At the Western Cable show in Anaheim last week, Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc, Intel Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co made a flurry of announcements on their new cable modem and server products that they hope will open up the cable market for Internet delivery. Both Hayes’s Ultra Cable and Intel’s CablePort’s modems were unveiled at the show. They use standard ISA boards that plug into personal computers, enabling them to receive high-bandwidth data by cable line and transmit it back upstream via telephone. On the cable network, Intel has hardware and software called the Cable Data Delivery System, which acts as the interface between the personal computer and the Internet. It is targeting cable operators exclusively, and they will pay about $500 per user for the CablePort modem and the Cable Data Delivery System to support it. It will go into trials from early next year. Hayes has a similar system, marketed under the Ultra name, though it seems to be focusing its marketing efforts on the retail channel, letting companies such as Intel take care of the back-end. The Hayes Ultra modem will cost as little as $180, but Hayes did not release pricing for the server side. If cable operaters facilitate cable modem standards, said Hayes, the modems would appear in retail channels as early as 1997. Not to be outdone, Hewlett-Packard Co announced a slew of deals around its own cable modem, QuickBurst, which uses the cable lines for both downstream and upstream traffic. Hewlett Packard says will be shipping QuickBurst in volume early next year to several countries, including Japan, Finland, Australia and Brazil. In the US, it is being tested by Cox Communications Inc and is being optimized for the @Home Network delivery system. And HP’s own cable system, the Broadband Internet Delivery System, will now be integrated with WorldGate’s TV On-Line cable service, giving both set-top converters and personal computers with cable modems access to the Internet via cable.
