SAN JOSE, California: Betting that video will drive the future of networking, Cisco Systems Inc. agreed Friday to buy the cable television technology company Scientific-Atlanta Inc. in a $6.9 billion (euro5.91 billion) deal that would create a one-stop shop for sending TV over the Internet.
The acquisition is expected to help fuel the revolution in how TV is distributed and watched - a change that's accelerating as telephone companies barge into the domain of cable operators and begin offering programming over fiber-optic networks using the language of the Internet.