Comcast Gives TLC to VOD,Enlisting Box Vendors' Help
By JEFF BAUMGARTNER -- Multichannel News, 7/8/2001 6:00:00 PM MT
After getting its feet wet with video-on-demand during some limited trials in four cities, Comcast Corp. intends to take the full plunge before the year is out.
The MSO's aggressive VOD plans will likely take the revenue-generating service into 15 to 20 markets by the end of this year, and put it in front of a potential 2 million households.
To get itself there — and help it to keep its head above water amid waves of hardware and software-integration issues likely to crop up along the way — Comcast has enlisted a pair of technical life preservers: Scientific-Atlanta Inc. and Motorola Broadband Communications Sector.
"VOD itself is pretty complex," Hess said.
Launching VOD — and doing so on such a fast track — is certainly not easy. Comcast's decision to tap partners for its VOD launches was a decision "based on complexity and manpower," said MSO vice president of digital television Mark Hess, who is tasked with making sure Comcast meets its aggressive forecast.
Comcast will team up with S-A's professional-services arm, SciCare Broadband Services, in 10 of those markets in 2001. Sci-Care will provide equipment installation, integration and other launch-support services.
All 10 of those networks run on S-A-based networks, while the rest run on platforms from Motorola or other vendors, Hess said.
Though the financial terms of S-A's support for Comcast's VOD deployments in 10 markets have not been disclosed, SciCare typically takes in between $60,000 and $150,000 per site, depending on how big a role the MSO wants the S-A unit to take in the deployment, said SciCare president Larry Bradner.
Those figures do not include network equipment and digital set-tops, which are paid for separately, he said. SciCare's bill to the operator "depends on the site and how we tailor the services to what the site needs," he said, noting that Comcast's SciCare requirements are a "bit north" of the range.
SciCare projects that it will take in more than $100 million in revenue over the next year to 18 months, Bradner noted. The division presently has about 19 VOD site projects on its plate, involving top MSOs such as Adelphia Communications Corp. and Time Warner Cable.
SciCare also is lending a hand in the network rebuild of Kabel Nordrhein-Westfalen GMbH & Co., a Callahan Associates International-operated MSO that serves about 4.2 million subscribers in Germany.
In Comcast's case, SciCare will help the operator work through four specific steps: planning and design, platform upgrade, equipment installation and system tests and trials. At each site, it will take about 90 days for the process to move from kick-off to technical trial.
The first phase, which takes about four to six weeks to complete, involves site surveys and an overall understanding of the network. SciCare and Comcast must craft a specific design for each of the MSO's VOD vendors, Concurrent Computer Corp. and SeaChange International Inc.
The second step — upgrading the platform — typically takes about three weeks to complete at each site, Bradner said. Today's digital-cable network is extremely software-intensive when compared to the systems of yore, so steps must be taken to ensure that the network is optimized to accept VOD, he added.
Once that's completed, Comcast and SciCare will install the VOD servers, as well as S-A's new M-QAMs (multiple quadrature-amplitude modulators), a more efficient, space-saving modulation scheme that puts 4 QAMs on a rack, instead of one. During this phase, which takes about two weeks, the companies also integrate the operator's legacy billing system.
Finally, Comcast and SciCare will shift into the trial phase, using feedback from a limited number of "friendlies" to make sure the system is up to snuff prior to a commercial launch. Because technicians and customer-service representatives must also be trained to handle the new service, this step could take longer.
"Depending on how comfortable the customer is at the site, it could vary [from] six to eight weeks to 12 weeks," Bradner said.
At this point, Comcast is on schedule and in the project-planning phase, Hess said. "I suspect that we'll start to do a system or two a month until the year runs out."
The team effort involves as many as 40 Comcast and SciCare employees focused squarely on the task of rolling out VOD in those 10 markets, Bradner estimated.
Cooperative efforts with such divisions as SciCare have become more of a priority for S-A since the mid-1990s, when operators shifted from "bounded," set-top-centric analog systems to "unbounded" digital arrangements comprised of more advanced network computers, operating systems and third-party applications, said Bradner.
"It's all about the network going forward," he said.
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