New Kid in Town

Chipset manufacturer BroadLogic hopped out of the rabbit hole Thurs to introduce itself to cable and say it secured $20mln in a series C round of funding led by Time Warner Investments and Rho Ventures. That infusion was coupled with the appointment of Time Warner Cable svp of advanced engineering & sub tech Mike Hayashi to its board. (Previous investors, including Intel and Cisco, are from the infrastructure space.) CEO Tony Francesca said the startup’s "WideBand" tech can recover up to 400Mhz of spectrum in HFC networks without rebuilds, which will be a necessity once ops go all digital. Francesca didn’t detail a specific product, saying BroadLogic will release specifics in the spring when its cable partners unveil unspecified "new services." While S-A vp/gm Mark Palazzo indicates the digital transition may be on the back burner (Cfax 11/11), Francesca insists the threat of ultrafast 50-100Mbps VDSL (now available in Asia) should be incentive enough to push ops to do away with analog.