Harmonic performs IPTV bypass for cable

Harmonic has joined the ranks of BigBand Networks, Motorola and other vendors that are offering the cable TV industry a route to more advanced IPTV-like services via DOCSIS cable modem termination system bypass. It's not new news that cable TV companies are starting to look at IPTV architectural components and IPTV delivery as future enablers of interactivity and advanced content concepts, though we are now seeing an increasing number of vendors riff on that idea to create new innovations.

Harmonic's approach is called DOCSIS Lite, and uses IPTV-optimized edge QAM devices and new CMTS software to carry upstream and downstream content together on a CMTS bypass.

The cable TV industry is still in the early stages of sorting out its IPTV technology options, and CableLabs eventually will need to weigh in with some standards development, but 2010 is already looking poised to be a very active year for the IPTV-over-cable concept.

For more:
- Light Reading's Cable Digital News has this story [1]

Related articles
The cable TV industry has been inching closer to IPTV [2]
SK Broadband already has pursued a major IPTV deployment [3]