Scientific Atlanta, Inc. was a

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

, United States–based manufacturer of cable television, telecommunications, and broadband equipment. Scientific Atlanta was founded in 1951 by a group of engineers from the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

, and was purchased by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

in 2005 for $6.9 billion after Cisco received antitrust clearance for the purchase. The Cisco acquisition of Scientific Atlanta was ranked in the top 10 of largest technology acquisitions in history and was Cisco's largest acquisition to date. Prior to the purchase, Scientific Atlanta had been a Fortune 500 company and was one of the top 25 largest corporations in Georgia. Scientific Atlanta was considered by many to be "the patriarch of Atlanta's technology industry for nearly six decades" and is sometimes referred to as "Atlanta's

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, Californi ...

Products

Scientific Atlanta was a supplier of transmission networks for broadband access to the home, set-top cable boxes, cable modems and digital interactive subscriber systems for video, high-speed Internet, voice over IP (VoIP) networks, and worldwide customer service and support. Products for the cable TV industry, from

fiber optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

network equipment for head-end media acquisition, to Explorer

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

cable boxes (as well as

universal remote A universal remote is a remote control that can be programmed to operate various brands of one or more types of consumer electronics devices. Low-end universal remotes can only control a set number of devices determined by their manufacturer, wh ...

s to go with them), and cable modems (formerly branded as WebSTAR until the Cisco acquisition in 2006), dominate Scientific Atlanta's sales. Scientific Atlanta's most popular modem is the Scientific Atlanta 2100, because it is often supplied by cable providers like

Spectrum A spectrum (: spectra or spectrums) is a set of related ideas, objects, or properties whose features overlap such that they blend to form a continuum. The word ''spectrum'' was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of co ...

Comcast Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, o ...

and

Cox Communications Cox Communications, Inc. (also known as Cox Cable and formerly Cox Broadcasting Corporation, Dimension Cable Services and Times-Mirror Cable), is an American digital cable television provider, telecommunications and home automation services comp ...

. Scientific Atlanta also supplies distribution technology to networks such as

Bloomberg Television Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by diversified information and media private company Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, re ...

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

and many others. In addition to providing products for traditional coaxial and fiber service operators, Scientific Atlanta also expanded its

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

solutions offerings after the merger with Cisco. Before this, on August 18, 2005, Scientific-Atlanta and SBC (now AT&T) signed a deal for Scientific-Atlanta to be the exclusive set-top provider for SBC U-verse TV.

History

Founded in October 1951 by six

Georgia Tech Research Institute The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit applied research arm of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States. GTRI employs around 3,000 people, and was involved in nearly $1 ...

researchers: James E. Boyd (future station director), Charles Griffin, Robert E. Honer (MSEE), Gerald Rosselot (station director), Lamar Whittle, and Vernon Widerquist, who each invested $100. In late 1952 Glen P. Robinson became the seventh member. Scientific Atlanta was started to produce technology developed at the research station. After the fledgling company's first contract resulted in a $4,000 loss, Robinson bought out all but one of the original investors, and paid them each back their original $100. Glen P. Robinson was the CEO of Scientific Atlanta for 20 years, and chairman of the board for an additional eight years, until he retired from the company in 1979. Scientific Atlanta grew dramatically; it earned $3.1 million in revenue in 1962 and approximately $200 million when Robinson left. Sidney Topol served as its president from 1971 to 1983, CEO from 1975 to 1987, and chairman of the board from 1978 to 1990. During his tenure, the company grew in sales to more than $600 million. During the 1970s the company developed the concept of cable/satellite connection, which, in working with

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

and transportable earth stations developed by

TelePrompTer Corporation TelePrompTer Corporation was an American media company that existed from approximately 1950 until 1981. The company was named for its Teleprompter, eponymous primary product, a display device invented by Hubert Schlafly which scrolls Written lang ...

and manufactured by Scientific Atlanta, established satellite-delivered television for the cable industry. In 2000, the company sold its satellite ground station and satellite networking businesses to Viasat. In August 2002, the company laid off 6 percent of the company's total. In February 2003, Scientific-Atlanta introduced their first Explorer HD set-top box, which is capable of displaying

HDTV High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it ref ...

programming, at

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

stores in the

Phoenix metropolitan area The Phoenix metropolitan area, also known as the Valley of the Sun, the Salt River Valley, metro Phoenix, or The Valley, is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the Southwestern United States, with its largest principal city being the c ...

. It was later rolled out nationwide. In March 2004, Scientific-Atlanta launched the Explorer 8000HD, their first set-top box with both DVR and HD. In the set-top arena, Scientific-Atlanta once enjoyed 100% market share with

Cablevision Cablevision Systems Corporation was an American cable television company with systems serving areas surrounding New York City. It was the fifth-largest cable provider and ninth-largest television provider in the United States. Throughout its ex ...

and AT&T U-verse; all three companies have since started to transition to other boxes, Cablevision using

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

, while TWC and U-verse are split between SA/Cisco and competitor

Arris In architecture, an arris is the sharp edge formed by the intersection of two surfaces, such as the corner of a masonry unit; the edge of a timber in timber framing; the junction between two planes of plaster or any intersection of divergent a ...

(formerly

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

also has a split account with the two companies. Other companies that have split accounts with SA and Arris are Suddenlink Communications,

Charter Communications Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. The company is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. With over 32 million customers in 41 states as of 2022, it is the ...

and Cox; the two vendors also had split accounts for Adelphia before that company went under in 2006.

Pace plc Pace plc was a British company which developed set-top boxes (STBs), advanced residential gateways, software and services for the pay-TV and broadband services industry. Pace's customers included cable, telco, satellite and IPTV operators. T ...

, which mainly competes in foreign markets, serves as a domestic rival, but on a limited scale. On November 18, 2005, Scientific Atlanta announced that it would be purchased by

in a US$6.9 billion cash deal. On February 25, 2006, Cisco Systems announced that it had completed acquisition of Scientific Atlanta in a cash deal that paid $43 per share. The total cash value of the deal was roughly US$7 billion, or US$5.1 billion net of Scientific Atlanta's cash balance, and also about US$5.1 billion over their 2005

shareholders' equity In finance, equity is an ownership interest in property that may be subject to debts or other liabilities. Equity is measured for accounting purposes by subtracting liabilities from the value of the assets owned. For example, if someone owns a ...

. In its fiscal year 2005, Scientific Atlanta earned $1.36 per common share (diluted). On November 21, 2015, Cisco completed sale of its Connected Devices Business Unit (CDBU) to

Technicolor SA Vantiva SA (formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, Thomson SA, and Thomson Multimedia) is a French multinational corporation that provides technology products and services for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Headquarter ...

. This business was comprised primarily by customer premises equipment (CPE) related hardware and software that had originated at Scientific Atlanta, including set top boxes, cable gateways / modems, CableCard devices, digital transport adapters, wireless video access points, network extenders, accessories and eleven software products related to these offerings. The company was honored at the 2008

Technology & Engineering Emmy Award The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineer ...

s for development of interactive video on demand infrastructure and signaling, leading to large scale VOD implementations.

References

External links

Scientific Atlanta official site
{{Authority control Companies based in Gwinnett County, Georgia Computer companies established in 1951 Computer companies disestablished in 2015 Cisco acquisitions Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies 1951 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) 2015 disestablishments in Georgia (U.S. state) American companies established in 1951 2006 mergers and acquisitions Telecommunications equipment vendors