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France Telecom Adds Broadcom to Its Turbo Code Licensing Program for Satellite Applications

Posted on: Thursday, 26 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

Spectra Licensing Group announced today that Broadcom Corp. has entered into a fee bearing patent license agreement with France Telecom (NYSE:FTE), a world leading communications carrier and innovator through its research and development group. Under the terms of the agreement, France Telecom has granted Broadcom a worldwide license to France Telecom's Turbo Code patents for use in Broadcom's satellite applications.

Broadcom's advanced single-chip satellite receiver, the BCM4500, is the first successful commercial integrated circuit supporting (8PSK) modulation and turbo code forward error correction (FEC). The BCM4500 allows satellite service providers to realize greater returns on their substantial infrastructure investments by increasing the information throughput by 35 percent in a given bandwidth or radio frequency link with no additional power requirements. This additional efficiency allows satellite service providers to expand their wide variety of available video and audio programming to include local stations for additional geographic areas, international programming and bandwidth-hungry, high-definition TV programming and broadband data services.

"We are pleased that a technology leader such as Broadcom has adopted Turbo Codes for its advanced broadband satellite solution," said Francois Jamet, director of Intellectual Property and Licensing for France Telecom. "Broadcom's selection demonstrates the continued leading edge performance of Turbo Codes as an ideal forward error correction technology for high volume, cost sensitive, broadband applications."

"Broadcom's implementation of Turbo Codes in the BCM4500 has provided cost-effective technology that has outperformed anything available since its introduction," said Rich Nelson, vice president of marketing for Broadcom's Broadband Communications Group. "The benefits of Turbo Codes have enabled our customers to offer access to more bandwidth intensive services, such as HDTV, as well as plan for the expansion of future services such as video on demand."

Invented by Claude Berrou and Alain Glavieux, Turbo Codes have power efficiencies approaching the theoretical "Shannon limit." Turbo Codes represent a revolutionary form of forward error correction (FEC), one of the fundamental building blocks of any type of digital communication, and have been widely recognized and honored for this technological innovation.

The BCM4500 is a highly integrated, all-digital satellite receiver that supports BPSK, QPSK and 8PSK modulation, operating with both advanced modulation satellite systems and legacy QPSK systems. The advanced modulation turbo-code forward error correction (FEC) decoder delivers extremely high performance, approaching theoretical capacity limits, with no requirement for external RAM. This versatile receiver provides full variable rate operation from 1-30 Mbaud, providing multiple operating points for optimal system deployment.

About France Telecom

France Telecom is one of the world's leading telecommunications carriers, with 118,6 million customers on the five continents (220 countries and territories) and consolidated operating revenues of 46.1 billion euros in 2003 (11.45 billion euros for 1st quarter 2004). Through its major international brands, including Orange, Wanadoo, Equant and GlobeCast, France Telecom provides businesses, consumers and other carriers with a complete portfolio of solutions that spans local, long-distance and international telephony, wireless, Internet, multimedia, data, broadcast and cable TV services.

France Telecom is second leading wireless operator and the number two Internet service provider in Europe, and a world leader in telecommunications solutions for multinational corporations. France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on the Paris and New York stock exchanges.

France Telecom R&D, a research and development centre, provides innovation thrust for France Telecom and its subsidiaries, in France and abroad. Its role is to anticipate revolutions in technology and customer use, providing innovation to offer customers the best from telecommunications, simultaneously imagining today the technologies which will be part of their daily life tomorrow. France Telecom R&D's results have put the Group in the lead position in Europe in terms of telecommunications research and development. http://www.rd.francetelecom.fr/fr/medias/medias.php.

France Telecom acting on behalf of Telediffusion de France (TDF), and Groupe des Ecoles des Telecommunications (GET), began the Turbo Code Licensing Program (TCLP) in late 2001, establishing a single licensing approach for virtually all digital communications applications that would benefit through the use of Turbo Codes. For more information on France Telecom's Turbo Code Licensing Program, visit http://www.turbocodes.info.

About Spectra Licensing Group Inc.

Spectra Licensing Group Inc., with offices in Rancho Bernardo, Calif., is the worldwide licensing agent for France Telecom's Turbo Code Licensing Program. Spectra Licensing enables access to Turbo Code licensing for communications product developers and vendors. By facilitating the licensing efforts of France Telecom and prospective licensees, Spectra Licensing provides a single source for Turbo Code licensing. For more information on Spectra Licensing Group and the Turbo Coded Licensing Program, visit http://www.spectralicensing.com.

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