TORONTO – While we’d have liked to hit each of the 40 vendor tables at the SCTE Canadian Summit, from Alcatel-Lucent to White Radio, there just isn’t time.
Below are a few of the new products some of the companies were showing their clients this week at the Toronto Congress Centre – and if there were a trend we had to pick, it would be the emphasis oh how the suppliers are pushing solutions for the business market and not just the residential space. This, of course, corresponds to the cable companies’ push into that realm, too.
For example, Lindsay Broadband was focusing on its fibre to the MDU (FTTM) power unit (for MDUs or businesses) with 10-hour battery backup. Instead of taking large outdoor equipment indoors and needing an electrician to install it, Lindsay has developed a new, smaller, lower-cost 1GHz fibre node solution with 0 ms power transfer time designed to be used indoors as it is built into a wall-mountable 14x10x4.25-inch enclosure and can be plugged in. www.lindsaybroadbandinc.com
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Staying with power, Alpha introduced its high performance XM Series 2 at the Canadian Summit. The new, high-efficiency transformer cuts energy consumption by an average of 3% (which sounds small, but when you multiply that by the number of power supplies in a cable plant, it can amount to significant savings) has 6, 15 and 22 amp models and its next generation microprocessor has double the memory capacity compared to past models. www.alpha.com. Alpha is distributed in Canada by TVC Canada. www.tvccanada.ca
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At the Power & Tel booth, it was showing the JDSU DSAM family of field meters for triple-play service installation, troubleshooting and network maintenance. The DSAM family includes JDSU’s patented Stealth Sweep technology to test and maintain both the downstream forward path and upstream return path. www.ptsupply.ca
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Capella was featuring Motorola’s newest multi-line eMTA, another product that can be used residentially, but is also geared towards the business market. Part of the SURFboard line, the new M-eMTA uses industry-standard signaling protocols to provide high speed Internet access and up to 48 lines of primary-line, full-featured, cable voice service. This is a product good for strip malls, apartment buildings and hotels. www.capella.ca
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On RGB Networks’ table was its SEP 48 Simulcast Edge Processor, which offers the ability to MPEG decode, NTSC modulate, and upconvert multiple video streams in one rack unit. www.rgbnetworks.com
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In the middle of the Telonix table was the Lightel Viewconn 6100, a small, hand-held, all-in-one fibre optic inspection and cleaning unit. It can tie into a technician’s laptop easily and has adapting tips for 2.5mm and 1.25mm PC connectors. www.telonix.com
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Vecima is getting close to launching its newest product, Terrace, an MDU digital to analog gateway that will be a serious help in reclaiming bandwidth. It can demodulate 16 QAM channels and output 80 analog channels and will make sure MSOs will still deliver signals to analog TVs in apartments – even when the buildings are being fed a digital signal. It’s at the evaluation stage right now with a large American MSO. www.vecima.com
