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Cisco Patents the Triple Play
Aditi.Tuteja writes, "Cisco was recently granted a patent on a 'system and method for providing integrated voice, video and data to customer premises over a single network.' Sound a lot like 'triple play?' Yes it is. The patent, which was filed back in 2000, describes a system that would allow consumers to receive all of their home services through one service provider instead of two or three. The patent's wording seems broad enough to cover nearly all existing implementations of triple play, and some are worried that Cisco will try to wield the newly granted patent against such providers as AT&T and Comcast. If such a thing were to happen, progress on AT&T's Project Lightspeed could slow even more."
The reason Cisco is patenting this is because they now own Scientific-Atlanta, who are one of a few companies that provide the infrastructure that make it possible for Time Warner, Comcast, et. al. to offer "triple play" or "all in one" or whatever brand name your particular cable operator uses for the combination. If Cisco were to sue someone for using this, it wouldn't be the cable operators - it'd be Motorola or whomever, their competitors who also offer a similar infrastructure.
I'm not exactly sure why the author of the article thinks that they'd sue the cable operators, many of whom use the Scientific-Atlanta technology in question... perhaps he wasn't aware of the link between Cisco and Sci-Atl.. which leads me to question his authority to even speak on the topic in the first place.
I call dibbs on creating a patent for opening 4 simultaneous TCP/IP sockets!
Insightful?
Who *didn't* think we were going to get all our services over one wire once digital bandwidth became great enough?
It's all just data. They might as well have patented a "novel method" for sending HTTP, FTP and SMTP data over the same wire.
Generally speaking, in business when you figure out in advance where the market is heading, you get a head start on all of your competitors putting yourself in a much better position to take advantage of the change. You do not, however, generally get to tax all transactions. I knew that online purchasing was going to take off years ago. Does that mean that I deserve to get paid once everyone else figured this out too?
Cisco figured this out ahead of time and positioned their product line to take advantage of the burgeoning communications infrastructure market. They deserve the financial success they've seen from this shrewd business accumen. They don't, however, deserve 5 dollars of every 50 I send to Comcast simply because they realized the obvious first.
The ______ Agenda
The absurdity of this patent is mind boggling. All a network does is move data. Voice and video may be encoded as data, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the network.
Why don't I just patent moving web pages over networks. Or, moving mp3s over networks. (Now there's an idea for the RIAA...) Just how obvious does something need to be for the folks at the patent office? Moving DATA over a NETWORK? How novel...
This just goes to show that everything should be encrypted. Only then can fairness, and the end-end nature of the Internet be restored. As soon as the ISP's can peek at your data, you may as well bend over.
I just patented a scheme whereby a company abusively patents anything it can possibly think of in order to squeeze money out of nothing! Pay up, Cisco!
They offer $90.00 a month for 10mbps DSL, VOIP phone and HD/Digital cable.
Sweet deal, but here in SF they seem to be quite spotty as to what buildings have it.. to the point of being a joke.
But I'm just bitter because the building across the street has it and my lofts I live in doesn't.
Instead I have Earthlink DSL which gives me 8mbps and VOIP phone for $70.
So I guess 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
I prefer to call it "Ménage à trois". :)
Isn't this exactly was promised by ISDN in the early 1980's? Somehow, it never got past step #1, ie. 2B+D. The plan was, once it caught on, things would scale up as the end user was able to consume bandwidth. 95B+D anybody? Oh, never mind, AT&T's patents for ISDN have probably all expired. If we take the same idea, and color it pink, the PTO will gladly patent it for us.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Yes, it was an insightful move, but not one that deserves a 17 year revenue stream. The US PTO deserves a -1 Redundant.
Jesus - no one told me I didn't need to get all these tubes.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
Instead of 3 concurrent streams, what about a single datastream.
We call that the network layer.
Converter box or software separates the single datastream back into the 3 (or more) original feeds.
And that would be the transport layer.
I worked for Kingston Interactive Television which was the first commercial launch of an Interactive Digital Television over ADSL in October 1999.
KIT offered the three services that are now called Triple play, Telephone, Video (both VOD and broadcast) and data (Internet and Walled Garden content).
Kingston Interactive Television October 1999.