Data carousel franchise provisioning

A broadband system for provisioning data to customers, each customer belonging to a franchise, the system comprising:

• a head end including a data carousel, the data carousel providing franchise-based data;
• and
• at least one broadband digital terminal (BDT) in communication with the head end data carousal and in communication with customers served by the BDT, the BDT operative to
• (a) support a franchise permanent virtual circuit (PVC) between the data carousel and the BDT for each franchise served by the BDT,
• (b) establish a PVC between each customer served by the BDT and the BDT,
• (c) receive a sign on request from a requesting customer over the customer PVC between the requesting customer and the BDT,
• (d) determine to which franchise the requesting customer belongs based on the sign on request, and
• (e) establish a soft PVC in the BDT between the requesting customer PVC and the franchise PVC corresponding to the determined franchise.

A broadband digital terminal (BDT) for provisioning franchise-dependent data to customers, each customer belonging to a franchise, the BDT comprising:

• at least one input port operative to support a franchise permanent virtual circuit (PVC) for each franchise served by the BDT, each PVC for receiving franchise-dependent data from a data carousel in a head end;
• a plurality of output ports, each output port operative to support a plurality of customer PVCs, each customer PVC serving at least one customer;
• an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch operative to form a point-to-multipoint connection between the at least one input port and at least one output port;
• and
• a control unit in communication with the at least one input port, each output port, and the ATM switch, the control unit operative to
• (a) receive a sign on request from a requesting customer over the customer PVC,
• (b) determine to which franchise the requesting customer belongs based on the sign on request, and
• (c) set the ATM switch to establish a soft PVC between the requesting customer PVC and the franchise PVC corresponding to the determined franchise.