Rogers Communications, Canada’s biggest cableco, is looking for an alternative to tru2way, according to its senior VP of engineering and network operations Dermot O’Carroll, speaking at the CTE Cable-Tec Expo this week.
“We are looking for an alternative,” O’Carroll said, adding that the company is looking for Web-based technology. “The challenge is that there’s really nothing available that uses open standards,” he said.
Under the threat of a US government mandate, six major US cablecos signed an agreement that they would deploy tru2way by this past June. But none has. Comcast says it’ll have deployed tru2way throughout its footprint by year-end. One of the six, the financially ailing Charter, has until next June to get tru2way deployed. The others aren’t talking publicly.
Tru2way was developed under the supervision of the cablecos’ CableLabs as a way for pay TV companies to fight off the internet by offering Web-like interactive functions. It is meant to be embedded in TV sets and set-top boxes.
CableLabs president and CEO Paul Liao said the benefits of tru2way are so great that he expects “we’ll see a lot of deployments.” Charter CTO Marwan Fawaz said that in any event, his company expects ultimately to port its tru2way and Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format applications to an IP platform.