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CHICAGO--BigBand Networks announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement with Hargray Communications to provide its Broadband Multimedia-Service Router as part of a video service the carrier is rolling out in South Carolina. Additionally, the company said its BMR has achieved NEBS Level 3 certification.

The deal with Hargray is the third publicly announced telco customer for BigBand. Just as important, all three carriers (Surewest and Comporium being the other two) are using the BNR over multiple access network technologies, said Seth Kenvin, vice president of strategic marketing and corporate development.

“What’s interesting to us is that all three are traditional telephone companies, but all three have also acquired cable [coax] areas,” he said.

All three also are offering service over fiber to the premises.

The deals also all are using MPEG2 compression and not MPEG4 AVC. BigBand, unlike most other head end vendors, is not rushing into MPEG4 and devoting major resources to it, though in May it did announce an AVC product.

“As we analyzed the market, we thought the lack of customer premises equipment [set-top boxes] as well as several other hurdles didn’t make it prudent for us to go into advanced encoding full bore,” Kenvin said.