ATLANTA - Telecommunications tech vendor CommScope is conducting acquisition talks with cable tech company Arris, Reuters reports.

Both companies have presence at the just-about-to-end SCTE Cable-Tec Expo Show, positioned not too far from Arris’ Suwanee, Ga. headquarters. Neither is commenting at this point.

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As Reuters noted, Arris shares spiked 13% on Wednesday, with rumor of the deal talks hitting Wall Street.

"We see some industrial logic to the deal, but we are not prepared to believe it,” wrote Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold, who published a note on the reported deal talks. "We see very little overlap for cost synergies beyond G&A. The companies are quite different, with Arris focused on electronics and CommScope on apparatus."

ATLANTA — Comcast Fellow Larry Wolcott received the SCTE•ISBE Member of the Year Award Wednesday at the Annual Awards Luncheon here at Cable-Tec Expo 2018.

Greg Allshouse, facilities and fleet manager, Comcast Cable Communications, and Jim Hughes, vice president, MSO Sales North America, CommScope, were inducted into the SCTE•ISBE Hall of Fame at the same event.

Wolcott, who per tradition did not know he was in line for the honor, said after receiving the award he was “shocked, honored and humbled.” He said, though, that he now understood why Comcast president, technology and product Tony Werner had smiled at him that morning and congratulated him for something he promised to explain to him later.

Wolcott was cited for his active involvement with the SCTE•ISBE Rocky Mountain Chapter in Colorado. He was credited with helping the chapter cross the 1,000-member mark and for organizing popular “Last Thursday” monthly gatherings that had exceeded expectations for participation.

Allshouse, the organization said, is revered for actively having taken full advantage of what the Society has to offer and for giving back generously by selflessly serving in various leadership roles dating back to 2002.

Hughes, a 35-year industry veteran, has been important to the society’s growth and development through skilled leadership on the SCTE•ISBE Board of Directors and the SCTE Foundation Board of Directors.

Cable-Tec Expo was the scene of various awards during the week. Also honored, according to the organization, were:

Craig Cuttner, senior vice president, technology development and standards, HBO, with the Excellence in Standards Award.

Mark Hess, senior vice president, business and industry affairs, Comcast Cable Communications, with the Chairman’s Award from SCTE•ISBE board chairman Bill Warga of Liberty Global, who this week was re-elected as chairman for a second year.

Roberto López, manager of technical learning and industry outreach, Telecom Argentina SA, with the Excellence in Learning and Development Award.

Noopur Davis, senior vice president, chief product and information security officer, Comcast Cable Communications, with the Women in Technology Award.

Dr. Claudio Righetti, chief scientist, CTO Office, Telecom Argentina SA, with the International Engineering Professional Award.

Mariela Anabel Fiorenzo, STEM senior analyst, Telecom Argentina SA, with the Rising Leader Award.

Five members received Senior Member Recognition: Mark Adams, director, technology, Cox Communications; David Eng, distinguished engineer, Comcast Cable Communications; Roger Hughes, senior engineer, Armstrong Group of Companies; James Kersnowski, retired; and David Sharkey, manager of technical support, Comcast Cable Communications.

ATLANTA - Sketching out the broad strokes of what it will take for the wireless industry to accomplish the very dense goal of widely deploying 5G services, a duo of consultants told an SCTE Cable-Tec Expo audience that cable operators have the power.

Literally.

It turns out that their hybrid fiber coaxial networks are pretty well situated to provide the electrical power needed to juice the thousands of small cell connections that make up a 5G service.

“Coax is a very efficient way to distribute power out to these small cells,” said Erik Gronvall, VP of strategy and business development for CommScope.

“The amount of coverage, and the amount of radios required to get that coverage they need is way beyond the revenue” that [wireless] can generate from 5G, said Todd Loeffelholz, VP of product management for Alpha Technologies. “The MSOs have what they need, and it’s becoming obvious.”

Indeed, as the wireless operators embark on deployment of a technology that will require the wireline services of cable operators, the latter constituency is looking to cash in on a brand new revenue stream.

The consultants noted Sprint’s recent MVNO deal with Altice USA. While Alice is able to lease the wireless network it needs to launch a mobile service next year, Sprint is getting the backhaul and network densification from Altice required to enable its pending 5G launch.

As Gronvall explained, 5G will require a fundamental realignment of wireless networks, not too different from the movement of the “PHY” layer currently occurring in hybrid fiber coaxial networks of cable operators as they move to Distributed Access Architectures.

While traditional wireless network designs were “macro cell focused,” with “everything coming off huge towers,” 5G will require a far denser network design.

The dense arrangement of radio-enabled “small cells” that define 5G will require three main things from cable operators: electrical power; backhaul, which is the network data connection to these small cells; and a small cell installation that is acceptable to local stakeholders.

In regard to the first requirement—power—cable operators must make sure that electrical requirements of small cell devices being paired to their network matches up, said Loeffelholz, noting that the typical HFC network wasn’t built to power small cells.

“We’re going to see the rollout of HFC ready small cells in next 12-24 months, but right now there’s not a lot fo HFC-ready product,” Loeffelholz added. “For cable operators, understanding what type of voltage you have and what you need to deploy is very important.”

As for backhaul, Gronvall said that’s the area of the typical wireless 5G architecture that’s most compatible with an HFC network. 

ATLANTA - Setting the table for a Cable-Tec Expo panel discussion on the state of the cable industry’s Reference Design Kit (RDK) open source software initiate five years after launch, moderator Leslie Ellis noted a few fast facts about the year 2013.

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The term “selfie” hit the Zeitgeist that year. Edward Snowden disclosed secret CIA documents. Oh, and …

It was at that point that former Comcast executive Steve Heeb, president and general manager of RDK Management, and the man who has overseen the joint initiative since it was kicked off by Comcast, Liberty Global and the erstwhile Time Warner Cable, put his own thoughts into Ellis’ exercise in in time perspective.

“Five years ago, if you said you were going to put an application layer on top of broadband, they would have told you to leave the room,” Heeb said.

Indeed, the open source development paradigm wasn’t popular—or even accepted—in the cable industry when the RDK initiative was originally conceived. But at the time, operators needed to try something to get more nimble as more agile over-the-top ecosystems began purging their subscriber ranks.

By having one centralized repository of software code, operators and their key vendor partners quickly realized significant software development time savings for video set-tops. They could create one user interface that would work across numerous set-tops from multiple vendors. The time it took for system on a chip (SoC) integration got cut in half. In short, re-invention of the wheel stopped occurring in the cable industry, at least for the video piece.

Today, Heeb said, more than 350 companies use RDK—not just the operators represented on Wednesday’s panel, which included Comcast, Liberty and Cox, but major hardware vendors including Intel, Broadcom, Technicolor and Humax, just to name a few.

Heeb said that there are more than 4 million transactions a month at RDK’s central repository for RDK code.

Related: RDK Partners With Metrological for Easier OTT App Integration

The software stack is standard on all video set-top boxes deployed by Comcast, Liberty, Cox and other cable companies around the world. And RDK recently extended its video capabilities, working with European software company Metrological to design an open source means for operators to integrate popular OTT services like Netflix into their user interfaces.

“Roku has Netflix and Hulu, and so do we,” said Bill Warga, VP of technology for Liberty Global.

The ‘B’ is for broadband

For his part, Warga never had doubts RDK would catch on. “I did think that open source would take off in cable—we needed a solution like this.” He noted RDK’s use in the development of Liberty’s voice remote. With Comcast already having laid down so much of the open source road work in development of its own X1 Voice Remote, Liberty was able to instead concentrate on other challenges—such as figuring out multiple Swedish dialects—and as a result, it vastly reduced the time to market for the voice control feature.

But Warga admitted that he never foresaw RDK’s current trajectory, which is moving into broadband services.

Sketching out the new domain of RDK, Heeb said the standard is now a “whole-home open source software platform for video and broadband devices. It goes across all devices an operator has in a home—from QAM set-tops to gateways to mesh extenders and even cameras.”

Earlier this month, Istanbul-based technology vendor AirTies said it will debut a version of its mesh WiFi software for broadband devices running RDK, beginning in the first quarter of next year.

And earlier this week, German smart home technology vendor Plume announced that it has open sourced its previously proprietary middleware, which is available to operators across residential gateways, modems, routers, access points, extenders, set-top boxes, IoT hubs, smart speakers and other devices. Plume said its open-source framework, which it calls OpenSync, is compatible with, and leverages, RDK.

Ed Shrum, VP of product development and management of devices and networking for Cox, said RDK will soon be deployed in every piece of residential CPE.

One of RDK’s biggest selling points, according to Heeb, is its ability to offer operators control of device data. Cox, Shrum explained, recently took advantage of that capability on its RDK-enabled gateways to diagnose an SSID issue. “We had the data needed solve the problem at our finger tips,” he said. Prior to RDK, Shrum added, Cox would have had to get the gateway vendor to write and push out a special piece of engineering code.

Certainly, as Wednesday’s morning panel showed, RDK’s coalition is a pretty happy one, with Comcast senior VP of devices and advanced systems declaring that his team uses RDK “every day, day and night” to create a better customer experience.

But there is at least a little discord. There’s disagreement, for example, on how much integration of FAANG companies to allow. Heeb conceded to MCN that he’s been reassuring RDK’s operator stakeholders at SCTE that bringing in popular devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home Assistant into the ecosystem will be accretive, and not a threat.

After all, he noted, there was a time, when companies like Comcast and Liberty wouldn’t think of integrating Netflix into their video systems.

Of course, that was so five years ago. 

ATLANTA — With the Federal Communications Commission voting Tuesday to enable sale of county-sized slices of the 150-MHz slice of high-bandwidth spectrum known as the Citizens Broadband Radio Service band (CBRS), Arris chief technology officer of customer premises equipment Charles Cheevers made a pitch to Cable-Tec Expo attendees during his afternoon session.

Operators serving enterprise customers such as shipyards, airports and sports venues can offer their low-cost, private LTE networks that are more reliable than WiFi. “We and other companies can deliver that to you today,” Cheevers said.

Speaking alongside Cheevers at the Arris-sponsored event was his counterpart at sibling wireless division Ruckus Networks, chief technology officer Mehmet Yavuz. Playing the part of moderator was Duncan Potter, senior VP of marketing for Arris.

As Cheevers noted, CBRS is a piece of underused spectrum, existing between 3.5 GHz and 3.7 GHz, that was only being exploited by a handful of aircraft carriers and U.S. naval stations.

Cheevers said the FCC made a “common sense” decision when it decided to allocate the spectrum to telecom companies, who can purchase local PAL licenses.

Arris also pitched uses such as neutral host applications (MDUs); MSO applications (wireless MVNO offload and smart homes); and MNO apps (network densification and capacity expansion).

Notably, Sioux Falls, S.D. operator Midco is currently testing CBRS for reaching rural broadband customers.

“Globally, everyone is looking at the FCC and how this market works out,” Yavuz added.

ATLANTA -- Bill Warga, vice president, Technology for Liberty Global, and Tom Adams, executive vice president, Field Operations for Charter Communications, will co-chair the program committee for SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2019 in New Orleans.

The news broke during day one of the Cable-Tec Expo 2018 in Atlanta. Warga and Adams were re-elected as chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the SCTE•ISBE board of directors here.

Now the cable industry’s largest annual convention, the Expo -- which will mark its 50th edition next year -- is slated to be hosted in Denver and Atlanta multiple times between next year and 2019, with one-time stops in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

“In our role as the industry’s applied science arm, SCTE•ISBE is looked to for engineering expertise and workforce development that can move the needle in deployments,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and the International Society of Broadband Experts, said in a statement. “Bill Warga’s background as immediate past chair of our Engineering Committee and Tom Adams’ keen understanding of the connection between workforce education and operational excellence ensure that Cable-Tec Expo 2019 will address those areas in ways that can have material impact on operators’ bottom lines.”

“The innovative spirit of our vendor community and the desire of operators to drive new customer experiences continue to fuel the success of cable telecommunications,” Warga said in the release. “Tom and I will be working together with the SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2019 Program Committee and our partners at NCTA and CableLabs to harness that energy and build an event that creates real value for our industry.”

“Ensuring that the workforce has the knowledge and the resources needed to convert new technologies into great customer experiences is key to cable’s future success,” Adams said. “I look forward to working with Bill and the 2019 Program Committee to continue the enhancement of SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo’s role in the industry’s educational and operational ecosystem.”

It’s been only five years since SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo last was in Atlanta, but that’s a lifetime in cable telecommunications these days. As our industry converges yet again on the Georgia World Congress Center, the changes that have been wrought are nothing short of staggering.

A glance at the Expo program shows the differences. The DOCSIS 3.1 service that was still on the horizon when we met five years ago is predicted to be in 90% of U.S. households by the end of the year. In its place, we are looking at such essential new subjects as the connected ecosystem, the promise of new applications for our broadband networks and the looming importance of security.

I’m a big fan of the “What got you here won’t get you there” philosophy of Marshall Goldsmith, the best-selling author who was previously was a highlight of our SCTE•ISBE-Tuck Executive Leadership Program. Nowhere is that more true than in cable technology, where the sands of technology seem to shift almost from day to day. A key mission of SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo is to anticipate those changes and to ensure that our industry stays abreast of them.

As SCTE•ISBE approaches its 50th anniversary next year, some of the most exciting developments have been in the past decade. While we’ve upped our game in general as a hub of knowledge sharing, thought leadership and standards during that time, the metamorphosis is particularly evident in the makeup of Cable-Tec Expo.

More Speakers, More Workshops

Thanks to the leadership of two of the industry’s brightest stars — our keynoter, Cox president Pat Esser, and our program chair, Cox executive VP and chief product and technology officer Kevin Hart — we’re welcoming you to an event that is better than ever. Expo 2018 is setting records for workshop speakers (104) and workshops (48) and hosting preconference and closing day sessions on next-generation architectures, enabling us to address in greater depth the topic that are key to our industry’s success now and in the future.

Here’s what else to look for over the next several days:

A powerful Opening General Session featuring Pat and Kevin, CableLabs futurist Dr. Bernardo Huberman and a first-ever panel featuring NCTA’s Michael Powell, CableLabs’ Phil McKinney and me speaking with Comcast’s Tony Werner about how our organizations are partnering to take the industry into the future;

Insightful Innovation Theater presentations featuring successful C-level executives from cable and Silicon Valley who will address such topics as the challenges and opportunities faces by small and mid-size operators, next-generation learning protocols, strategies for women in the C-suite and more;

An exhibit floor where the hundreds of vendors who fuel the industry’s technology excellence are demonstrating products and solutions that are paving the way for the industry’s continued growth in the years to come; and

Our CORTEX Lounge — also on the show floor — that is showing how SCTE•ISBE is working with operators, vendors and world class educators to create products that can guide cable careers and strength the link between training and ROI.

Expo’s 2018 theme is “Vision of the Future,” and no one embodies that topic more than our Annual Awards Luncheon speaker on Wednesday. Vernice “FlyGirl” Armour, America’s first African-American female combat pilot, will talk about how her career vision and her willingness to “get gutsy, lead gutsy” paved the way for her success.

International Crossroads

What’s our vision for the future of SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo? As the largest cable telecommunications trade event in the Americas, it already has become a nexus for national and international industry collaboration. In recent years, Expo has become a forum for the sharing of knowledge by a wide variety of groups, including the American Cable Association, The Cable Center, CableLabs, the Cable TV Pioneers, NCTA–The Internet & Cable Association, the National Cable Television Cooperative, Women in Cable & Telecommunications and others.

As we look toward our 50th anniversary and Expo 2019 next Sept. 30-Oct. 3 in New Orleans, we will be implementing a plan designed to ensure the long term success of Expo with one goal in mind: to continue to help the industry move the needle on technology and business results in the years ahead. 

Mark Dzuban is president and CEO of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers/ International Society of Broadband Experts.

As cable operators around the world enter the finishing stages of DOCSIS 3.1 deployment, it’s still unclear as to how much current demand there is for 940 Mbps downstream services, the technology’s current speed threshold.

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But as it has at each Cable-Tec Expo over the last several years, Arris is challenging the industry to see 1-gig downstream as just a signpost coming up fast. With internet of things putting more connected devices in the home, and applications like 4K streaming and virtual reality emerging, the vendor says cable operators are going to need to bring 20 Gbps into the home in the next 10 to 15 years.

While compounded annual growth rates (CAGR) of downstream traffic on the internet have stabilized a little of large, “upstream is actually accelerating, 25-30%, which is quite a bit higher than the 20% it used to be,” said Tom Cloonan, chief technical officer of Arris’ Networks Solutions unit, noting that the Suwanee, Georgia-based vendor is now focusing on technologies that improve upstream capacity and latency.

Related: Comcast testing FDX with MaxLinear, Other Vendors

In doing so, Arris is walking a bit of a marketing tight rope, as it tries to sell a more immediate network upgrade, Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX), and a separate, theoretical one that is further out, Extended Spectrum DOCSIS.

As subscriber bandwidth demands grow and equipment capacities increase, MSOs will need to expand their upstream spectrum, and FDX provides a somewhat immediate opportunity to do just that, Cloonan said.

FDX enables DOCSIS 3.1 hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) networks to support shared 10 Gbps transmission capabilities in both the upstream and downstream directions. The current technology, DOCSIS 3.1, will support 10 Gbps downstream and only 1 Gbps upstream, once all of the standard’s features are finally actualized.

With CableLabs completing the specifications for FDX a year ago, Cloonan and his team will be using Cable-Tec Expo to show off network solutions based on the second generation E6000 Converged Cable Access Platform, with an eye for FDX upgrades occurring in the next two years.

Indeed, at the booths of multiple technology vendors, Full Duplex will be in the here and now this year, with operators including Comcast, for example, looking to swap in FDX-capable nodes as they transition to Distributed Access Architectures (DAA). And for its part, Arris has already been in the market touting the FDX upgrade potential of its DOCSIS 3.1 network solutions, such as one recently deployed by Australia’s NBN earlier this year.

To make FDX a reality, Cloonan explained, operators will need to be able to move quickly to a node+0 environment and be willing to upgrade their Cable Modem Termination Systems (CMTSs), nodes and CPE.

Of course, that’s asking a lot for some cable companies.

Further out and currently in the research and development phase, Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, Cloonan said, may be better suited for cable operators that want assurances that their future high-capacity networks will work in existing node+X environments that may not support FDX operation, which requires node+0.

“There are a lot of operators who have no intention of getting to a node+0 environment in next 10 years,” Cloonan said. “It’s going to take a while to run fiber deep enough to get to node+0.”

Capable of working in node+6 configurations, and delivering theoretical symmetrical speeds as high as 60 Gbps, Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (aka “DOCSIS 4.0”) is being championed by operators including Cox Communications.

With Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, operators would use more—a lot more—than the 1.2 GHz of plant spectrum they currently exploit for DOCSIS 3.1. In fact, they’d use more than the 1.8 GHz leveraged by FDX. Extended Spectrum’s visionaries see as much as 3 Ghz, or even 6 GHz, being used.

It was Cloonan who first pitched the Extended Spectrum idea two years ago, with the technologists proposing the use of 6 GHz of spectrum and Fiber Deep to deliver symmetrical speeds as high as 50 Gbps.

Earlier this year, Jeff Finkelstein, executive director of advanced technology for Cox, told Lightreading that he had a team of Georgia Tech graduate students perform calculations suggesting the concept could actually work.

“A lot more work has to be put into it to prove it will work,” added Cloonan, who envisions a go-to-market for Extended Spectrum sometime in the mid-2020s range. “It’s not going to be put into the field next week.”

Of course, all of this work on advanced DOCSIS technologies is unfurling as Arris continues to support the current DOCSIS 3.1 standard.

“From Arris' point of view, we’re still developing 3.1 features,” Cloonan said. “The spec is several thousand pages long, and certainly, not every feature was turned on on day one. We’re still rolling features in. It’s still a very active program.”

Harmonic announced that Northwest Ohio operator Buckeye Broadband has deployed CableOS, the tech vendor’s virtualized Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP).

Buckeye adds to a list of more than a dozen cable operators around the world that have either deployed CableOS or are in the trials with it.

Read More: CableTec Expo 2018

Virtualized CCAPs like CableOS are gaining traction as MSOs look to become more agile in their service launches, put more capacity into their networks, and reduce the space, cooling and powering requirements that come with traditional, purpose-built CCAP chassis. In the case of CableOS, an important selling point is that it runs on off-the-shelf, Intel-based x86 servers.

Related: Harmonic Expands Deployments, Field Trials of its Virtual CCAP

“As we look to deliver next-generation data, voice and video services to customers, we need a future-proof infrastructure solution,” said R.J. Walker, VP of engineering, operations and IT services at Buckeye Broadband, in a statement. “Harmonic’s CableOS solution provides sustainable capacity growth over the long term and end-to-end support for centralized architectures now, while future-proofing our operations for distributed architectures, enabling us to deliver faster broadband offerings and address critical space, power and cost requirements.”

Added Nimrod Ben-Natan, senior VP and general manager of cable access business for Harmonic: “Software is transforming the future of cable access networks, providing increased scalability, flexibility and cost savings to operators. We’re excited to collaborate with Buckeye Broadband on this world-class broadband access network. With the CableOS solution at the heart of its infrastructure, Buckeye Broadband is ready to achieve unprecedented DOCSIS bandwidth and boost cost efficiencies.”

ATLANTA - As it crosses the finish line on an 18-month mission to deploy DOCSIS 3.1-enabled services across its entire footprint, Comcast is already testing a new network configuration mixing Distributed Access Architecture with Full Duplex DOCSIS capabilities.

According to Robert Howald, VP of network architecture for Comcast, DAA is a "prerequisite to Full Duplex,” with the operator looking to deploy Full Duplex-capable, Remote PHY nodes.

“We see DAA as part of the train of evolution. We’re not going to wait years for Full Duplex to start deploying DAA” said Howald, VP, speaking at a pre-SCTE Cable-Tec Expo event Monday focused on DAA and featuring engineer representatives from a host of major operators, vendors and standards bodies.

Complete Coverage: Cable-Tec Expo 2018

While compound annual growth rates (CAGR) for demand of downstream bandwidth is decreasing, the CAGR is increasing for upstream broadband, up to about 25% - 30% from a longtime plane of around 20%. This can be credited to the proliferation of devices like surveillance cameras, but also the emergence of applications like virtual reality and advanced gaming.

“We want to go symmetrical,” Howland said, noting the 10 Gbps speed potential, in both downstream and upstream, for Full Duplex DOCSIS. “But we want to be in DAA to do that.”

DAA, he added, will “lead Comcast down the road to virtualization” of its network, allowing the operator to use “off-the-shelf” server components and delivering “tremendous scalability benefits for us at our head end.

Related: Comcast Reaches the Finish Line on DOCSIS 3.1 Deployment

“We prefer not to build new facilities if we don’t have to,” Howland added, echoing comments made minutes earlier by CableLabs’ Jon Schnoor on the potential of DAA to save on infrastructure real estate expansion, not to mention on cooling and power needs.

Howland offered up no specific time frame for deployment of DAA and Full Duplex (FDS) services. However, speaking shortly afterward, Steven Krapp, senior director of technology for vendor MaxLinear, said his company is working with Comcast on FDX trials, “seeing how the cable swinging in the wind effects the echo cancellation.”

With echo cancellation being core to a technology that involves the upstream and downstream frequency layers existing on top of one another, FDX requires that operators move to a node+0 environment. This isn’t as much of an issue for a company like Comcast, which has “pushing fiber deeper and deeper into its network,” according to Howland, almost reaching the point of the “optic nerve” of the subscriber.

But it is an issue to many operators, which don’t envision having a node+0 configuration in a 10-year time window.

According to Krapp, MaxLinear is working FDX amplifiers that will enable the technology to work beyond node+0. 

ATLANTA - Liberty Global VP of technology Bill Warga and Charter Communications Exec VP of field operations Tom Adams will return to their roles as chair and vice chair of the SCTE board for the coming 2018-19 campaign, the org announced today.

Related: SCTE Touts 10-Year Plan for Cable-Tec Expo

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its sibling org, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE) also announced that Meena Soleiman, VP of finance, business operations and technology for Comcast, will serve as treasurer; and Steve Williams, director of DOCSIS for Charter, will be secretary.

“The guidance of our boards has been essential in making SCTE•ISBE one of cable’s most valuable and respected association resources,” said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE•ISBE, in a statement. “I look forward to working with Bill, Tom and the rest of the board in our 50th anniversary year as we continue to leverage our training, our standards and our partnerships with NCTA and CableLabs to deliver value to the bottom-line for our industry.”

SCTE/ISBE and its partners said a record pool of more than 100 speakers are on tap to present at the Fall Technical Forum at Cable-Tec Expo 2018 in Atlanta.

RELATED: Cox’s Pat Esser to Keynote Cable-Tec Expo 2018

The Fall Technical Forum, produced in partnership with the NCTA-The Internet & Television Association and CableLabs, is slated to feature 104 presentations via four dozen workshops, another record for the event, the organizations said.

Those workshops will focus on areas spanning areas that include wireline, wireless, customer experience, video, the Internet of Things, cloud, operations and security, and individual topics such as FTTH and distributed access architectures, high dynamic range, DOCSIS, 5G, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Selections were made from more than 261 abstract submissions, the organizations said.

Cable-Tec Expo is set for Oct. 22 to 25 at the Georgia World Congress Center.  

The SCTE/ISBE said the CEOs of three policy- and tech-facing organizations will kick off the Innovation Theater component of this year’s Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta, and shed some light on the issues affecting tier 2/3 cable operators and rural service providers.

The Innovation Theater kickoff panel, called Off The Beaten Path: Strategies For Success In Small, Midsize and Rural Markets, is set for Tuesday, Oct. 23. It will feature Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association; Rich Fickle, president and CEO of the National Cable Telecommunications Cooperative (NCTC); and Matt Polka, president and CEO of the American Cable Association (ACA).

“Small, mid-size and rural service providers are essential to fulfilling the promise of ubiquitous broadband coverage,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE, said in a statement. “NTCA, NCTC, and ACA are well-positioned to share their members’ needs with the Expo audience, as well as how that translates into future technology roadmaps.”

Cable-Tec Expo 2018 is set for Oct. 22-25 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications, will keynote the show’s opening general session.

RELATED: NCTA, CableLabs, SCTE/ISBE CEOs to Share Stage at Cable-Tec Expo

The presidents and CEOs of three industry organizations will share the stage in a joint panel at Cable-Tec Expo 2018, set for Oct. 22-25 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.

The panel, to be part of the show’s opening general session on Tuesday, Oct. 23, will feature Michael Powell, president and CEO of the NCTA — The Internet & Television Association; Phil McKinney, president and CEO of CableLabs; and Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE, the organization that’s putting on the annual event.

The panel, titled, An Integrated Circuit: Closing the Links Between Innovation, Deployment and ROI, will be moderated by Tony Werner, president, technology and product, Comcast Cable.

SCTE/ISBE announced last week that Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications, will keynote the show’s opening general session.

Kevin Hart, EVP and chief product and technology officer of Cox, is serving as program chair for this year’s Cable-Tec Expo.

Last fall’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver drew 8,800 registered attendees.

“The cable industry’s leadership in deploying new technologies has been a cornerstone of our mission to provide consumers with services that make their lives better,” Powell, said in a statement. “As technology continues to transform connectivity and entertainment, our organizations will lay the foundation for rapid implementation of next-generation products that will continue to meet consumer demand.”

“When we look at the next 10 years, we see tremendous opportunities not only for cable but for cable’s impact on healthcare, education, automotive, and any industry that requires access to high-speed broadband,” added McKinney. “The close relationship with NCTA and SCTE•ISBE helps the industry deploy CableLabs’ innovations to the benefit of those customers.”

“SCTE•ISBE’s applied science mission is fundamental to bringing the vision of NCTA’s members and CableLabs’ innovators to life,” said Dzuban. “Our collaboration with both organizations has spurred development of training, certification, and standards that have helped to accelerate the time-to-market and ROI for products that are maintaining cable’s competitive edge.”

Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications, will keynote Cable-Tec Expo 2018, set for Oct. 22-25 at the Georgia World Congress Center.

SCTE/ISBE said Esser will keynote the show’s opening general session on Tuesday, Oct. 23, and discuss topics such as product innovation and service delivery.

RELATED: Cable-Tec Expo: Cox’s Kevin Hart to Chair 2018 Show

“In recent years, the eyes of the cable industry have been on SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo as the focal point for new technologies that can positively impact bottom lines for the industry,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE, said in a statement. “As president of one of cable’s most highly regarded companies, Pat Esser is uniquely positioned to share insights about the future of the industry and the approaches that are needed to sustain success.”

“Our customers today have a greater choice of communications and entertainment options than ever before,” added Esser, who also serves on the boards of C-SPAN, CableLabs and NCTA-The Internet & Television Association. “SCTE/ISBE and Cable-Tec Expo play important roles in ensuring that we have the standards, the workforce training and the applied science leadership that are fundamental to the seamless delivery of services that enable our industry to stand out from the crowd of competitors.”

SCTE/ISBE, CableLabs and NCTA-The Internet & Television Association has set a March 30 deadline for paper proposals for the Fall Technical Forum at Cable-Tec Expo, which is set to run October 22-25 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.

Selected tech papers will be presented during Cable-Tec Expo and will be published as part of the industry’s archival body of technical literature, the Fall Technical Forum Proceedings.

They said the Expo the Fall Technical Forum this year will target the following areas:

-Wireline Access Network

-Wireless Access Network

-Internet of Things

-Digitizing the Customer Experience

-Cloud & Virtualization

-Operational Transformation

-Business Services

-Video Services

-Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

-Security

The Expo 2018 Program Committee is chaired by Kevin Hart, EVP and chief product and technology officer for Cox Communications.

Last year’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver drew about 8,800 attendees.