Broadcom Fires Noise

IRVINE, Calif. -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, will demonstrate its innovative impulse noise protection technology at next week's Broadband World Forum in Berlin, Germany. The recently announced Broadcom(R) PhyR(TM) (pronounced "Fire") firmware enables service providers to deliver a ten-fold improvement in noise resilience resulting in more advanced triple-play services for ADSL and VDSL networks. From a user perspective, the improvement in performance provides better service coverage, fewer errors and a better viewing experience when watching IPTV systems equipped with PhyR.

Video services, provisioned over traditional copper loops, are susceptible to noise sources in the ambient environment that limit the coverage area over which services can be made available, or may even reduce video quality by inducing "macroblocking," or corrupted images. Today's IPTV deployments require carriers to provide a certain acceptable level of impulse noise protection and margin settings, which in turn, determine an achievable data rate and the loop length over which voice, video and data or IPTV services will be delivered. Increasing noise protection in current IPTV deployments has an improved effect on residual errors, but generally has an adverse effect on the serviceable reach and data rate, thereby limiting the service coverage area.

Broadcom PhyR technology is included in the company's industry leading ADSL2+/VDSL2 firmware and provides a significant improvement in resistance against impulse noise as well as a reduction in the residual bit error rate (BER). This results in a vastly improved user experience for subscribers of telecommunications triple-play services. Unlike competing solutions, Broadcom PhyR technology significantly improves noise protection without creating limitations on reach, data rate, margin or latency, providing operators with a valuable tool that significantly reduces errors and improves service coverage area, reliability and achievable revenue for IPTV investments.

"Our PhyR technology provides our customers with greatly improvedADSL2+ and VDSL2-based video and data capability, and allows carriers to vastly improve performance while reducing their complexity and scalability issues for new IP services," said Greg Fischer, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Carrier Access line of business. "PhyR technology allows service providers to offer IPTV and other high bandwidth applications utilizing simplified provisioning with quality levels comparable to Ethernet, while leveraging their existing copper plant infrastructures."

Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM)