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Buys 100,000 Media Gateway Units for Minn. Rollout
Charter Communications Inc. will be the first cable operator to turn on the Moxi, ordering 100,000 units of the multifunction, multimedia digital gateway design created by sister company Digeo Inc. and built by Motorola Inc.
The St. Louis-based MSO will roll out the Moxi Media Center design with HDTV and digital video recorder capabilities in Rochester, Minn., some time in the fourth quarter.
It's the first deployment for the Moxi reference design, which Motorola has built into its Broadband Media Center 9012 and BMC 9022D.
A "100,000-unit commitment is a really significant step for the industry, and we think this is a huge milestone for us," said Bert Kolde, Digeo's chief operating officer. "Our hope and expectation is we will have other distribution partners as well going forward."
The multifunction box comes as Charter faces increased competitive pressure from satellite providers, who are also busy rolling out HDTV and DVR offerings.
"We are in an extremely competitive business now, and how we react to satellite with the products and the services we offer -- we're at a critical time," said Charter vice president of sales and marketing Kip Simonson. "And the Moxi box is another advanced service that positions us better against the competition that we face from the satellite companies."
Charter has been trialing the boxes in St. Louis with several hundred users, including employees and a number of subscribers.
But Rochester, Minn., was selected as the first market based on several factors, including demographics and...