ATLANTA: Oceanic Time Warner Cable has deployed a Scientific-Atlanta Prisma DT digital transport system to provide a variety of interconnect services for its cable TV and cable modem customers on the islands of Oahu, Maui and Hawaii. A fourth segment of the system is currently being installed on Kauai.

In addition to serving cable customers, the network will also provide high-speed data services for government and education agencies in Hawaii.

The flexible Scientific-Atlanta transport system will be used to deliver five major applications for Oceanic on the four islands via an undersea fiber optic cable network that is believed to be the longest fiber link ever supported by Scientific-Atlanta. Fully redundant links on each island will help to protect the network in the case of a fiber cut.

The applications are:
Video on Demand - At the master headend in Mililani on Oahu, library servers are used to store all VOD content. Rather than replicating the effort of downloading the same content at a master site on each island, the central master site on Mililani downloads content updates to remote servers that are located close to customers on each island. Oceanic is using a variety of Scientific-Atlanta Explorer set-top models to support its VOD application.

High-speed residential cable modem service - All of Oceanic's residential cable modem traffic is being transported among the islands to the system's master headend in Mililani for connection to the Internet.

Off-air broadcast channels - On each island, local off-air broadcast content is captured at the broadcasters' studios and transported to the Prisma DT network using the Prisma DTx service adapter. Then, the programming from all the broadcasters is included in the cable lineup for viewing on the four islands. This allows cable customers on one island to view programs that are broadcast on the other islands in pristine quality, expanding their viewing options.

High-speed data service for government - Several government agencies and the Department of Education have interconnected existing networks on the three islands over OC3 and OC48 rings. The flexibility of the Scientific-Atlanta transport system and its OC3 cards has allowed Oceanic to deliver a high-speed data link for the agencies and schools.

Content delivery - The Prisma DT system's powerful delivery capabilities enable Oceanic to downlink the programming for its entire cable lineup at Mililani, create the complete cable package for all consumers, and use ASI to transport it on the Prisma DT system for delivery to customers. Using a Prisma DT ASI card at the master headend at the single reception site has proven to be both efficient and cost-effective. This eliminates the costly process of receiving, processing and multiplexing feeds to create identical cable channel programming lineups on each island.

"The Oceanic deployment of the Prisma DT digital transport system dramatically highlights the versatility and flexibility this solution can deliver for cable operators," said Scientific-Atlanta VP and GM of emerging businesses Paul Connolly. "We feel the distance we were able to span on the undersea fiber is an indicator of some new applications we can support in more friendly geographic environments where we could link two operations together, reliably and cost-effectively," he added.

Installation, integration and support services for the Oceanic network on Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii were provided by SciCare Broadband Services, Scientific-Atlanta's integration and professional services arm that provides the technical resources to help customers meet their business and technical needs. SciCare is currently supporting the Kauai installation.