The U.S. isn’t the only country pining for high-speed Internet connections.
Broadcom Corp. is hoping to cash in on broadband fever overseas with a new line of cable modem chips aimed at the European market.
Company officials are touting the chip’s low-cost design, which incorporates several functions on a single chip rather than several components.
The chips, which are undergoing tests to ensure compatibility with existing European cable standards, will allow cable companies to send high-speed data, video and phone calls over a single cable line.
According to the European Telecommunications Over Cable Operators Forum, European cable operators hope to deploy 650,000 cable modems this year and 2.3 million by 2002.
Broadcom officials say they made only minor changes to similar chips designed for the U.S. market, which kept costs low.
