Scientific-Atlanta will unveil its latest series of DOCSIS 1.1/Euro-DOCSIS compliant cable modems, the WebSTAR DPX200 at the Western Cable Show in California this week.

The product acts as a complement to high speed voice data that offered by cable operators. The cable modem series comes with an embedded media terminal adapter (EMTA). This is the first time Scientific Atlanta, the leading supplier of digital content distribution systems, is offering stand-alone cable modems with VoIP services. Now cable operators can give subscribers two additional phone service lines and high-speed Internet service. This reduces operational costs as voice services will be bundled with the existing data offering. The WebSTAR DPX200 series will be commercially available by early 2002 with the roll-out of DOCSIS 1.1/PacketCable 1.0.

The cost of telephony service in Europe and Latin America is prohibitive at present, as calls are metered. Scientific Atlanta expects the WebSTAR DPX200 series to allow cable operators in those regions to compete with the telecom companies and offer primary line voice services to their subscribers with better quality and at a lower cost.

Besides this, Scientific-Atlanta is also introducing a stand-alone media terminal adapter (SMTA) as an add-on solution for data modems like the WebSTAR DPX110 cable modem. This will allow cable operators to turn their data modems already in the field into telephony devices. Scientific-Atlanta's SMTA series is backward compatible for DOCSIS 1.1 upgradable cable modems that have Ethernet interfaces.