A British company attracted attention

A British company attracted attention at the Western Show 2001 in Anaheim, California, yesterday. Pace, which is well known for set-top boxes, showed its wireless "advanced home gateway" running as part of Microsoft's Advanced TV system. If you have a wireless set-top box with a broadband cable TV connection, then desktop and notebook PCs and other devices can use it to connect to the net. Clearly this is part of the wave of the near future, the other part being wireless hubs linked to ADSL phone connections rather than cable TV sets. So it is another feather in the cap for Pace, which is based in Saltaire, near Bradford in Yorkshire (David Hockney country, for those who don't know about Sir Titus Salt). And the company is not dependent on the success of Microsoft's long struggle to get into the TV business. It is also working with the giant AOL Time Warner conglomerate, among others, and supplies Time Warner Cable with a set-top box.