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Our Group:

Gerald Kresta

Matt McGovern

Kelly Orman

John Verbeke

Positive Factors:

• Radio took 30 years to reach 50 million people, 13 years for TV, WWW reached twice as many users in half the time.

• Projections for 250 million Internet users worldwide by 2002.

• Cable offers access to 65% of all American homes

• Broadbrand HFC infrastructure exists.

• Internet access at speeds 100 times faster than current modems.

• Potential to offer cable consumers the convergence of telephony, Cable TV and internet services to become a virtual communications center.

Limiting Factors:

• Question on impact of current narrowband ISPs and if the government will regulate access to broadband.

• Possible difficulties with On-Line Service Providers to build the content (AOL).

• Potential limitations with respect to technical standards with the goal that content providers, aggregators and portals should not have to reprogram their sites for use with broadband systems.

• HFC networks' inherently "noisy" return path is limiting; two areas need to be addressed - Narrowband Ingress and Impulse Noise:

• Narrowband Ingress is found in all households it is noise interference from household appliances.  Even homes not on the network can add to the noise in the cable plant.

• Impulse Noise is caused by flaws outside the plant.

• Digital Modulation technique and Multiplexing Protocol also remain as challenges:

• The Modulation scheme decision is the result of balancing efficient delivery of the signal with its immunity to noise: higher bits-per-hertz results in a higher carrier-to-noise ratio meaning the system is less able to tolerate noise.

• The choice of a modulation scheme today does not prevent the migration to a higher bits-per-hertz scheme in the future as the risks of this move are reduced.

• Multiplexing two major alternatives:  Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA).

• Network management is key to delivering reliable two-way telephony over an HFC network--which differs significantly from the one-way video service of current cable providers.

• Customer management and billing becomes more complicated than in basic one-way Cale TV services currently provided by the Cable TV operators.