HighSpeed Surfing Breaks the Waves
By JEFF BAUMGARTNER -- Multichannel News, 7/31/2000
Cable-modem start-up HighSpeed Surfing Inc. believes a combination of retail sagacity and home-networking prowess will help it to hang 10 on a competitive equipment-market wave that continues to gain in strength.
"Our mission is to help the cable industry accelerate the deployment of DOCSIS [Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification] cable modems as well as we can," explained HSS president David Lin, a broadband-data veteran who started up both Zenith Electronic Corp.'s and Samsung Electronics America Inc.'s cable-modem divisions in the 1990s.
"Cable puts a pipe in the home, but there's a lot of other work that needs to be done," Lin added.
Some of that work will help HSS to differentiate itself from a growing field of cable-modem vendors, Lin said, adding that his company is already shipping modems to Comcast Corp. He declined to divulge how many units have been ordered.
On the home-networking front, HSS is piecing together two wireless products-the "WM100 Access Point" and the "WM 101 Wireless PC LAN card"-which will work in tandem with its DOCSIS 1.0-certified "Surfing-Machine" cable modem, Lin said.
Although both wireless-networking devices will be based on the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers' "802.11b" interface for wireless-data speeds of 11 megabits per second, Access Point is the most robust of the two, able to handle up to 32 networked PCs. In comparison, the company's PC LAN (local-area network) card can share bandwidth among two or three computers.
The company expects to have prototypes of both products available in time for this year's Western Show.
In addition to tackling the home-networking market, HSS also has its sights trained on the retail space, preparing to be among the first vendors to launch a Web-based front end that utilizes Cable Television Laboratories Inc.'s recently announced "Go2Broadband" initiative.
Designed to prod the cable-modem retail market, CableLabs' Go2Broadband project will link retailers, PC vendors and cable operators to an Internet-based "one-stop shop" for cable-based high-speed-deployment information.
In turn, consumers will be encouraged to query Go2Broadband-enabled cable-modem vendor sites to determine whether high-speed cable services are offered in their neighborhoods and to seek out stores that sell DOCSIS-certified gear.
Although CableLabs declined to provide a list of operators that are currently supporting the undertaking, three MSOs-AT & T Broadband, Comcast and Time Warner Cable-pledged support for Go2Broadband in a press release issued by CableLabs early last month.
The launch of HSS' Go2Broadband front end is "imminent," vice president of marketing and sales David Fox said, adding that if the site weren't live by today (July 31), it could be operational as early as Aug. 7.
"A few affiliates, including HighSpeed Surfing, are getting very close to launching their front ends," Go2Broadband service-operations manager Connie Reding said. "We have a few that are running neck-and-neck."
Com21 Inc.-which is one of at least 15 vendors participating in the project-insisted that it wasn't in a race to launch a Go2Broadband front end.
"We just want to provide as much customer service as we can," Com21 electronic-commerce marketing manager Peggy Atwell said.
Com21 already sells its wares directly to consumers via its online storefront, "InstantNet."
