Thomson TCW710 Wireless Cable Modem Teardown

Overview / Main Features

The Thomson TCW710 is a combination cable modem and wireless access point designed for the North American and European cable service provider market. The TCW710 features dual model (both traditional DOCSIS and European DOCSIS), 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity and USB 1.1 support.

Thomson TCW710 Wireless Cable Modem Main Image

North American & European Cable Broadband Service Providers

Released

unknown

Thomson TCW710 Wireless Cable Modem - Main PCB Top

Pricing - Typically, residential broadband equipment are heavily subsidized by the service provider. This particular Thomson TCW710 is an Ono branded wireless modem and offered through the service provider in the Spanish market. Actual pricing is unknown at this time.

Availability - Select cable service markets in Europe and US, this particular version is available only in Spain via Ono.

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed a lifetime production volume of 3M units.

As a reminder, teardown volume production assumptions are primarily used for our cost analysis in terms of amortized NRE and tooling costs, especially for custom components specific to the model being analyzed (mechanical components especially). Unless assumed volumes are different by an order of magnitude, minor changes in volume (say 1 million vs. 2) rarely have a large net effect on our final analysis because of this.

Thomson TCW710 Wireless Cable Modem - Main PCB Bottom

Main Cost Drivers Representing ~50% of total materials cost

Broadcom - BCM3349KPBG - Cable Modem - Single Chip Solution, QAMLink, DOCSIS/EuroDOCSIS 2.0, w/ 200MHz MIPS32 CPU

Broadcom - BCM4318KFBG - WLAN - Single-Chip, 802.11b/g Baseband & 2.4GHz Radio

Ellington Electronics - 4-Layer - FR4

Samsung Semiconductor - K8D6316UBM-PI07 - Flash - NOR, 64Mb, Dual Bank Boot Block, 2.7-3.6V, 70ns

Passive Filter Module

Samsung Semiconductor - K4S281632F-UC75 - SDRAM - 128Mb (8Mx16), 3.3V, 133MHz @CL=3, 7.5ns

Total BOM Cost $29.56

Thomson TCW710 Wireless Cable Modem Cost Analysis

What Is Not Included in our Cost Analysis

The total materials and manufacturing costs reported in this analysis reflect ONLY the direct materials cost (from component vendors and assorted EMS providers), AND manufacturing with basic test. Not included in this analysis are costs above and beyond the material manufacture of the core device itself - cost of intellectual property, royalties and licensing fees (those not already included into the per component price), software, software loading and test, shipping, logistics marketing and other channel costs including not only EMS provider and the OEM's margin, but that of other resellers. Our cost analysis is meant to focus on those costs incurred in the manufacture of the core device and exceptionally in some circumstances the packaging and literature as well.

Manufacturing Notes

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on markings, the unit was assembled in China. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were also sourced in China.

Country of origin assumptions relate directly to the associated cost of manufacturing, where calculated by iSuppli. In the cases of 'finished' sub-assemblies (such as whip antenna), we do not calculate internal manufacturing costs, but rather assess the market price of the finished product in which case country of origin assumptions may or may not have a direct effect on pricing.

Remember also that labor rates are applied directly only to hand inserted components and systems in our bill of materials, and although regional assumptions do, these new rates do not have a direct effect on our modeled calculations of placement costs for automated SMD assembly lines. "Auto inserted components (such as SMT components) placement costs are calculated by an iSuppli algorithm which allocates a cost per component based on the size and pincount of the device. This calculation is affected by country or region of origin as well.

Thomson TCW710 Wireless Cable Modem - Enclosure Disassembly

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The Thomson TCW710 has an overall component count of 485 (excluding box contents), of which only 43 are mechanical in nature. As with most other routers we've seen, most of the complexity resides in the densely pack main PCB.

Component counts have a direct bearing on the overall manufacturing cycle times and costs, and also can increase or decrease overall yields and re-work. Our calculations of manufacturing costs factor counts and more qualitative complexities in the design. The cost of manufacturing is also, to some extent, decreased in this case because of assumed labor rate applied for China.

Note that manual labor has a much smaller effect on auto-insertion assembly lines (for the Main PCB, for example), where manufacturing costs are much more capital equipment intensive and driven by these investment costs.

Design Notes

The TCW710 is largely a Broadcom design as evident from the 2 largest ICs on the device: BCM3349KPBG Cable Model single chip solution and BCM4318KFBG WLAN chip.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Thomson TCW710 design:

Main PCB

MPU

• Broadcom - BCM3349KPBG - Cable Modem

WLAN

• Broadcom - BCM4318KFBG - WLAN
• SiGe Semiconductor - SE2521A60 - WLAN RF Front-End

Memory

• Samsung Semiconductor - K4S281632F-UC75 - SDRAM
• Samsung Semiconductor - K8D6316UBM-PI07 - Flash

Front End

• Broadcom - BCM3419KML - Tuner

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Thomson TCW710 Wireless Cable Modem - Box Contents