AT&T dares cable companies to cut cable with Wi-Fi STB

The Cisco ISB7005 for AT&T U-Verse cleared the Federal Communications Commission. This is the first set-top box that IMS Research has observed beyond those from the Turkish company AirTies that is designed to receive pay-TV over a Wi-Fi interface. Stephen Froehlich, a senior analyst with IMS Research's Consumer Electronics group states, "AT&T appears to be using the extreme compression of their video as a competitive advantage. U-Verse's comparatively low HD video bitrates are allowing them to use a relatively inexpensive 2x2 dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi radio based on the BRCM4717 for this application. Our preliminary analysis is that AT&T can use such a simple design because its HD video is encoded at approximately 5 Mbps compared to 5-8 Mbps for HDTV over satellite and 16 Mbps for HDTV over cable. This means that the satellite and especially the cable providers will need far more elaborate wireless solutions to enable them to stream video over a wireless network."