A newly formed consortium of European cable operators, equipment vendors and research organisations is to focus on extending the life expectancy of hybrid fibre coax networks.
The ReDeSign consortium comprises cable operators Telenet, Zon TV Cabo, the German cable association ANGA and equipment manufacturers Alcatel-Lucent and Vector. The work is being supported by the Dutch research institution TNO and Technische Universitaet Braunschweig, which is also coordinating the project.
“Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) networks are capable of transporting Gigabits of digital content to customers. However, with the rapidly evolving markets and the increasing bandwidth demand for new services such as HDTV, Video on Demand, and sophisticated IP-based services, the cable industry needs to continuously evolve its networks to maintain its competitive advantage,” the group said in a statement.
The organisation is promising to work closely with development bodies such as the DVB and CENELEC.
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Connected TV Forecasts NEW REPORT. The number of TV sets connected to the Internet will reach 551 million by 2016 for the 40 countries covered in this report from Digital TV Research, up from 124 million at end-2010. The report states that this translates to 20% of global TV sets by 2016, up from only 6% at end-2010. Published in November 2011, this 83-page PDF report is the most geographically comprehensive to ever be published.