We’ve seen this movie before — three times.

In the early 1990s, cable positively disrupted the television industry by rapidly developing and deploying video delivery standards and technology at scale. Almost overnight, new digital TV networks and customer premises equipment enabled hundreds of channels to be delivered across America and around the world — where only 10 or fewer channels had been available.

Then in 1997, cable operators disrupted another well-established industry — telecommunications — and created the DOCSIS multimedia Internet delivery standard. The resulting products outperformed dial-up and nonstandard cable modems to launch a new realm of always-on high-speed internet connectivity that made us leaders in the business of broadband. 

Again in 1999, cable disrupted the landline telephone phone industry with the DOCSIS 1.1 standard. The triple-play bundle of digital TV, internet and telephone reigned supreme. Cable soon became the dominant global provider of residential and small business phone service, beating incumbent telcos at their own game. Penetrations of cable modems and cable phone service skyrocketed and in record time, more than 2 billion modems were produced, revolutionizing how we live, work, love and play all around the globe.

Today another established industry — electricity — would benefit from cable disruption. With overall energy costs doubling and grid power outages increasing nearly 800% in the last 20 years, rapid deployment of newly developed Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) standards and technology can raise the resiliency and efficiency of the grid, contain costs, create new revenue streams and accelerate the safe transition to renewable energy sources. The standards enable a new lucrative triple play in modernizing the grid by providing optimization of electric load shaping, sensing and forecasting.

Severe weather has resulted in more frequent and catastrophic grid outages that, when combined with an aging power infrastructure, lessen reliability and raise electricity costs. The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are filled with stories on the inabilities of the antiquated and increasingly failing electric power grid. Ivan Penn headlined the problem in The New York Times as “Old Power Gear Is Slowing Use of Clean Energy and Electric Cars.”

Extremely hot and cold temperatures created unprecedented and unmeetable demands for electricity during the western North America heat wave over the summer and during the February Texas power crisis. Severe storms are ever-more-effective battering rams that destroy grid infrastructure, as seen in August during Hurricane Ida in New Orleans.

In addition, the grid suffers from inefficiencies that are so extreme that only one-third of the energy from burning coal and natural gas is converted to electricity — the rest is rejected into our environment as waste heat. Along with transportation, power plants are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all anthropogenic heat and carbon emissions. Two-thirds! Furthermore, the process of boiling water to make electricity is so inefficient that steam power plants are the No. 1 consumers of water, using nearly half of fresh surface-water withdrawals — more than agriculture.

Efficiency Is Crucial

It is posited that the only way to reduce severe weather is to cut carbon emissions drastically. If this is true, then power plants are our most severe existential threat — human survival depends on rapidly decommissioning the most inefficient generators. These should be replaced by energy-efficiency measures in homes, and businesses along with managing distributed storage of renewable energy sources like wind, solar and other forms of clean power. In 2020 in the United States, of all energy used, a mere 5% came from wind, solar, and geothermal power and 3% came from hydro power. 

Cable can accelerate the use of renewables from hobby status to mainstream. In 2021, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the SCTE developed the ANSI/SCTE 267 2021 standard, Optimum Load Shaping of Electric Vehicle and Battery Charging. SCTE 267 allows cable operators to cut electric bills and create new revenue opportunities by reversing the traditional electricity supply-follows-demand relationship first popularized by Thomas Edison.

It may be hard to imagine that flipping a light switch results in a thimbleful of coal being thrown on an already gigantic fire at a power plant, but such is life. Just as Edison did in 1882, utilities today add more fuel to the fire to increase the output of central station generators to meet increasing electrical demand.

To instead ensure that electricity demand follows supply, SCTE 267 enables cable operators, other businesses and residences to modulate and time-shift electric loads to maximize the use of renewable energy and the efficiency of power plants — and minimize congestion in the last mile of the grid. Building energy management applications that are compliant with SCTE 267 will be increasingly important to ensure safe, reliable and low-cost electric power.

Following the Cable Network‘s Lead

Much of the cable industry’s expertise, developed while transitioning our network from one-way to two-way with content creation and storage at the edge, is directly applicable to transitioning the grid to have energy production and storage at the edge. Solar energy produced at homes and business is wasted, if not transferred immediately to the grid, used locally or stored for future use. But how much power can the grid absorb and distribute before congestion results in overheating of wires and transformers, causing more catastrophic outages and wildfires? The grid does not know because it is sensor-starved — but cable knows. Like canaries accompanying coal miners, the broadband network follows the grid’s secondary distribution network everywhere it goes — and provides early warning signs of grid issues. 

With the SCTE 267 and 271 standards, the bases are loaded and energy is at bat. It’s time for cable’s grand slam. While the cable industry continues to make advances in traffic engineering and capacity planning to calculate how many cable modems, 4K, and 8K streams can be supported in a serving area, it’s time to broaden its reach to the 3,400-plus U.S. utilities. They’re almost completely in the dark in measuring grid utilization and can use broadband to actively manage the load on the grid and maximize rooftop solar and EV chargers at hundreds of millions of grid interconnections. Let’s do this!

The telecommunications industry has been riding the hype wave of virtualization over the past few years, and the cable industry has not been immune to this trend. To be sure, virtualization brings significant benefits in terms of improved operations, better resiliency, feature velocity, better customer experience and possibly lower cost, and indeed the cable industry is right to focus on adopting this enabling technology in their operating environment. We expect virtualization to gain meaningful traction in 2020 in the cable industry.

This said, virtualization is an enabling technology with far reaching implications for the operating environment of a cable operator beyond simply deploying a new system, and there is not one optimal approach to pursue; each operator should carefully consider the path to virtualization that is best suited to its current network, operating environment and parameters, service needs, and market dynamics.

Although the focus of virtualization conversations has typically focused on the CCAP—granted an essential component of a virtualization strategy—it is important to note that significant benefits can be derived from virtualizing the management and control planes, which can be achieved even while retaining the legacy I-CCAP. We expect cable operator strategies regarding virtualization to follow four paths in the next five years:

1. Retain the legacy I-CCAP as long as it continues to meet the operator’s needs. Despite technology innovation, legacy technologies tend to stay around a lot longer than one would expect, as long as they adequately meet the operator’s needs.

2. Virtualize the CMTS core while retaining the edge QAMs and move the PHY layer to a remote PHY shelf, which can be located in the headend or the hub. The advantage of this architecture is that it enables the MSO to derive some virtualization benefits while retaining RF from the headend and preserving the edge QAMs.

3. Remote PHY: The CMTS core is virtualized, and the PHY layer is moved to a Remote PHY device (RPD), which is housed in the access node. The traffic out of the headend is IP, carried over digital fiber. This approach allows the operator to leverage existing resources in the headend for MAC processing, keeping nodes simpler (no compute resource) with lower power requirements.

4. Remote MACPHY: The MAC and PHY layers are moved to the node, and a Remote MACPHY device (RMD) is housed in the node and performs the CMTS core capability in the node. This approach is simpler and has lower latency, but possibly a higher power requirement in the node and the need for compute resources in the node.

Although each of the above strategies has pros and cons and significant considerations based on the needs of each operator, it is important to note that all four solutions can be managed by a virtualized control plane, and more modern management tools such as RESTCONF and YANG can supplement traditional tools such as SNMP and CLI to deliver significantly improved management and monitoring. Furthermore, the architecture that the operator adopts today is not necessarily the one it will have over time. For example, Option 2 could be an interim solution for an operator that is looking to ultimately have a Remote PHY architecture but is not yet ready to move away from the edge QAMs and RF. Furthermore, some innovative vendors are developing solutions where the MAC functionality can be either part of the CMTS core or in the node.

It is imperative that an operator carefully considers its needs and makes a well-thought-out evolution plan, rather than be swept by the virtualization wave, and to work closely with a leading industry vendor that can offer the right solutions to meet its needs.

Liliane Offredo-Zreik (@offredo) is principal analyst atACG Research.

CableLabs, the industry’s Colorado-based R&D house, is reducing its workforce by at least 30 staffers amid a reorganization that will see the Colorado-based R&D house prioritize spending on longer-term “innovation projects” and “funding game-changing innovations.”

When contacted last week, CableLabs declined to confirm how many workers have been let go as part of the decision, but sources familiar with the decision said the decision affected people in CableLabs’s video and applications group, as well as some in its networks group.

Update: CableLabs confirmed Tuesday (January 19) that 27 employees were affected. The original headline in this story said 30-plus employees were cut as a result of the restructuring. 

Phil McKinney, the former HP exec who was named president and CEO of CableLabs, in mid-2012, discussed some of the changes in a blog post today under the headline: “CableLabs 2.0.”

“With the work done over the last three years in addressing the fundamentals, now is the time to significantly increase the funding in innovation,” he wrote. “The transformation we are announcing today involves prioritizing the investment in innovation projects focused on three to eight years as being of equal importance to our traditional R&D projects focused on one to three years. These longer range innovations will become the source for the R&D projects of the future.

While most organizations spend a small portion of their budget on longer range innovation, we’ve made the deliberate decision to be aggressive in this transformation to ensure that CableLabs can rapidly build and sustain a significant innovation pipeline for the industry.”

The shift also comes as CableLabs has extended its focus into areas such as WiFi, LTE-Unlicensed, software-defined networking/network functions virtualization, while also keeping close tabs on technology developments around 4K and virtual reality.

Update: CableLabs said Sunday that the organization has not dropped MSO-related SDN/NFV research activities following the shift in focus, disputing what an industry source told Multichannel News.  

CableLabs's shift in focus also comes comes soon after the cable industry reached a big milestone, as cable modem products from five vendors were certified by CableLabs for the new multi-gigabit DOCSIS 3.1 platform, aided by new processes that helped to accelerate that work.

McKinney wouldn’t go into all the areas that will see increased investment, but did identify a few, including virtual reality (“a hot area in the innovation space”), next-gen video technologies (including future versions of high dynamic range and display materials), and more focus on cable’s growing role in healthcare technology.

“If you want to have a meaningful impact on it [the innovation pipeline], you’ve got to align a chunk of resources against that effort, otherwise it becomes more of a hobby or a secondary activity for the organization,” McKinney said in an interview. “This move, what we call CableLabs 2.0, is that aligning of a significantly increased amount of resources focused on creating an innovation pipeline." 

CableLabs wouldn’t say how staffing levels are changing amid this shift of focus, but McKinney said there’s no change in the total budget or the total funding for the MSO-backed organization, which also operates a facility in Silicon Valley that opened in the fall of 2013. Additionally, he doesn't expect the overall staffing level at CableLabs to change as it realigns its focus.  

“Anytime you're trying to do a transformation like this, there's some people that move across and become part of those expanded focus areas,” McKinney said. “And in some cases you move people out of an organization to free up resources that can be invested in the innovation space.”

And that focus will also impact which projects are on the front burner and which ones get mothballed.

“If we don’t’ believe [projects] are going to have high impact on the industry in those [innovation] areas, we'll actually cancel those projects,” he said. “That frees up resources, budgets and headcount and we’ll allocate those budgets and headcounts to new areas." 

CableLabs took on a broader, global focus in 2013, when it combined with Cable Europe Labs. CableLabs now has 55 members in 33 countries that serve about 180 million video subs. Membership fees, paid on a quarterly basis by MSOs, represent a key source of revenue for CableLabs, which also gets revenue from its own events, interoperability testing, and as well as from a for-profit device-security unit, called NetworkFX, that was spun-out in 2012.

A delay in Arris’s proposed $2.1 billion merger with Pace plc isn’t a “show stopper,” as Arris has “viable options to modify the deal” that could alleviate concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice, Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold said in a research note released Monday.

Arris announced on Friday (October 17) that the deal might not close until late December or the first quarter of 2016 amid additional requests from the Antitrust Division of the DoJ and regulators in Brazil and Colombia. Arris said the Antitrust Division’s focus appears to be on their optical transmission products, which include node equipment. Pace strengthened its position in this area in 2013 when it acquired Aurora Networks for $310 million.

“We do not consider the optical transmission products as the primary focus for ARRIS' Pace acquisition and believe options exist to consummate a transaction,” Leopold wrote. “We see the sale of the Pace transmission unit as the most logical scenario.”

He said possible buyers could include CommScope, Harmonic and Casa Systems, with Emore and Applied Optoelectronics and Ericsson to be among those “less likely” to make a play for the Pace unit.

“Although we are uncertain if the unit would be divested in its entirety, we imagine it might be valued near 1x sales or $300-$350 million,” Leopold added.

The divestiture of the networks business of Pace, he said, would bring the combined CY16 sales estimate to $7.48 billion, down from $7.80 billion, and earnings per share to $3.27, versus $3.41, with accretion of $0.51, down from the analyst’s prior $0.66 estimate.

Leopold maintained a “strong buy” rating on Arris as well as his $41 target price on the stock.

Regulators in Portugal, Germany and South Africa have already cleared the Arris-Pace  agreement.

As Charter Communications’ proposed acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks move forward (see Cover Story), expect the angst among suppliers to build as they position themselves for the outcome.

Some could find themselves on the outside looking in, while others are firmly in the catbird’s seat. For still others, notably Arris, it presents a mixed bag.

The future is not set, of course, but here’s a snapshot of some potential winners and losers from the deal.

CABLE MODEMS/ROUTERS/GATEWAYS

Winners: SMC Networks, Cisco Systems, Netgear

On the residential end, SMC Networks and Cisco Systems are Charter’s primary suppliers of cable modems, sources have said. Netgear, meanwhile, has locked in a slot to supply Charter subs with WiFi routers, including a new high-octane model that uses 802.11ac outfitted with Charter-specific middleware.

A dark horse winner in this category is French supplier Sagemcom, said to have Charter’s gateway business for smaller business customers and to be gearing up for an aggressive residential play.

Losers: Arris, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive

These three vendors are the approved gateway suppliers for TWC’s residential broadband service, so their hold could loosen should Charter apply a modem-plus-router strategy while continuing to eschew the use of integrated wireless cable modem gateways.

SET-TOP BOXES

Winners: Cisco, Humax

They are the initial suppliers of the Worldbox, Charter’s new set-top box platform that will support cloud-based apps, including the MSO’s new Spectrum Guide, and a new downloadable security system that will enable the device to run on any Charter system.

Possible Losers: Humax, Samsung and Arris

Humax finds itself in both camps, because it has also been tapped to supply TWC with its first set-top client based on the Reference Design Kit, the software stack for Internet prototcol-capable devices being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and TWC. Charter has not divulged any specific plans for the RDK, at least not yet (expect something on this in next week’s issue).

Samsung is a known supplier to TWC and Bright House, but has not announced anything involving Charter’s Worldbox program. However, it does supply boxes to Cablevision Systems that utilize the same “open” architecture that Charter is using in its Worldbox platform.

Arris has been supplying TWC with a souped-up six-tuner “enhanced” DVR for the MSO’s “TWC Maxx” upgrade initiative. It’s not yet known how those rollouts will continue once Charter expands its Worldbox strategy.

MISCELLANEOUS VIDEO TECH

Winners: Cisco, Arris, ActiveVideo and Zodiac Interactive

They’re all involved in the video end of Charter’s Spectrum initiative, Cisco (downloadable security), Zodiac (set-top software stack), and ActiveVideo (user interface cloud TV platform), which is now co-owned by Arris and Charter.

Also sitting pretty is Michael Willner-led Penthera, which last week announced deals to supply its secure video-downloading platform to Charter and TWC, while reupping its agreement with Comcast.

Time Will Tell: Envivio

Envivio has bet a lot of chips on TWC. On last week’s first-quarter earnings call, the multiscreen video specialist said it received significant orders from Comcast and TWC, and that those two customers represented 57% of revenue in the period.

BILLING AND CUSTOMER CARE

Winner: CSG Systems

It’s coming off a new deal with Charter that’s good through the end of 2019, and includes a framework that, presciently, allows for the consolidation of additional customers that Charter might obtain through M&A activity. CSG also has existing deals with TWC and BHN.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers is seeking proposals for papers and presentations for technical sessions to be conducted at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015, which is set for Tuesday through Friday, Oct. 13-16 in New Orleans. The SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015 Program Committee is targeting papers that address technologies, best practices, solutions, workforce training, and case studies in four key subject areas: Business-to-Business: Driving Revenue; Wireless Services: From 4G to LTE and Beyond; Wireline Access: Evolving the HFC Access Network; and Next-Generation Services: Leveraging All-IP, Cloud and Apps. It is desired that all sessions be interactive and include case studies whenever possible.

The deadline for abstract submissions is Tuesday, Feb. 17. Abstracts will be reviewed by the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015 Program Committee, chaired by Balan Nair, executive vice president and CTO of Liberty Global.

Here are the key subject areas for SCTE Cable-Tec Expo® 2015 in greater detail:

• Business-to-Business—Improving cable operators’ revenue and offerings in current and next-generation business class services, including SDN/NFV; cloud-based services; “as-a-service” models; traffic engineering, SLAs and business continuity planning; and hospitality services and standards.

• Wireless Services—Wireless drop technologies; Wi-Fi coverage in the home; Wi-Fi extension; maintaining customer experience; Wi-Fi First robustness requirements and operational practices; LTE interference elimination; leveraging white spaces in the USA; and operational practices for Wi-Fi hotspot deployment in congested areas or spectrum.

• Wireline Access—Transition planning and operational issues related to DOCSIS 3.1; transition plans for remote PHY and remote MAC/PHY; deployment and troubleshooting of fiber-deep and FTTH; moving the upstream/downstream split point; just-in-time training delivery; improving the number of military veterans in the workforce; and operational practices and standards requirements related to the Energy 2020 program.

• Next-Generation Services—Next-generation services that leverage all-IP or cloud architectures as well as apps and the vibrant app environment, including: DCAS/DRM for next-gen rights management; advanced advertising; deployment, operational practices and cost-avoidance strategies for continuing toward all-IP networks; set-top client evolution; operational practices for TVE to 4K TV; IoT and its applicability to cable; CDN management and orchestration practices; cybersecurity; RDK and beyond; and CPE virtualization.

More details on these topics and subtopics are available in the Call for Papers at http://www.scte.org/papers/. Proposals tailored to them will receive the strongest consideration. Interested participants must submit through the online submission platform a one-page abstract (300 words max.) and identify which of the aforementioned key subject areas it addresses.

Previously published papers and product-specific presentations will not be accepted. Abstracts must be tailored for workshop learning and provide real-world tools that attendees can apply to their everyday work. The Call for Papers provides the complete abstract submission instructions.

Scheduled in 2015 for the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, SCTE Cable-Tec Expo is the leading venue for helping the cable telecommunications industry and its workforce to reduce costs, deploy new services, and increase customer satisfaction. Expo 2015 will offer a wide variety of learning events and demonstrations, as well as peer-to-peer interaction and networking.

A concentration on new cutting-edge cable technologies, an increased focus on education and the debut of several cable new exhibitors helped drive attendance at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers 2014 Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.

The annual technology fest, held from Sept.22-25, attracted about 9,100 attendees, the SCTE said in a statement. While that was below the 9,800 attendees to the 2013 gathering in Atlanta, a 22% increase in new exhibitors helped drive total booth takers to 376 and a pre-conference symposium on DOCSIS 3.1 and wireless technologies drew more than 500 attendees for the first time. Both the exhibitor and attendance totals represent increases over those registered in 2009, when Denver last played host to the event.

This year’s get-together also had a new focus on learning and education – the conference agenda included more than 100 hours of workshops and symposiums on three distinct tracks: Next-Generation Customer Experience; Next-Generation Video; and Next-Generation Networks.  A standing-room only crowd heard Comcast executive vice president and chief network officer John Schanz keynote the Energy 2020 session that unveiled cable’s plan to reduce energy consumption and assure energy availability by the end of the decade. The event also saw strong attendance at back-to-back sessions on DevOps, Agile Software Development and RDK.

Cable executives provided insights at the general sessions into how the industry is adapting to continue to improve the customer experience and maintain its competitive edge worldwide, and how engineering and operations professional can align their careers.  The sessions included opening remarks by Tony Werner, executive vice president and CTO of Comcast Cable Communications and the 2014 SCTE Cable-Tec Expo Program Chair; a keynote presentation by Rob Lloyd, president, development and sales for Cisco Systems, Inc.; a panel on cloud technologies; a Werner conversation with Mike Fries, president and CEO of Liberty Global; and views on career growth from Yvette Kanouff, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Video Software and Solutions Group, Cisco, and Mike LaJoie, executive vice president and CTO and chief network operations officer for Time Warner Cable.

“Despite unavoidable proximity to IBC and other industry events, the cable engineering community turned out in force to learn more about harnessing the new technologies that increase and ensure service availability,” said SCTE president and CEO Mark Dzuban in a statement.  “We’re grateful for the leadership of Tony Werner; the insights of Mike Fries, Rob Lloyd and our other speakers; the support of CableLabs at our DOCSIS 3.1 and Wireless symposium; and the technical resources of Comcast’s Denver Central operations. All of them—and many others—contributed to making SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2014 the most successful educational event in our history.”

SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015 will be conducted Tuesday through Friday, Oct. 13-16 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. Liberty Global executive vice president and CTO Balan Nair will serve as Program Committee chairman for the 2015 event.