2Wire Unveils the Industry's First Fully Integrated Solution for Digital Home Connectivity

Interoperability, Intuitive User Interfaces, Place Shifting, Centralized Storage, and Unified Management Are Keys to Successful Integration of the Digital Home
LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwire - January 2, 2008) - CES -- 2Wire, a provider of broadband service platforms, today unveiled the industry's first fully integrated multi-service connectivity solution, with the addition of the new 2Wire intelligent home server, and the 2Wire Shifter™ remote video and multimedia access feature.
The fully integrated solution creates the opportunity for service providers to be the sole source of the subscriber's entire digital experience, by offering bundled service plans that cover the full breadth of subscriber data and entertainment needs.
For broadband subscribers, the integrated platform finally solves the digital media dilemma. Having embraced digital media, subscribers are ultimately disappointed to discover that file types are mismatched, platforms are proprietary, and media access is limited to specific devices and locations. The result is scattered content and a fragmented digital experience.
2Wire solutions resolve these issues by providing seamless integration of interoperable devices, applications, and services. Key features of the 2Wire platform include automated storage, backup, and universal access to all media types, from purchased video, to photos, music, and user-generated video. Content and services are accessible via a single intuitive Web portal, whether at home or away.
"Since our inception, 2Wire has been opening the door to the digital home for our telco customers, with platforms that provide subscribers uncomplicated, whole-home networking solutions," said Pasquale Romano, president and CEO of 2Wire. "We are now able to provide subscribers with the most unified digital experience available, while giving telcos new products, services, and software that create the unprecedented opportunity to assume ownership of the entire digital home experience."
Both the 2Wire intelligent home server and the 2Wire Shifter leverage the 2Wire HomePortal® intelligent gateway and MediaPortal™ platforms to provide DSL subscribers with a unique, fully convergent digital media experience. HomePortal intelligent gateways feature a high performance ADSL or VDSL modem, high-speed router, professional-grade firewall, integrated voice over IP, and flexible home networking options. The 2Wire MediaPortal platform allows providers to combine broadcast satellite or off-air TV programming with broadband services, to deliver a comprehensive entertainment solution.
The new components of the 2Wire multi-service connectivity solution include:
-- 2Wire intelligent home server - This category-defining new solution
combines the functionality of a network-attached storage device with the
flexibility of a media server. Discover™, an application bundled with
the intelligent home server, actively seeks out content from other
networked devices and, keeping metadata intact, aggregates it into
categorized libraries which can then be accessed directly -- through any
networked device, such as a PC, video game console, or other set top box --
or remotely, through any Internet-connected, media-capable device such as a
computer or even handheld devices and mobile phones. The intelligent home
server features a Web-based user interface, customizable by the service
provider, for simple subscriber access and configuration on the provider's
portal site, utilizing the subscriber's existing username and password.

-- 2Wire Shifter - 2Wire Shifter is the pivotal place-shifting component
of the 2Wire multi-service media platform. This feature is enabled by an
adapter the size of a deck of cards. Interoperable with a variety of
networked devices, including set top boxes and the 2Wire intelligent home
server, it enables Web-based remote access of any multimedia content,
including live streaming television, to any content-capable device, such as
a laptop computer or even a mobile phone.

Each component of the 2Wire multi-service connectivity solution is interoperable and standards-compliant. The entire system is fully manageable by the 2Wire CMS CPE management system as well as a variety of 2Wire server applications. Such applications include business rules and analytics, home automation controls, data backup management, and media management, a server application that mediates third-party content providers and manages subscriber content purchases and downloads, DRM, and billing. As a customized, bundled solution, this suite of intelligent, interoperable products and services features Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) functionality, and a single service-provider-branded, Web-based portal.
All components of the 2Wire multi-service connectivity solution will be made exclusively available to the world's leading telecom broadband service providers. Components are also compatible with many third-party devices, and customized platforms may be provided for integration in a variety of configurations.
2Wire will be demonstrating the new platform to broadband service provider customers in private meetings during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
About 2Wire
2Wire provides global telecom carriers with broadband products, software, and service platforms that enable an integrated triple play of networked data, voice, and media services. Award-winning products and services include residential gateways, broadband multimedia set-top boxes, remote management systems, and call center customer support. 2Wire customers are leading broadband providers throughout the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, including AT&T, Bell Canada, BT, Embarq, SingTel, Telmex, Telstra and others. For more information, visit www.2Wire.com.
2Wire, HomePortal, MediaPortal, and Shifter are trademarks or registered trademarks of 2Wire, Inc. in the United States and in other jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.
Source: marketwire.com

Ikanos' Residential Gateway Vision

Ikanos Communications (www.ikanos.com) a developer of silicon and software for broadband solutions, recently teamed up with D2 Technologies (www.d2tech.com) to demonstrate a quadruple play residential gateway (for OEM developers) running D2’s Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) software. The device is an amalgam of Ikanos’ Fusiv Vx180 VDSL2 gateway processor with D2’s vPort VoIP software. Both technologies combined enable a residential gateway to support voice (VoIP), video (IPTV), data (VDSL2) and mobile wireless services. Peter Ahimovic, Director of Marketing at Ikanos, says, “Ikanos’ history dates back to VDSL space focusing on CO and CPE side, first with VDSL1 and VDSL2 standards. Then, in early 2006, Ikanos acquired the network processor and ADSL team from ADI [Analog Devices, Inc.]. Our PHY, or layer one physical interface technology for VDSL1 and VDSL2, now joined ADI’s ADSL PHY technologies. Moreover, we combined our PHY technology with ADI’s Fusive gateway processor technology which took us into the gateway market. We can now offer chips and software to enable services such as high-speed Internet access, VoIP, Telco TV, Wireless LANs, Access Point (News - Alert) router-type functionality, security services, and so forth. We have several new products, such as the Vx170 and Vx180 VDSL2 gateway processor, based on the MIPS32 24KE core produced by MIPS.” “The market dynamics are trending in a way that we feel the need to converge the various pieces found in the digital home domain into a single box solution, a residential gateway, where you will have various means of broadband access, be it VDSL, ADSL, cable or even fiber-to-the-home PON-type technology,” says Ahimovic. “Basically we’ll see converging Infotainment, Security and Broadband Access. The services now terminated within the home are on the infotainment side. This includes all of the video services such as PDR, DVR, and media server-type applications, and of course you use a set-top box so you can display the video content. Then there’s voice – meaning terminating derived fixed-line voice, VoIP or fixed-mobile convergence [FMC] voice. And of course we have to provide security across the services, which includes firewalling, anti-spam, anti-virus, and so forth, since threats will always be coming through the broadband access points. Multiple devices in the digital home will be interconnected through the residential gateway and they’ll use an emerging ITU standard called G.HN, in which ‘HN’ stands for ‘Home Networking.’” “The ITU is creating an umbrella over the home networking standards that are available today,” says Ahimovic, “which are industry consortia-led technologies that currently have some technical pieces in common but don’t interwork at all, such as MoCA [Media over Coax Alliance], HPNA [Home Phoneline Networking Alliance], HomePlug, and so forth. So we’re talking about a sort of ‘super middleware’. We provide software, but we’re in the silicon business. We need to provide devices that can run this ‘super middleware’ and enable these services.” “When people talk about Network Attached Storage [NAS], they’re typically referring to a PC with a shared hard drive,” says Ahimovic. “But we believe that technology will migrate to the gateway. Indeed, our Home Media Gateway [HMG] concept incorporates a SATA [Serial ATA] drive so that it can easily offer NAS [Network Attached Storage] and DVR [Digital Video Recording].” “Today many ISPs provide the broadband access part,” says Ahimovic, “with VoIP-type capabilities, and WiFi access points for distributing the Internet access capability, and so forth. That we see carrying forward. Adding to that you’ll see femtocells, a fixed-mobile convergence technology where you have the ability for your cell phone work within your home by connecting to the network via a femtocell emanating from within the gateway, instead of the larger macro network as is usually the case. The gateway will handle the signaling and the voice traffic over its broadband connection. Basically it’s an IP connection from the gateway to the mobile service provider, and then from the gateway to your phone via the femotcell.” “We believe that femtocells will ultimately be a ‘killer application” for broadband access,” says Ahimovic. “The femtocell opportunity is being driven by increased service coverage in the home for voice, video and data as well as reduced operating costs for the wireless providers. Various opportunities exist to sell femtocells to existing broadband subscribers as well as new deployments.” “You may well ask what happens to the set-top box as all this technology appears,” says Ahimovic. “Today, of course, all set-top boxes are doing the video decoding that typically it’s super set-top box that is doing the DVR and multi-room DVR and so forth. Our vision is that DVR capabilities will be part of the gateway. It’s a device managed by the service provider, and has the ability to turn features on-and-off as desired by the subscriber, so it allows providers to derive additional revenue by offering features on a subscription basis, typically a monthly fee.” “You’ll see centralized content storage, centralized policy-driven management of the home media gateway [HMG] and peer-to-peer distributed storage too,” beams Ahimovic.

Source: tmcnet.com

AT&T Switches From Tellabs To Ericsson

Light Reading notes that AT&T, who just launched U-Verse in their first BellSouth territory market (Atlanta), has dumped Tellabs in the southeast. The company has discontinued purchasing Tellabs fiber-to-the-curb gear, and instead is now using Ericsson FTTN gear. Telephony Online has more detail on why AT&T is shifting from FTTC to FTTP in the Southeast:
In an interview today, Leopold said AT&T may choose to deploy Ericsson's gear in a configuration very similar to FTTC but based on IP rather than ATM. One of his sources had described to him a scenario in which AT&T would deploy fiber to Ericsson equipment located within a few hundred feet of each home and run VDSL2 the rest of the way, which essentially describes FTTC. The difference is, that 500 feet is IP-based VDSL2, so it fits better into the U-Verse architecture, in that you're getting rid of all the ATM, he said.AT&T's U-Verse deployment area is small for now (only a few hundred homes) as the company tests the service on the former BellSouth network. Source: dslreports.com