International Telecommunications Union Approves DOCSIS Modem Standard

Worldwide Scale Economics

Louisville, Colorado, March 19, 1998—The Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS), created by Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs®), its members and a wide array of suppliers, has been approved as an international standard for transmitting data over cable systems.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Study Group 9, which is responsible for cable television system matters, approved the landmark standard, designated J112, during meetings in Geneva, Switzerland the week of March 16 to 20. The measure had been out for ballot by ITU Telecommunication (ITU-T) members for several months before that.

"It's a tremendous achievement for the cable industry and its suppliers to have taken the idea of having interoperable high-speed data delivery over cable from a concept in late 1995 and to have made it an international standard a little over two years later," said Dr. Richard R. Green, CableLabs president and CEO. Green is active in Study Group 9 and attended the meetings in Geneva.

CableLabs has managed the DOCSIS process on behalf of its members as its seeks to foster interoperability among suppliers' devices. The DOCSIS process was started by four CableLabs member companies - TeleCommunications Inc., Time Warner Cable, Comcast Corp., and Cox Communications, and was known at first as Multimedia Cable Network System (MCNS) Holdings LP. The latest information on the DOCSIS process is available at http://www.cablemodem.com/.

The ITU standard defines modulation and protocols for high-speed bi-directional data transmissions over cable. Recommendation J112 will enhance interactive cable television services, providing transmission data rates up to 30 Megabits (million) per second and should result in worldwide economies of scale and interoperability benefits, the ITU said in a news announcement.

Jose Louis Tejerina, chairman of ITU T SG9, said: "This work is a significant achievement for the ITU as it supports the needs of industry to produce advanced data communications equipment for the emerging cable television services. World wide standards enable the economies of scale and lower costs so important to telecommunications infrastructures in the developing countries."

Recommendation J112 includes three annexes which address the unique requirements of the European, North American and Japanese Asia sectors respectively.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org, www.ebif.tv and www.tru2way.com.

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