Terayon was run by two brothers: Zaki Rakib was CEO and CFO, and Shlomo Rakib was chairman, president and chief technical officer. The Santa Clara company built cable modem systems that let cable TV operators sell internet service over the coaxial cable already wired into homes. Its S-CDMA technology was meant to handle the noisy, shared lines of real cable networks. In August 1998, broadband at home was new, and cable and phone companies were racing to sell it.

A Noisy Line, Tamed

Terayon was incorporated in California in January 1993. It began shipping products commercially in June 1997 and only shipped in volume from early 1998. The Rakib brothers bet on S-CDMA, a way of sending data that held up on the noisy upstream path of old cable systems. Customers included Shaw Communications and TCA Cable. The risk was standards. The cable industry was settling on a common modem standard called DOCSIS, and Terayon's own technology sat outside it.

From Boom to a Buck Eighty

Terayon priced at $13 a share in August 1998 and listed on Nasdaq as TERN. Cable broadband made it one of the hot stocks of the boom, and it spent heavily on acquisitions. The bust and the shift to DOCSIS left it struggling. Terayon moved into digital video gear for cable operators. In April 2007, Motorola agreed to buy the company for $1.80 a share in cash, and Terayon deregistered its stock in July 2007.

Cover: Sun Rays—Paula, Berlin, Alfred Stieglitz. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for rays of sunlight through a window (Terayon).