By Jim Hu

Influential friends are hard to come by, but courting a giant like SBC Communications can make or break a start-up such as 2Wire.

The San Jose, Calif., company, which makes wireless home networking gear, on Monday expanded its relationship with SBC to provide multimedia set-top boxes for the telco giant's satellite TV service, powered by EchoStar's Dish Network. Until now, SBC has sold 2Wire equipment to broadband Internet subscribers looking for wireless access. The new agreement will give 2Wire a greater presence in the living room as well as in the home office.


The set-top box, dubbed the MediaPortal, receives input from SBC's broadband service and video signals from the Dish Network. With a 250GB hard drive, the MediaPortal can record and store TV shows, much like TiVo, and retrieve digital media files from PCs linked into the network.

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