, LinkSys, Motorola, NetGear, Pioneer, Scientific-Atlanta, Terayon, Texas Instruments, Thomson and Toshiba. Three 1.1 CMTS were qualified from: Scientific-Atlanta, Arris and Cisco Systems.

Receiving DOCSIS 1.0 certification in Wave 24 were Efficient Networks, SMC, Thomson and Toshiba.

As part of Certification Wave 24, CableLabs 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.

Results of PacketCable and CableHome(TM) certification and qualification testing will be released Dec. 20.

CableLabs would like to extend its gratitude to the following individuals who contributed on behalf of their respective companies to make DOCSIS 2.0 a success: Hal Roberts and Ty Pearman of ADC; Michael Yeh of Ambit; Don Wyman of Arris Interactive; Bruce Currivan, Scott Cummings, Lisa Denney, Margo Dolas, Roger Fish, Daniel Howard, Tom Kolze, Niki Pantelias, Rich Prodan, Tom Willis, and Jason Willis of Broadcom; Alon Bernstein, John T. Chapman, Dan Crocker, Rick Meller, David Liang, Bill Singer and Jiahuai Zhou of Cisco Systems; Rich Woundy of Comcast; Mike Le of Com21; Yoav Hebron, David Hull, Terry Jackson, Gordon Li and Shimon Tzukerman of Conexant; Rusty Cashman and Tom Middleton of Correlant; Andy Brown and Joe Gerhardstein of Daqtron; Hunter Donahue, Gerry Dwyer, Rob Fanfelle, Mike Grimwood, Zhenzhong Gu, Lina Nakhle and David Raftus of Imedia; Jeff Calder, Jeff Hoffman, Elias Nemer, Adi Shaliv, Mugundhan Varadanarayanan and Hassan Yaghoobi of Intel; Ray Harvey, Victor Hou, Sophia Ku, David Munro and Hikmet Sari of Juniper Networks; Clive Holborow, Kevin Marez, Jack Moran and Greg Nakanishi of Motorola; Simon Brand, Lee Colby, David Doan, Christiaan Prins and Leo Zimmerman of Philips; George Hart of Rogers Cable; ShinWoong Kay of Samsung; Eric Jensen and Jim Miller of Sigtek; Steve Burroughs of Spirent; Dan Rice and Jason Schnitzer of Stargus; Aviv Goren, Asaf Matatyaou, Adam Paramlee, Craig Patten and Tom Williams of Terayon; Curtis Barnes, Guy Cohen, Noam Geri, Miron Tzhori, Daniel Wajcer, Ariel Yagil and Efrat Zeharhary of Texas Instruments; Hide Haruyama of Toshiba.

CableLabs Certified(R) or CableLabs Qualified means that the device has passed a series of tests for compliance with the indicated version of the Specification and has thus demonstrated interoperable functionality with any other "CableLabs certified/qualified" device. Many of these devices provide other functions or are designed to comply with other specifications, in each case tailored by the manufacturer to meet the growing needs of consumers or cable operators in an evolving communication/entertainment sector. While CableLabs encourages such innovation and diversity, the phrase CableLabs certified/qualified should not be understood as an endorsement of these other attributes (or that the product is certified to other specifications or versions), which are solely the responsibility of the company making the additional claims.

Founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry, Cable Television Laboratories is a non-profit research and development consortium that is dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications technologies and to helping its cable operator members integrate those advancements into their business objectives. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains web sites at www.cablelabs.com; www.packetcable.com; www.cablemodem.com; www.cablenet.org; and www.opencable.com.