Chicago -- With about two months of commercial service
under its belt, overbuilder 21st Century Cable TV Inc. claims to have about 3,000
customers here, and it is using back-office-management software tools written in Sun
Microsystems Inc.'s Java programming language.
During a press briefing here Jan. 14, executives with 21st
Century and Strategic Technology Resources -- the integrator selected to write the
back-office suite -- detailed a suite of software tools that supports the upstart's
high-speed-data launch.
21st Century, which is moving into the lakefront territory
of Tele-Communications Inc. in urban Chicago, has aggressive plans to connect businesses
and residences to the fiber-rich network that it is building.
Steve Lee, vice president of Internet and data services at
21st Century, said during the briefing that he picked Sun's Java model for his
high-speed network 'because it provides a key, enabling link' in managing voice,
data and video within a single Java-based system.
For starters, though, the Java modules were developed in a
tight, four-month time frame to support 21st Century's move into high-speed-data
services, Lee said.
Currently, about two-dozen customers in 21st Century's
Chicago loop franchise area are accessing the Internet at symmetrical speeds of 4 megabits
per second, using modems made by Zenith Electronics Corp., which is also headquartered in
the Chicago area.
Last year, 21st Century agreed to buy as many as 40,000
Zenith modems, and it will 'regularly cache' 250 Web sites for users to keep the
service moving quickly despite bandwidth bottlenecks upstream of the headend.
Lee said that so far, users only surf the Web at high
speeds, without a content-heavy front end.
'@Home [Network] doesn't seem interested,'
he quipped, referring to the facts that 21st Century is overbuilding TCI's system in
Chicago, and that TCI is the controlling partner of @Home.
STR's Java software team started with a parameter that
the management software work on a variety of operating systems, with a graphical user
interface that worked on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT and Windows 95 and Sun's
Solaris 2.5 systems, said Doug Thiel, an STR software designer who worked on the 21st
Century project.
'We started with a month of research,' Thiel
said, explaining that a major design consideration was a 'configuration tool'
that lets 21st Century staffers add users and manipulate that information on the fly.
'When you think about the number of e-mail addresses
per house, and just routine adds, moves and changes, they would be purely arduous to
perform without a system like this,' Lee said.
The actual design of the management suite took six weeks,
and writing the code took four weeks, using Java code, Thiel said.
The software also lets 21st Century remotely maintain
Internet services -- like proxy, HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol), FTP (file transfer
protocol) and mail -- and divide those services into customer packages.
Modules to handle accounts receivable and payable, customer
care and network management will follow shortly, 21st Century executives said.
Executives with STR, Sun and 21st Century didn't
discuss how much the Java software cost, but overall, the overbuilder will likely spend
about $200 million over the next four years to build a two-way network in the
two-mile-wide strip of land dubbed the 'Gold Coast,' which stretches from the
northern suburb of Evanston to the South Side Chicago community of Hyde Park.
In that region, 21st Century's network will pass
300,000 residences, 500,000 businesses and 50,000 hotel rooms, executives said.
Terry Pfister, executive director of communications for
TCI's Chicago system, said TCI is 'carefully watching' 21st Century's
encroachment onto its turf. She said the MSO will launch digital video services in the
northwestern Chicago suburbs this week to about 350,000 customers. Data services are
planned for the entire Chicago area 'in the near future,' Pfister added.
'The competitive issue in Chicago is a live one --
there's Ameritech [Corp.'s Ameritech New Media video arm], 21st Century and
[direct-to-home] satellites,' Pfister said. She added that TCI's countermeasures
will be to 'pay close attention to what our customers want.'
