Virgin supportive of DVB-C2

IBC 2009 – Amsterdam. Virgin Media’s director of technical strategy Kevin Baughan has told Broadband TV News that it makes sense for the cable industry to sign up to the new DVB-C2 technology. However, the UK cablenet has no plans to join the nine operators that have publically declared their support for the technology.

“We didn’t want to sign up now and cause confusion for our technology vendors,” said Baughan. “We’re comfortable where we’re at, but we are supportive of the rest of the industry. We do not have the capacity issues of some of the other operators.

Baughan’s stance was backed by Dr Peter Siebert, director of the DVB technical office. “When you have sufficient bandwidth, why bother, just maximise the revenues.”

By contrast, UPC for the moment does not back DVB-C2. The company issued an official statement by email to Broadband TV News, saying” At the moment UPC does not feel that we would get a benefit by moving to DVB-C2. We continue to be happy with the DVB-C standard. All cable operators have different networks and varying operational needs. We will always continue to review technological developments to to see if they can improve the services we offer to our customers but DVB-C2 is not part of our plans.”

On Friday Broadband TV News revealed the nine operators that have agreed to adopt the successor to DVB-C as being Kabel Baden Württemberg, Unitymedia, Kabel Deutschland (Germany), Ziggo (the Netherlands), ONO (Spain), Com Hem (Sweden), Numericable (France), YouSee (Denmark) and ZON (Portugal).