LONDON — Two rival consortia have been formed to support competing U.S.- and European-developed cable-modem standards in the European market.
The European Cable Modem Consortium is promoting and developing cable-modem products based on the U.S.-developed multimedia cable-network system (MCNS), otherwise known as the Data Over Cable System Interface Specification (Docsis) standard. Its members are U.S. industry leaders and some European proponents of MCNS, including 3Com, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Dassault, General Instrument, Motorola, Pace and Thomson. MCNS is a de facto standard in the United States and it is now looking to leverage economies of scale in Europe.
At the same time, Alcatel, Cocom, DiviCom, Hughes Network Systems, Nokia, Sagem, Simac, Thomson Broadcast Systems and Thomson Multimedia have teamed up to create the DVB/Davic Interoperability Consortium, which supports the European-developed DVB-RCCL return channel for cable and LMDS (local microwave distribution systems).
U.K. cable operator Cable & Wireless Communications has selected Docsis/MCNS for future set-top boxes, despite the existence of the DVB/Davic cable-modem standard. But other European cable operators, through the industry association, have spoken out in favor of choosing the rival DVB/Davic system.
When it disclosed its participation in the Euro Cable Modem Consortium, Broadcom said its BCM3300 single-chip cable modem is suitable to use in European Docsis systems.
Tim Lindenfelser, Broadcom's vice president of marketing, claimed that Docsis standardization and implementation, in the form of the BCM3300, were ahead of the rival group's. And though Broadcom is a leading player in the consortium, Lindenfelser said that other semiconductor companies could benefit if MCNS is successful in Europe.
In the opposing camp, Gregers Kronborg, chairman of the DVB/Davic Interoperability Consortium and chief operating officer of Cocom A/S (Copenhagen, Denmark) said, "The MCNS solution is not a complete solution. It has to be DVB-compliant at the physical layer and is only MCNS at the MAC [media-access control] layer. Our hardware supports 16-QAM and we've asked for it to be included in the DVB-RC standard."
