Cable Television Laboratories has announced that its PacketCable test programme will be ready to qualify vendors‘ products by next year.

This will allow the cable industry to deploy PacketCable-based multimedia services such as Voice-over-Internet Protocol without delay. More than 40 PacketCable vendors have reportedly brought their products to CableLabs for experimentation and assessment. The project is updating test plans and procedures at present.

CableLabs, which comprises cable television operators from North and South America, engages in extensive R & D, helping companies tackle challenges and explore further avenues for growth. The company claims to have made great progress in demonstrating product inter-operability. The PacketCable programme is a company initiative aimed at developing inter-operable interface specifications for delivering advanced, real-time multimedia services over two-way cable plant. Built on top of the DOCSIS 1.1 cable modem infrastructure, PacketCable networks will use Internet Protocol technology to deliver multimedia services to the consumer such as IP telephony, multimedia conferencing, interactive gaming and general multimedia applications.

Scientific-Atlanta is determined to beat the slowdown back home by making its presence felt in other markets.

Its purchase of Belgium company BarcoNet NV is a step in this direction. BarcoNet is a leading provider of multimedia distribution solutions for broadband and broadcast applications. Focussing on internet-over-cable and other interactive digital services, BarcoNet‘s customers include the world‘s largest broadband operators, in cable as well as terrestrial, telecom, satellite or wireless applications.

Scientific-Atlanta, the leading supplier of digital content distribution systems as well as transmission networks for broadband access to homes, will launch a public tender offer for the outstanding common stock of BarcoNet at a price of ?5.70 per share in cash, together with all outstanding options, warrants and convertible securities, for an aggregate value of approximately US $ 154 million. The deal is expected to close next month. BarcoNet generated 98 million dollars in revenues for the year ended June 30, 2001.

BarcoNet distributes digital television manafactures headends for integrated multimedia services as well as high-speed digital fiber optic backbones. The company brings to the Scientific-Atlanta stables extensive customer relationships, strong product portfolios and local market knowledge. In turn, it will leverage the scale that Scientific-Atlanta brings in sales, engineering and support.