Dosty Hedges of Cox Communications was the overall winner of the Society of Telecommunications Engineers’s International SCTE Cable-Tec Games, earning the member of the SCTE Cactus chapter in Mesa, Arizona, a gold medal at the event held October 19 at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver. 

Hedges was tops in a field of 28 competitors overall from SCTE chapters in the U.S. and Canada who competed in seven events designed to showcase a variety of cable engineering skills. 

A pair of Comcast techs also earned Silver and Bronze honors as overall winners: Tom Hawk and Ryan Moss, both members of the SCTE’s Washington state-based Mount Rainier chapter. 

The Cable-Tec Games have been staged at Cable-Tec Expo since 1981. SCTE chapters and meeting groups at all levels of the organization host more than 500 local, state and regional Cable-Tec Games competitions to determine who will represent each chapter or region. 

This year’s games took place at a new venue that debuted at Expo 2023, the Technical Training Theater, or T squared. The three T’s in the name stand for three pillars of technical excellence — training, teamwork and talent, SCTE said. 

Individual event winners in the 2023 International SCTE Cable-Tec Games were: 

• Cable splicing: Shannon Cameron, Ritter Communications (first place); Ryan Moss (second); and Lamont Williams, Comcast (third). 
• Fiber splicing: Dosty Hedges (first), Tom Hawk (second) and Lamont Williams (third).
• Meter reading: Charlie Brown, Comcast (first); Eric Tracy, Charter Communications (second); and Ryan Moss (third).
• MTDR: Dosty Hedges (first); Tom Hawk (second); and Bryan Huffstutler; Madison (third).
• Drop connection: Tom Hawk (first); Noah Collins, Cable One (second); and Dosty Hedges (third).
• OTDR: Tom Hawk (first); Dosty Hedges (second); and Bryan Huffstutler (third).
• Cable Jeopardy!: Bryan Huffstutler (first); Rich Beversdorf, Charter (second); and Dosty Hedges (third).

Competitors representing SCTE chapters were: Sean Wingblade, Golden Gate chapter; Donovan Sorenson, Rocky Mountain chapter; Dosty Hedges and Timothy Palmer, Cactus chapter; Noah Collins, Snake River chapter; Ryan Moss and Tom Hawk, Mt. Rainier chapter; Aaron Cox, Hill Country chapter; AJ Campos, Sooner State chapter; Bryan Huffstutler, Gateway chapter; Stephen Rangel, Iowa Heartland chapter; Rich Beversdorf, Badger State chapter; Nathan Krick, North Country chapter; Lamont Williams, Great Lakes chapter; Ian Burnett, Central Indiana chapter; Jeff Adkins, Music City chapter; Shannon Cameron, Razorback chapter; Charlie Boivin, Chattahoochee chapter; Christopher Woehrle, Central Florida chapter; Patrick Powers, Crystal Coast chapter; Jim Egloff, Bluegrass chapter; Joel Moore, Chesapeake chapter; Paul Perrotta and Jim Tulley, Penn-Ohio chapter; Eric Tracy, New England chapter; and Matt Berti, Daryl Fummerton and Jesse Hofland, Ontario chapter.

DENVER — Thirty months after acquiring the distressed assets of IPTV provider MobiTV at auction for $18.5 million, Xperi and its TiVo brand are making moves with the business. 

The company used this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo to announce a new hardware partnership, with Denver-based Evolution Digital’s Evo Force 1 set-top and Fuse 4K streaming stick becoming the exclusive devices in North and South America for the ongoing MobiTV concern, which has been rebranded as “TiVo’s Managed IPTV Service.”

The move follows a similar arrangement with U.K. tech company Amino in Europe.

The deal marks only the latest collaboration between TiVo's software and Evolutions's hardware.  

“Our continued collaboration represents a significant milestone for both companies and a major leap forward in enhancing the streaming video aggregation for service providers’ broadband-only customers,” Marc Cohen, chief revenue officer at Evolution Digital, said in a statement. “Our combined expertise offers innovative, high-quality video solutions that set new industry standards.“

Added TiVo senior VP of global sales Jeffrey Glahn: “As a preferred development partner for Evolution Digital, we endeavor to provide solutions to the broadband market to stay competitive, retain customers, get to market quickly and minimize video costs.“

DENVER — With the Democratic FCC majority once again on the offensive with proposed net neutrality legislation, the cable industry's top policy figure, NCTA: The Internet & Cable Association president and CEO Michael Powell, used an opening session at his industry’s annual tech trade show Wednesday to launch a full-throated, very libertarian-leaning counter-offensive. 

Powell labeled Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s new attempt to reclassify and regulate broadband as a Title II common-carrier service, setting rules preventing ISPs from establishing abusive restrictions and tolls, as an “illusory” effort trying to solve a “fabricated” problem.

Interviewed during a SCTE Cable-Tec Expo keynote session by CableLabs president and CEO Phil McKinney, Powell described the FCC’s approach as being rooted in regulatory solutions for problems that existed with railroads in the 1800s.

“It’s a shocking mistake,” he said. “It’s not only dated, it’s your father’s Oldsmobile.”

Powell said the cable industry has no economic incentive to arbitrate who does and who doesn’t have access to its network infrastructure. 

“We’re doing pretty damn good with having open pipe,” he said. 

And with artificial intelligence, piracy and Big Tech, Powell questioned the FCC's regulatory priorities. 

Further, he kicked the tires on their use of time and money, given that a Republican win of the White House and Congress next year — or the Supreme Court — could quickly wipe all of the FCC’s net-neutrality work away. 

Net neutrality legislation does have an ephemeral quality that comes and goes with the political cycle. 

In 2017, the FCC under Republican chair Ajit Pai scrapped net neutrality rules established two years earlier by Pai's predecessor, Democrat Tom Wheeler. 

DENVER — Comcast and Charter Communications arrived here at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo this week intent on selling their video platform joint venture, Xumo, to the rest of the U.S. cable industry. 

And they already have a taker in Middletown, New York-based Mediacom Communications, which Marcien Jenckes, president of the Xumo JV said Tuesday at an SCTE show-floor presentation, said will start distributing the new Xumo Stream Box to its customers. 

Also Read: Xumo Stream Box Reviewed: The First OTT Player From Comcast and Charter’s JV Has a Few Bugs and Limitations, but We Can Still See Potential

Jenckes offered little details about Mediacom's deployment — like when it’ll start — but he did say: “This is just the beginning with more to come. We’d like to be working with a lot more operators, and we’ll be doing that in the coming months and years."

UPDATED: The Xumo JV released an official statement two days after Jenckes' disclosure, indicating that the Stream Box will be distributed to Mediacom Xtream internet customers "in the coming months." The release didn't say if Mediacom would charge them for the device, and if so, how much.

"Through our partnership with Xumo, we will be able to significantly enhance the value of our broadband services by combining our market-leading speeds with a new world-class streaming experience," said Tapan Dandnaik, Mediacom's senior VP of operations, product strategy and customer experience. "Xumo Stram Box is incredibly versatile and consumer-friendly, and we are excited to be among the first companies to bring this cutting-edge device to market."

The Mediacom announcement comes two weeks after the JV formally introduced the Xumo Stream Box player, which in addition to playing the cable companies’ core pay TV apps — Charter's Spectrum app and the Xfinity Stream TV app — supports all major SVOD services and around 200 apps in all. 

Last week, Light Reading reported that Xumo was in talks with a number of tier 2 and 3 cable operators about offering the Xumo platform to their customers under ad-revenue sharing terms. The NCTC cooperative, which represents hundreds of smaller cable operators, reportedly expressed interest in the JV's proposition. 

The National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC) and other smaller cable interests are looking for ways to provide video to their now mostly broadband-oriented constituency, with rising content costs sapping their profitability and interest in linear video in recent years. 

For its part, Charter said the OTT platform — which is powered by Comcast voice-remote technology — had already replaced its linear set-tops as its “go-to” video platform.

“It’s the primary video box that we are deploying today,” Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey said during Tuesday’s Expo opening session. “It’s been hard for us lately to be excited about our video product. This is about as excited as we've been in 15 years." 

DENVER — The cable and wireless industries continue to disrupt each other, with fast-growing but still nascent mobile services from cable providers stealing market share from wireless giants, while fixed wireless access keeps eating into cable wireline growth. 

Witness the back-and-forth Tuesday, as Charter Communications CEO Christopher Winfrey declared cable the network speed champion at his industry’s annual tech event, SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, which is being held this year in the Mile High City. 

Speaking during the event's opening session, Winfrey said that 87% of the bits generated by Spectrum Mobile are now being transacted “over our seamless, converged, gigabit wireless network.”

“And that’s faster than 5G,” he said, noting that Charter’s wholesale MVNO agreement to use Verizon’s 5G network merely acts as “our radio backup” in the event Charter’s own infrastructure is unavailable. 

As Charter and other cable companies continue to sap the bulk of mobile customer growth from wireless companies with cheaper, faster services, the latest Ookla internet speed rankings show T-Mobile catching up with cable wireline broadband on the home internet side with a similarly undercutting proposition. 

According to Ookla, T-Mobile's 5G network delivered a median download speed of 221.57 megabits per second in Q3, which was shouting distance from the Q3 home broadband speed champion, Cox Communications, which delivered a market-leading download speed of 260.09 Mbps.

The data is based on customer usage of Ookla’s Speedtest app. 

T-Mobile, which offers high-speed 5G wireless home internet service for $50 a month, added 509,000 fixed wireless access customers in the second quarter, during which the entire cable industry added less than 10,000 users combined. 

For his part, Winfrey declared cable’s “converged network advantage.” Initiatives like the cable industry's ongoing effort to upgrade to multi-gigabit DOCSIS 4.0 network services tend to be executed footprint-wide, he said, while AT&T’s current fiber wireline efforts may cover 20% of footprint. 

That makes it difficult for wireless companies like AT&T to compete with cable via national converged network offerings. 

Stepping away from the competitive cable vs. wireless discussion, meanwhile, Winfrey also took a moment to tout the billions of dollars in subsidies the Biden administration is throwing at cable companies to execute the buildout of rural internet. 

“This is a unique moment in time for cable and we need to take advantage of it,” Winfrey said. “When has the U.S. government has ever gone out and given you money to build networks? And when is the last time that cable has received a chance to look great in terms of solving the digital divide?”

DENVER — In 60 years working across the technology-media-telecom industries, mogul John Malone has weathered a few global economic storms.

Appearing virtually for a fireside chat during the opening session Tuesday at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, his interviewer, Mike Fries, who runs Malone’s European cable conglomerate, Liberty Global, asked him if he sees any clouds coming up on the horizon for the cable industry. 

How bad could things get? Think Sebastian Junger’s 1997 nonfiction bestseller The Perfect Storm.

“Are we headed into the third world war in a greatly weakened position as a country and as a west?” Malone said. “There are a lot of things to worry about right now when it comes to global stability.” 

Beyond a possible invasion of Taiwan by China, which would badly disrupt the global semiconductor industry, there are threats to world order, he noted, with Russia's ongoing attack on Ukraine and the renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza ramping up global tensions. 

Tipping off his Libertarian sensibilities not so subtly, Malone said there’s the prospect of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 corporate tax break expiring in 2025 with little prospect of a Democratic-led Congress voting to renew it. 

Meanwhile, the resurrection of net neutrality talk in the FCC, Malone said, threatens to further cement “monopoly control" of TMT in the hands of the “tech giants,” further relegating cable providers into a position they've tried to thwart off for decades — simply as operators of “dumb pipes.” 

But all is not bleak for the cable industry in Malone's forward-looking view. 

He lauded decisions by Comcast and Charter to utilize legacy hybrid fiber-coax infrastructure for their next-generation 10G networks. This enabled both companies to get to market with multi-gig services faster and more efficiently. 

“They can always add fiber as they go,” he said. 

Malone also complimented the recent program licensing renewal deal negotiated between Disney and Charter. 

“I was happy to see it,” he said. “It allows cable to start selling hybrid video services, mixtures of of streaming and linear. That will prolong the life of linear and continue that revenue stream. It will also slow down the transition of big tech becoming the primary provider of entertainment.”

To close the virtual fireside chat, Fries engaged his boss in a “lighting round” of questions that required one-word answers

Will Disney still own ESPN in five years? “No.”

Who are you a longtime buyer of, Apple or Google? “Google.”

Yes or no, the government wins its antitrust cast against Google? “There will be a settlement.”

The IPO market comes back in 2024 or 2025? “24.”

Yellowstone or Ted Lasso? “Ted Lasso.”

Cable's most exciting decade, in the past or the future. “Future.”

DENVER — It's not hyperbolic to say that CableOS, the cloud-based virtualized software platform, now marketed as “cOS” by Silicon Valley company Harmonic, has revolutionized cable broadband, with both Comcast and Charter Communications making it an essential ingredient in the ongoing rollout of their DOCSIS 4.0 networks.

So it's noteworthy when Harmonic, which reached $625 million in annual sales last year and now has a $1.15 billion market capitalization, touts new cOS product features, as it did Tuesday as the cable industry’s biggest technology conference, SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, unfurled here in the Mile High City.

The erstwhile CableOS now offers unified support for the DOCSIS 4.0 specification, including full duplex (FDX) and extended spectrum DOCSIS (ESD), as well as 10G fiber. Additionally, new cOS platform capability called BoostD 3.1 supports the new class of cable modems currently coming to market.

Also read: Comcast Set To Light Up World’s First DOCSIS 4.0 ‘10G’ Deployment in Colorado Springs Next Week

The cOS platform has also added a feature to simplify device timing synchronization across networks deployed in distributed access architectures (DAA), allowing service providers to easily circumvent requirements related to utilization of specific timing protocols when necessary.

And in a move to further enhance its Profile Management Application (PMA) capabilities, Harmonic has integrated OpenVault's OV PMA software (previously marketed as “Nimble This”) with the cOS platform. This integration reduces PMA cycle durations and provides operators with an advanced, automated solution to ensure optimal network performance at scale.

“The cOS platform is unique in the marketplace today, making it even easier for operators to address the very real economic, environmental and technical requirements they face, while also ensuring greater agility and versatility to strategically extend high-speed services to more subscribers,” said Nimrod Ben-Natan, senior VP and GM of broadband business at Harmonic, in a statement.

Among a seemingly bottomless list of motivations for upgrading cable telecommunications systems, here’s one industry engineers may have overlooked: preventing bad first dates. 

That’s the idea behind a novel use case for broadband data transmission from Match Group Inc., the owner of digital dating applications including Tinder and Match.com. A company technology unit has been developing live-video streaming features that are designed to help subscribers visit with and evaluate potential partners before they meet in person. 

“Our ultimate vision here is for people to never have to go on a bad first date again,” Match Group adviser Shar Dubey said.

Score one for broadband. Whether it’s used to stream Netflix movies or chat with prospective romantic partners, high-quality video requires bandwidth, and bandwidth is what the cable industry is determined to deliver with its ever-expanding broadband network architecture. 

Ever since introducing residential high-speed data services at scale in the late 1990s, the cable industry has been on a never-ending mission to deliver more data bits at faster speeds over blends of fiber-optic and coaxial cable distribution networks. Determined to maintain an impressive lead in U.S. residential broadband connectivity — Leichtman Research Group has said cable companies currently command close to 67% of the market — industry strategists are working to elevate performance while they stave off threats from rivals that are extending high-capacity fiber networks deep into the nation’s neighborhoods. 

They’re also grappling with shifting consumer expectations around media and communications. Even though a large amount of video consumption is now happening over independent streaming services like Netflix or YouTube TV, cable providers often remain first in line when it comes to dealing with user complaints over signal quality or connectivity issues.

“Control of the complete experience for cable operators to consumers is being reduced, but expectations for a perfect, error-free experience remain,” Adrian Herrera, chief marketing officer for Varnish Software, told Multichannel News. That reality has pressured cable companies to ramp up network performance and quality of experience by embracing new tools and techniques. 

Expo Exhibitors Pitch Solutions

Varnish Software is among an emerging breed of suppliers working to optimize network performance partly by embracing an “edge” approach: caching more functionality closer to the point of customer interface in order to reduce latency and ward off network congestion.

These tactics and other industry advances will be on display at the 2023 SCTE Cable-Tec Expo technical conference happening in Denver, starting October 16. There, exhibitors will showcase a mix of technology enhancements that play out across the full breadth of cable’s “last-mile” access networks. 

At headends, new virtual cable-modem termination systems promise improvements in signal quality along with deployment and provisioning latitude. Across the network, upgraded amplifiers and passive devices can accommodate frequencies extending as high as 1.8 GHz, expanding raw capacity. 

In neighborhoods, distributed access architectures put more processing muscle at the network edge, reducing latency and adding flexibility. 

At street-side fiber-optic cabinets, node splits — techniques to pare localized serving areas into smaller and smaller groups of homes — allow for impressive bursts of bandwidth. 

And inside homes, multi-band Wi-Fi routers are spritzing out signals faster than ever. 

Behind it all are new ways to modulate signals, effectively squeezing more information into shared spaces, courtesy of the new DOCSIS 4.0 standard. 

All of these techniques are part of the cable industry’s “10G” ambition — a catchily-named initiative to maintain the high ground in prepping for the next major surge in bandwidth demand and playing a major role in the multi-gigabit data evolution. 

Impact of DOCSIS 4.0

A big enabler here is DOCSIS 4.0, the CableLabs-authored data delivery specification that will start to invade the market in a big way over the next two years. Nearly half of North American cable companies will activate DOCSIS 4.0 deployments before the end of 2025, according to a 2023 survey of roughly 100 industry engineering professionals conducted by broadband systems gear maker ATX Networks. Not all of these early adopters will rush to commercialize DOCSIS 4.0 capabilities right away, but the fact that they’re poised to do so reflects widespread recognition of the value of getting ahead in the speed race. 

Cable companies already are deep into the gigabit data revolution thanks to the widely deployed DOCSIS 3.1 specification, which uses bonded channels and higher order modulation to support faster data rates. But with the ability to push data rates into the multi-gigabit per second range both downstream and upstream, DOCSIS 4.0 promises to bring even more muscle to cable’s fiber-meets-coaxial architectures, likely extending the lifespan of these hybrid networks.  

Although many observers believe all-fiber architectures will one day prevail — a few cable companies, including Altice USA, are already well down that path — cable-industry proponents believe there’s plenty of life left in hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) networks, especially those that are supercharged with a DOCSIS 4.0 engine. 

ATX Networks, for example, believes full-on replacement of cable’s HFC architectures with all-fiber successors won’t happen until around 2050. In the meantime, cable’s hybrid networks promise to provide a best-of-both-worlds reward: the ability to render multi-gigabit data rates in both directions at a cost well below what fiber-to-the-premise providers are spending to catch up. 

This confluence has cable industry engineers feeling heady about their competitive posture. ATX found only about 20% of respondents cited fiber-to-the-home providers as a serious competitive threat. That’s down from 27% a year before. 

Holograms and Health

Cable’s rivals maintain a different viewpoint. AT&T, which hopes to have all-fiber lines in place in front of roughly one-fourth of U.S. addresses — some 30 million — by 2025, is convinced fiber’s superior technical characteristics will win the day, possibly sooner than some theorize. CEO John Stankey, talking with investment analysts at a Goldman Sachs conference in September, said AT&T continues to steal away customers as it plows forward with ambitious network upgrades. 

Through the first half of 2023, AT&T added close to 523,000 fiber-broadband connections, bringing its total to 7.7 million. Some of those net gains are displacements of aging digital subscriber lines, but to Stankey’s point, there is almost certainly some success being had at cable’s expense. “The game is about taking share in those footprints (where) we build fiber,” Stankey said. “And we’re successfully doing that.” 

The ultimate arbiter of the network wars will be customers who make buying decisions across the roughly 112 million or so U.S. addresses where broadband data networks are up, running and increasingly ingesting gobs of digital data. As of the second quarter of 2023, the average U.S. residential broadband user was consuming slightly more than 503 gigabytes of digital data in a month, a record amount that compares with just under 491 gigabytes in mid-2022 and 271 GB in 2019. The estimates come from a detailed quarterly usage report published by Jersey City, New Jersey-based OpenVault, which makes a living by optimizing broadband network performance and parsing rolled-up usage analytics provided by customers serving close to 60 million end users. 

OpenVault founder and CEO Mark Trudeau, who has watched the usage numbers climb steadily year after year, points out that bandwidth-gobbling applications like 4K video and video gaming are dovetailing with ongoing video cord-cutting and a rise in the number of connected devices people and businesses are using. Because of these trends, data consumption is bound to keep rising. “I don’t think it’s ever going to stop,” Trudeau said.

This shared belief that bandwidth demand will continue to soar is what’s compelling the latest wave of upgrades and fiber buildouts. The intention is for providers to stay in front of the curve by retooling today’s networks as the world edges toward a possible all-fiber future. It’s an agenda rooted in hard data and an appreciation for historical usage trends, but it also hinges on educated guesswork. “We don’t even know what the next applications are going to be,” Trudeau said. 

Needed: Bigger, Faster Networks

What is certain is that new apps and use cases will depend on a rising supply of bandwidth. Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of the Cable-Tec Expo’s organizer, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, points to futuristic applications like holographic displays — imagine a near-lifelike version of Taylor Swift rocking out in the living room — that might require as much as 700 megabits of bandwidth per second over a single video channel.  These sorts of new-age visual apps will be paired with advancements in networked healthcare and home automation to support emerging societal shifts including the aging-in-place movement, Dzuban believes. Meaning: The world will need bigger, faster networks. 

Besides new data-engulfing apps, there are more gizmos than ever sipping from the broadband pipe. A cybersecurity report published last December by Comcast found there were an average of 15 connected devices in homes served by the MSO’s residential data network. More are coming: The networked “smart thermostat” market alone is pegged to grow at a 17% compound annual growth rate through 2028, cable equipment supplier CommScope pointed out in a recent analysis. 

Besides tracking health care and other applications, Dzuban also is keen on a new flavor of “convergence” that unites cable’s wireline broadband capabilities with the industry’s fast-growing mobile communications business. Devising ways to unify these networking concepts so that users perceive almost no gap between the two is a focal point for SCTE, which will stage a “Mobility Pavilion” at the upcoming conference. As the two technologies intertwine, the CableLabs subsidiary is also focused on “operationalizing” the industry’s tech advancements — transferring knowledge and skills throughout member organizations — as a way to achieve competitive superiority.  

Revving up broadband speeds and ramping up operational acumen aren’t the only boxes cable engineers are working to check off. Capital also is being plowed into better back-office software systems, more agile set-top boxes and business-services enhancements like software-defined networking and physical premise security. There’s also renewed action happening around the advertising sector, where the long-sought dream of dynamic ad insertion — imposing different commercials into different slots in real time, based on viewer characteristics — is gaining momentum. 

Rising investment here is partly an outgrowth of the Internet, which has taught a generation of media consumers to expect personalized content experiences, David Solomon, president and CEO of cable advertising provider Viamedia, said. “Consumers want flexibility in how and where they consume content, and they expect personalized ad experiences,” he said.

That and a better chance of actually enjoying a first date. 

Comcast said it has successfully tested the final component need to begin trials of its next-generation cable network. 

The No. 1 U.S. cable operator will now begin formal trials of its “10G” Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 network tech, with the aim of starting deployment late next year. Comcast hopes to have the technology distributed into 50 million customer homes and businesses by the end of 2025.

The announcement was made coinciding with the cable industry’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo trade show, which resumed a live format this week in Comcast's hometown of Philadelphia. (Our own Mike Farrell is on the ground covering the event for Multichannel News.)

With Full Duplex (FDX) DOCSIS 4.0, Comcast said it can now deliver symmetrical speeds of 4 gigabits per second, vastly improving the performance of latency-sensitive applications including gaming, videoconferencing and telehealth.

The tech falls into a catchall marketing umbrella that the cable industry has been calling “10G” — a kind of Nigel Tufnel-esque response to the wireless business' 5G push.  

Also: SCTE Cable-Tec Expo: Home Networks Are the New Industry Battleground, Panel Says

For the final test, Comcast said it used FDX amplifiers built on a reference design developed by Broadcom. The test successfully demonstrated the ability to conduct download speeds of 6 Gbps and upload speeds of 4 Gbps across a configuration that places six amps between the home and the node, otherwise known as a “N+6” setup.

This is quite improvement over FDX iterations a few years back that required N+0 configurations to work effectively. Cable operators largely balked at the feasibility of dense node configurations extending so far out into the network. 

“With this test, we’ve gone beyond proof of concept. We know we can use this technology to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical services throughout our network and, in fact, we’re confident we have the potential to go even faster,” said Elad Nafshi, executive VP and chief network officer at Comcast Cable. “With the key components of 10G tested and proven — and our digital, virtualized network architecture ready to support them — we turn our attention to extending the full benefit of 10G directly to our customers, including lower latency, greater reliability, and enhanced security.”

At Cable-Tec Expo this week, Comcast has also been touting advanced progress with virtual “Distributed Access Architecture” (DAA) network tech, as it builds its FDX DOCSIS 4.0 apparatus over a largely software-driven infrastructure. 

Comcast said it has recently accelerated deployment of configurations that turn its network’s bulky CMTS backbone appliances into software running on generic x86 servers. ■

While the industry grapples with labor shortages for skilled fiber technicians as incumbents and competitors alike build out massive fiber networks, Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson and Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries told the opening general session of the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo that the so-called “talent gap” is largely dependent on the projects at hand.

“There is so much activity going on all at once,” Watson told a Tuesday audience at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. “Every operator is dealing with not only a significant upgrade to the networks, all mapped out, anticipated to improve multiple assets of connectivity, but there are also new things like new passings. …There’s a bit of a crunch in terms of the sheer amount of people needed to pull all of this off.”

Also read: Home Networks Are the New Industry Battleground (Expo) 

Watson said providers that are changing their networks, or large components thereof, to virtualize and add capability need a different set of skills.

“It does require that people get trained up on how to do this,” Watson said. “Our people are adaptable. The front-line leadership is on their toes, working hard, and they’re dealing with all of these changes.”

At Liberty Global, which derives about half of its revenue from mobile, the needs are different. Fries said LGI isn’t having much trouble finding people with experience in 5G or other mobile tech, but he sees a gap in attracting people who can help the company move into new businesses.

“It’s the things we want to do,” Fries said. “We need more data experts, we’re finding it hard to find  people who can help us get us into new revenue streams.”

For most cable companies, 10G is one of those new products with the most potential, and it’s also one of the main themes of the Cable-Tec Expo. Fries said 10G is the technology he is most excited about because he’s already deploying it: Liberty Global has rolled out a 10G product in Switzerland for $50 per month.

Comcast hasn’t rolled out 10G yet, but earlier this month it launched a multi-year initiative to bring multi-gig internet to 34 cities by the end of 2025. Comcast intends to eventually put multi-gig service in front of 50 million homes and businesses.

“It really pieces together an efficient and effective network evolution for us,” Watson said.

Fries added that the European competitive landscape — he estimated that nearly 100% of Liberty Global’s markets will be overbuilt with fiber over the next three years by another company — makes the 10G evolution a necessity for him.

“It’s urgent for us,” Fries said. “It’s not a ‘nice to have’ — it’s life or death.”

Both Watson and Fries thanked the tech side of the business for keeping the networks running during the pandemic, a period that put an unprecedented strain on the infrastructure as usage ballooned as most of the country had to work and learn from home.

While both Fries and Watson praised cable for stepping up to the challenge, Fries said the goodwill associated with cable broadband during the pandemic is also an opportunity the industry shouldn’t let pass.

“Let’s bottle that magic,” Fries said. “During that pandemic, not only did we rise to the occasion and our networks did everything that we hoped they would do, we built up a lot better relationship with our consumers, and the businesses we serve, hospitals and regulators and government. That’s a special thing we have to hold onto. We’ve got to build on that. We can’t just take that for granted.” ■

Comcast Cable said at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2022 Monday that it plans to double its network energy efficiency by 2030, cutting the electricity per consumed terabyte of data in half.

“We’re on the path to a greener internet,” Comcast Cable president of Technology, Product, Experience Charlie Herrin said in a statement. “The smart technologies powering our new network architecture are transforming how data is delivered, providing the industry’s best combination of speed, coverage, and control — all more sustainably.”

Comcast has been investing in a nationwide network transformation to virtual, cloud-based technologies that offer faster broadband speeds, greater reliability, and improved energy efficiency. The new virtualized platform includes more centralized locations for headends, hubs, and data centers that are more efficient than previous technologies, requiring less hardware, less space and less energy per byte.

Comcast has set a goal to be carbon neutral by 2035 for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, or the direct and indirect emissions it owns and controls, across its global operations. With purchased electricity accounting for the majority of its emissions, Comcast is investing in clean, renewable energy to power its network and operations, as well as shifting to newer, more energy-efficient technologies and facilities to deliver more data with less energy per byte.

To underscore the company’s commitment to the environment, Comcast has purchased and gifted renewable energy certificates to power Cable-Tec Expo with 100% clean energy.

“Achieving our carbon neutral goal will require our business to work harder and smarter, and that goes for the network itself,” Herrin added. “We’re proud to make network energy efficiency a priority among our peers and suppliers, and to demonstrate the role our industry has in creating a more sustainable future.” ■ 

The SCTE Cable-Tec Expo will return to an in-person event for the first time since 2019 on  September 19-22, and attendees are expected to descend on Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center with broadband on their minds. 

Cable-Tec Expo, the premier event in the cable technology realm, is eager to please. After two years of virtual contact, members will be able to meet face to face, reigniting friendships and deal-making as cable faces one of its biggest transitions ever.

Streaming is quickly taking the place of traditional video and cable’s once-robust cash cow — broadband — is feeling pressure. As new technologies like Fixed Wireless Access and aggressive fiber buildouts seek to offer service to more and more rural customers, operators and vendors alike are scrambling to find a way to efficiently and sufficiently meet demand.

Cable-Tec Expo has long been a showcase for new technologies, but it’s also a gathering place for tech executives and workers to learn about new developments and exchange ideas.

In an interview, Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers president and CEO Mark Dzuban said that while there are a host of technologies that will be discussed at the show, topics like 10G broadband will be top of mind.

The Expo will tackle 10G in three separate sessions: 

• The 10G Challenge: A fireside chat with CableLabs president and CEO Phil McKinney and Corning Optical Communications emerging applications marketing development manager Cate McNaught; 

• Navigating the 10G Journey: A trio of experts — CableLabs distinguished technologist Karthik Sundaresan, Volpe Firm founder and CEO Brady Volpe and CommScope engineering fellow John Ulm — will discuss the what, when and why of the technology in a panel moderated by Shaw Communications senior VP, wireline technology and strategy Damian Poltz;

• Plant Design for the Future of 10G and DOCSIS 4.0: A panel moderated by Cox Communications director of outside plant engineering and architectures Mark Adams and including Comcast VP of plant maintenance Michael Spaulding and Shaw Communications standards specialist Kyle Holman will discuss and evaluate the emerging 10G OSP (outside plant) architecture.

The theme of this year’s show is “Creating Infinite Possibilities.” It’s co-chaired by Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson and Liberty Global vice chairman and CEO Mike Fries, who will kick off the event’s Opening Session on September 20. Later, Comcast Cable president of technology, product and experience Charlie Herrin will talk about how industry platforms continue to evolve customer experiences worldwide. Rounding out the session, technology leaders will join a fireside chat to cast a vision of the future, closing with an announcement from CableLabs president and CEO Phil McKinney and an invitation from Dzuban to visit the exhibitor floor.

There will also be six dedicated sessions (three live and three prerecorded) in Spanish, as well as the International Cable-Tec Games and member forums like Exponential, a CableLabs forum where members can exchange ideas and connect with experts. 

No Such Thing as Overkill

Several cable operators have unveiled plans to offer multi-gig speeds even as they are still making 1 Gigabit per second broadband available across their footprints. And while there have been some critics that have called 10 Gig service overkill — 100 Megabits per second is usually ample bandwidth to handle most current applications — Dzuban said 10G is the future. 

Dzuban pointed to telemedicine applications, like remote diagnostics, using facial recognition to detect strokes and the ability to offer medical service to those hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital, as uses for 10G services.

“We have shortfalls of doctors and physicians today,” Dzuban said. “How do we solve that problem? It’s with video.”  

Cable broadband subscriber growth has been on a downward slide for months. It seemed to be near its nadir in the second quarter, after the two largest operators — Comcast and Charter Communications — reported flat growth and a loss of 21,000 high-speed data customers, respectively, in the period. That sent analysts back to their calculators, rejiggering expectations for full-year and beyond growth expectations. 

At the same time, small and medium­sized operators and telcos have been aggressively building out fiber in smaller markets, taking advantage of federal programs that are seeking to make broadband availability ubiquitous. 

The federal government has earmarked about $42.5 billion through the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment fund (BEAD), to be distributed via states to projects aimed at bringing broadband to more regular markets. That is expected to increase competition, as well as expand the market.

In a February white paper titled U.S. Broadband Blitz: Timing and Impact, the Fiber Broadband Association estimated that fiber access to broadband households would increase from 55 million homes in 2021 to 112 million by the end of 2026. Subscribers to fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services are expected to rise from 25.6 million in 2021 to 65 million by 2026.

While the FBA said federal money usually comes with conditions like price controls, more government oversight and strict deadlines for service, and larger companies (with the exception of Charter Communications) haven’t participated in the programs yet, $43 billion could cause everyone to take a closer look.

“In any case, the competitive landscape is certain to undergo some big changes,” the FBA wrote.

Competition already is beginning to have an effect. In the second quarter, large cable operators, which have held a decades-long stranglehold on broadband subscriber growth, reported their first customer losses ever. Comcast was flat in the period but Charter shed 21,000 broadband subscribers and Altice USA lost another 40,000 in the period. And though some analysts believe they may return to growth in the third quarter, they could finish the year at a deficit for the first time since introducing the product.

In addition to fiber competition, fixed-wireless offerings from telcos like T-Mobile and Verizon Communications are adding to cable broadband subscriber erosion. 

Market research firm Dell’Oro Group upped its forecast for fiber spending in late July based on the surge of projects, predicting that passive optical network (PON) equipment revenue would rise from $9.3 billion in 2021 to $13.6 billion in 2026; fixed wireless CPE revenue should surge to $5.1 billion by 2026, fueled by shipments of 5G sub-6 GHz and 5G Millimeter Wave units; and revenue for cable distributed access equipment (Virtual CCAP, Remote PHY Devices, Remote MACPHY Devices, and Remote OLTs) should reach nearly $1.3 B by 2026, as operators ramp their DOCSIS 4.0 and fiber deployments.

Fiber Worker Shortage

With that expansion has also come a worker crunch. Eleven industry organizations wrote a letter to Congress in 2021 saying that at least 250,000 fiber workers needed to be trained in the next three years just to meet that demand. 

SCTE is one of several organizations that have stepped in to address that worker crunch, launching the Workforce 2027 initiative this year to help address the problem. Workforce 2027 is a five-year program that focuses on building skills and bringing in new resources to help the industry compete in the marketplace. SCTE is working with companies to help develop training programs to educate the next wave of fiber techs. 

“That’s a big deal because what’s happened is the evolution of our networks requires this current state of the art to be developed in the skill sets, not only for new employees, but existing employees that need to maintain and operate the networks,” Dzuban said. 

The SCTE chief noted that the need for training isn’t just to satisfy the surge in construction, but to replace long-time workers who are nearing retirement age. 

“If you think about it, a lot of folks who put in 25 or 30 years, there’s been a lot of retirements this year and we’re going to see [more] next year,” Dzuban added. “So how do we fill those voids? We’ve got to develop the skill sets.”

What’s Up, DOCSIS?

While companies search to fill the fiber worker void, some in the industry have feared that one of the technologies that was supposed to drive the transition to 10G — CableLabs’ DOCSIS 4.0 standard — may be taking a back seat. But Dzuban said the standard is needed now more than ever. 

One of DOCSIS 4.0’s biggest selling points is that it can deliver speeds of up to 10 Gbps over existing coaxial cable plant, meaning there’s no major rebuild required. So even if a company is building a fiber network that could take several years to finish, it can offer those blistering speeds much sooner.

“Coax is still very healthy and viable delivering up to 10 gigabits and more, so that infrastructure is in place,” Dzuban said. “From a business perspective, I think it can certainly stand on its own. But there’s a migration. It’s like a toolbox. Every operating company has a different problem it is trying to solve. CableLabs has done a great job of saying, ‘You know, we’ve got fiber capabilities, we’ve got DOCSIS 4.0 capabilities, we have a spectrum of tools we can use to compete in the marketplace.’ ”

Other Hot Tech

Yvette Kanouff, a longtime cable technology executive and currently a partner in former Cisco chairman John Chambers’s venture-capital fund J2C Ventures, said the technology pendulum is beginning to swing from products as a differentiator toward customer experience, adding that “technologies that automate, self-heal[ing] applications and networks, make experiences faster and easier are critical.” Just as tech advancements helped shape the current cable landscape, she said, they have the same potential on the customer-care side.

“[W]e now have AI-based solutions that can help find issues and solutions much faster than traditional ways,” Kanouff said. “This makes every agent a great agent that can focus more on the customer.  Embracing social channels is another key area of focus.  I could go on for hours on this topic, it will define our successes.”

The veteran technologist also believes that despite the competition from telcos and other companies, cable can still come out on top, adding that “the question is who will be bold enough to lead in some of the amazing innovation happening in this space.”  

Dzuban was equally excited about AI. 

“The intent here of our networks is to be able to determine a problem before the customer does,” Dzuban said. “And I think that is well underway. There’s a lot of work being done, but stay tuned.”

Despite the challenges, Dzuban is optimistic about the future. 

“I think our industry has huge upside and I think that this is the beginning of things we can do that you’ll start to see,” he continued. “In fact, I think we don’t always give ourselves enough credit for what we’ve done. This is the beginning, this is not the end.” ▪️

The Cable TV Pioneers has selected 21 new members for induction into its Class of 2022, which will take place September 19 in Philadelphia prior to the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo.

“The diversity and accomplishments of this class are noteworthy and deserving of Pioneer status,” Cable TV Pioneers chair Yvette Kanouff said in a statement. “These new members from Founders and Presidents to Engineers, Marketers and Ad Sales executives represent the best of what our industry offers. They truly are indicative of the achievers whose entrepreneurial spirit, leadership and innovation have contributed to the success of our industry and our communities.”

The inductees are men and women involved in all aspects of the cable TV business, including CEOs, sales, marketing and technology executives and consultants. They are: Dale Ardizzone, chief operating officer and corporate secretary, INSP LLC; Janice Arouh, president, Network Distribution, Allen Media Group; Nomi Bergman, investor and strategic adviser, Advance; John Bickham, vice chairman, Charter Communications; Shelley Brindle, mayor of the Town of Westfield, New Jersey; Ralph Brown, founder and principal, Brown Wolf Consulting; William (Bill) Connors, president, Xfinity, Comcast Cable; Matthew Deprey, VP of finance, C-SPAN; John Dowd, retired VP of operations, Dycom Industries; Jeffrey Finkelstein, chief access scientist, Cox Communications; Joseph Floyd, retired president, Midcontinent; Camilla Formica, chief program officer, The Cable Center; Joseph Guariglia, retired VP, Comcast Cable; Charlie Herrin, president of the Technology, Product, Experience organization within Comcast Cable; Randy Lykes, chief technology officer, Viamedia; Ned Mountain, former president, Wegener Communications; Allison Olien, VP and general manager, Comcast Technology Solutions; John Piazza, president and CEO, Greyfox Services, Inc.; Michelle Rice, president, TV One Networks; Richard Rioboli, EVP, CTO and CIO for Comcast Cable, and Theresa Sauerwein, western sales manager, Radiant Communications. 

The Cable TV Pioneers was founded in 1966 during the NCTA Convention in Miami, Florida. The original group of 21 entrepreneurs has grown to more than 700 men and women over the past 50 years. Photos, articles and video of the 54th Anniversary celebration, previous banquets, as well as member rosters, are available here. ■

With vaccination levels approaching 70% of the adult population, several cable and broadcast conventions are planning on making the 2021 slate at least partly an in-person experience for the first time since 2019.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 66% of U.S. residents aged 18 and older have taken at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 57% are fully vaccinated. 

The National Association of Broadcasters is kicking off its NAB Show Oct. 9-13 in Las Vegas. Actor and comedian Jim Gaffigan is slated to perform live at the NAB Show Sunday Kick Off at 4:15 PST on Oct. 10.

“After a difficult year and unfortunate hiatus for the NAB Show, we look forward to celebrating the opening of the show floor with the ever talented and hilarious Jim Gaffigan,” NAB president and CEO Gordon Smith said in a press release. "His notoriously fun and entertaining performance is ideal for this momentous occasion as we reunite and re-engage in Las Vegas.”

Also as part of the event, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt anchor and award-winning journalist Lester Holt will be inducted into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame on Oct. 11.

Like some other organizations, NAB was forced to move the dates for its 2021 confab because of the pandemic. The 2021 event was originally scheduled for April 11-14, but it was decided in September 2020 to move the event to October.

NAB has said it is going ahead still with the NAB Show in 2022 on April 23-27 in Las Vegas.

The Society of Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable-TEC Expo will be held Oct. 11-14 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta and will be a hybrid in-person/virtual event, according to organizers. Last year’s Cable-TEC Expo broke records with more than 3,000 people attending the Opening General Session of the all-virtual event. 

The SCTE also said it will hold a joint forum linking the Cable-TEC Expo with the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology (BEIT) Conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 12. 

According to SCTE, joint sessions will include live, interconnected presentations and audience questions originating from both Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta and the BEIT Conference in Las Vegas, with hosts at each location to field questions and moderate the conversations. The dual-site event will include live panels and interactive discussions that explore timely topics, such as dynamic ad insertion and NextGen TV.

Global marketing organization DPAA said it will hold its Video Everywhere Summit in-person at the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan on Oct. 12.

“Regions are opening up and it’s time for us to all reconnect in-person,” DPAA president and CEO Barry Frey said in a press release “After careful consideration and talking with members, brand and agency leadership we decided to hold this year’s Summit in-person as our community needs to reconnect in person.”

IBC, the big international content and technology convention in Amsterdam, is slated for an in-person gathering Dec. 3-6 at the RAI Amsterdam complex. The theme is Come Together Again.

The 2022 Consumer Electronics Show, which was all-digital in January 2021, is expected to be a hybrid in-person and virtual event, slated for Jan 5-8 in Las Vegas.

“We’re thrilled to return to Las Vegas – home to CES for more than 40 years – and look forward to seeing many new and returning faces,” Consumer Technology Association president Gary Shapiro said in a press release in April. “Hundreds of executives have told us how much they need CES to meet new and existing customers, find partners, reach media and discover innovation.”

As was reported earlier, The Cable Center’s induction ceremony for the 2021 class of Cable TV Pioneers will be held  on Oct. 11 in Atlanta, as part of the SCTE-Cable-TEC Expo.

The Cable Center’s 2021 Cable Hall of Fame celebration will be held virtually, on Oct. 20.

The Cable TV Pioneers is looking for nominations for the class of 2021, which would be inducted in a ceremony on Monday, Oct. 11, ahead of the opening of the the SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo. The nomination application is available online at CableTVPioneers.com. The application period will end April 30, 2021.

Cable Pioneers members who have been in the group for three years may nominate men and women who have a minimum of 20 years' industry experience; have demonstrated outstanding leadership and have contributed to the growth of the industry and their communities.

Also Read: 54th Cable TV Pioneers Class Scales Industry Heights

The group is developing plans along with the SCTE to conduct the 55th annual induction ceremony ahead of the Cable-Tec Expo 2021, the convention slated to be held at the World Congress Center in Atlanta Oct. 12-14. “While we were pleased and delighted to partner with C-SPAN to televise and stream the Class of 2020, induction, we’re looking forward to resuming our live presentation of the new Class of Pioneers” Cable TV Pioneers chair Dave Fellows said in a statement.

NEW ORLEANS — The Cable TV Pioneers have welcomed 25 new industry veterans into their ranks.

Eighteen men and seven women were welcomed into the group at the 53rd Annual Cable Pioneers Banquet held in New Orleans Oct. 2, in conjunction with the SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo.

“This year’s class includes remarkable men and women who currently contribute to the growth and innovation of the industry as well as those who served the business in the past,” the group said in a statement.

Founded in 1966 during the NCTA convention in Miami, the original fledgling group of 21 entrepreneurs who gathered to draw attention to the contributions of cable television’s tenacious creators has grown to more than 700 men and women over the past five decades-plus.

To become a Cable TV Pioneer, a candidate must be nominated, have a second sponsor and have a minimum of 20 years of direct involvement in the cable industry, demonstrate leadership and progress in their positions and have contributed to their communities.

BRIAN PATRICK BANE

Brian Bane is vice president of network implementation/ construction for Comcast Cable, a position he has held since 2014. His responsibilities include outside plant construction and implementation strategies for the next generation of fiber networks across the company’s national footprint.

Bane got his start in the industry with Prime Cable in 1982, working his way to plant maintenance and headend technician in Marlboro, Massachusetts. Six years later, he moved to Continental Cablevision in Massachusetts as technical operations manager.

In 1996, Bane was promoted to the position of director of Open Settlement Protocol (OSP) Networks for Continental’s New England region, where he managed a team of 250 technicians and engineers. When Comcast acquired the operations in AT&T’s purchase of Continental successor MediaOne Group, Bane was named director of network construction for the MSO’s Northeast Division.

Bane is a member of the New England chapter of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and was awarded its Bill Riley Personal Achievement Award in 2014. In addition to being an active United Way volunteer, he is a member of “Team Bane,” which honors the memory of Mary Murray Bane. He has personally raised more than $50,000 through Team Bane cycling, riding in the 200-mile Pan-Mass Challenge. The ride supports adult and pediatric cancer patients by funding life-saving research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

JOHN R. ‘DICK’ BEARD

Dick Beard is director of business development for Ervin Cable Construction, where he has responsibility for sales and business relations.

Beard’s cable journey began in 1972 with Sammons Communications as a system technician. In 1973, he moved to Continental Cablevision as chief technician for Quincy and Lincoln, Illinois, and spent the next twelve years working with their engineering team, reaching the position of director of engineering for Illinois and Missouri.

In 1985, he founded Brentec, a design and construction company, before returning to Continental five years later as regional director of engineering for Midwestern operations. In 2003, Beard assumed his current position with Ervin Construction.

Beard is a senior member of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers/International Society of Broadband Experts and serves on the boards of the Gateway and Five Rivers chapters. He is a member of the SCTE Hall of Fame, the SCTE “Circle of Eagles” and currently serves as an associate board member of ACA Connects.

He has coached multiple youth sports teams and has been recognized by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society with the MS Corporate Achievers Leadership Award.

THOMAS J. CLOONAN, PH.D.

Tom Cloonan is the chief technology officer, network solutions for CommScope (formerly Arris), a position he has held since 2002. He is responsible for specifying architectural features within network solutions platforms and all next-generation products within the company. From 1982 to 1999, Cloonan was a distinguished member of the technical staff and technical manager for AT&T Lucent Bell Labs, where he led multiple design teams. Following his Bell Labs tenure, he was one of three founding members of Cadant, a startup company dedicated to the design and manufacture of routers and cable modem termination systems.

Cloonan is widely recognized throughout the broadband industry for his initiatives in developing and deploying advanced technologies which include the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP), Channel Bonding and DOCSIS. He holds more than 60 patents in a broad set of industry related areas, has published more than 130 papers and is co-author of four technical journals.

Cloonan is a significant contributor to the SCTE Engineering Council, IEEE Computer Society, CableLabs and other organizations. He has been a volunteer teacher as part of the National Junior Achievement program and volunteers at the West Suburban Humane Society shelter. He has mentored countless employees, students and new authors while gaining new industry patents, publishing white papers and sharing his knowledge as a speaker at technical conferences around the world.

MARC W. COHEN

Marc Cohen is executive vice president for sales and marketing at Denver-based Evolution Digital, where he is currently spearheading the company’s entry into the end-to-end IPTV solution space.

Cohen entered the cable industry in 1985 with Continental Cablevision as a sales representative in one of the company’s newly-built Michigan systems. Following the Continental tenure, Marc spent three years as sales supervisor for Comcast in Pontiac, Michigan. Subsequent career advancements took him to North Carolina for a management position with Vision Cable and later to Hauser Communications in Virginia, where his responsibilities included managing residential and business sales and negotiating right-of-entry agreements. Cohen parlayed this experience with his next career move as VP of sales and marketing for Mid-Atlantic Communications. Following the company’s sale to Comcast in 2000, Cohen and Mid-Atlantic chief financial officer John Long co-founded Longview Communications.

Cohen is an active member of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, SCTE, ACA Connects and the National Cable Television Cooperative and served as VP of the Carolina Cable Co-Op. He has served on the Cancer Research Foundation executive committee in Virginia and funded a free hot lunch program for a local elementary school from 2009 to 2014.

JOHN DICANDILO

John DiCandilo is vice president of business development for Dycom Industries, where he is responsible for key MSO relationships and promoting cost-saving solutions for customers. Prior to joining Dycom, DiCandillo spent 22 years with CommScope, responsible for first sales in the Mid-Atlantic Region and then serving as vice president of sales for the Northeast Region from 2006 to 2018.

DiCandillo served on the board of the SCTE’s Delaware Valley chapter, working on membership growth initiatives. He currently serves on the board of the SCTE Foundation, which is dedicated to the advancement of business education for industry professionals. He has been a featured speaker at many SCTE Chapter Leadership conferences and is involved with many alumni volunteer projects at his alma mater, Drexel University.

DUANE C. DICK

Duane Dick is senior partner and co-founder of Sand Cherry Associates, an award-winning consulting firm that supports top companies in cable, broadband, wireless and media. He began his cable career in 1996 as a graduate intern with US West Media Group after earning his MBA from Georgetown University’s School of Business. He was soon heading market strategy development for MediaOne Group and AT&T Broadband. When MediaOne Group was acquired by AT&T Broadband, he took on the primary responsibility for the integration of Tele-Communications Inc. and MediaOne.

He co-founded Sand Cherry Associates in 2001 and twice received industry innovation awards from CTAM. Sand Cherry, a Colorado Top 50 company, was the WICT Rocky Mountain Chapter’s Industry Partner of the Year. An active member and leader in multiple industry associations at the local, national and international level, Dick has served as a board member of CTAM’s Rocky Mountain Chapter and co-chair of CTAM’s National Chapters Council.

Dick and his wife, Michelle, both military veterans, support the Wounded Warrior Project and other veterans’ organizations. They are patrons and annual sponsors of the acclaimed Colorado Springs Youth Symphony.

MARTY DOMINGUEZ

Marty Dominguez joined C-SPAN in September of 1989 as accounting supervisor, shortly after obtaining her MBA from Tulane University in New Orleans. Dominguez would soon become finance manager, a post she held until December of 1994, when she was promoted to national accounts manager. In this role, she represented C-SPAN with MSOs, managing carriage issues, contractual relations and marketing opportunities. In October of 1999, Dominguez was named director of marketing and in 2005 was tapped as VP of marketing, overseeing all consumer marketing, print media, community outreach and election-related promotional events.

Dominguez has been a member of CTAM for 25 years, serving on committees and working groups to foster stronger partnerships with affiliates. In 2017, Women in Cable & Telecommunications recognized Dominguez with its Touchstones of Leadership “Inspire” award, and she is consistently listed among the most influential minorities in cable by Cablefax.

Born in Paraguay, Dominguez became a U.S. citizen in 2008. She spends her free time devoted to family and assisting her aging parents, but still makes the time to mentor young associates and to volunteer with animal welfare and pet adoption services.

BARRY R. ELSON

Barry Elson entered the cable industry in 1980 as vice president, market and product development for United Cable, where his franchising team won 16 of 31 competitive markets. In 1983, Elson joined Cox Communications as vice president of Western operations, was soon promoted to senior VP and in 1992 was named executive VP for all Cox operations.

In 2003, after two years of consulting for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs on their cable television and telco strategies, he moved to Telewest Global as chairman and CEO and led a successful turnaround of the communications firm creating $2.8 billion in shareholder value in only 27 months.

Elson graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, received his MBA at Cornell University and served in Southeast Asia as a Signal Corps first lieutenant. During this military service, he ran the world’s first mobile satellite station using Satcom 1 and Satcom 2. After Cornell, Elson became the youngest general manager at Owens-Corning Fiberglass and was the first to bring fiber optics to the worldwide market in 1971.

Elson served on C-SPAN’s board from 1986 to 1989 and on CTAM’s board, including a term as chairman, from 1989 to 1994. A two-time cancer survivor, he has funded three cancer research projects and been honored by The V Foundation for Cancer Research for his work mentoring more than 50 cancer patients nationwide.

JAMES L. FAUST

Jim Faust was the founder and first president of Zenith Cable Equipment Corp., where he produced the first addressable set-top boxes and, in partnership with Viacom, the first commercial broadband modem. In June of 1966, he joined Scientific-Atlanta as vice president for international operations and in June of 1990 was named VP of international operations for General Instrument. In January of 1995, Jim was named president of Antec Network Systems and later corporate director for Arris International.

In 2001, Faust again pioneered a new technology, video streaming, creating ClearBand. He later moved to Optinel, a major player in Gigabit Ethernet fiber transport. Faust also served as a director of ATX.

When taking time away from building companies, Jim served as a village trustee for his hometown of Golf, Illinois, and also served on the board of trustees of Lake Forest Graduate School. Faust was a team member for the United Way in Northern Illinois and with his wife, Helen, was instrumental in the establishment of a Special Needs Trust in Palm Coast, Florida.

Jim is a member of the board of trustees and heads the audit committee for one of the oldest colleges in Illinois, Blackburn College, founded in 1837.

JOHN FELLET

John Fellet was CEO and managing director of Sky TV New Zealand until his retirement in February. His 44-year cable career began in 1975 as Executive Director of the Arizona Cable Television Association. After two years of advocating for cable operators in his home state, Fellet joined Storer Communications as a regional finance manager for new-build operations in Arizona and Colorado. In 1988, he was promoted to lead the franchising, construction and operations of the company’s West Valley systems in Glendale, Peoria, Sun City and Goodyear, Arizona, where he supervised the build out of Storer’s first dual cable two-way plant.

Following Storer’s exit from Arizona through a major trade of systems with Times Mirror, Fellet moved to United Cable to oversee the construction and operations in Scottsdale. His tenure at United would continue with promotions to ever-larger systems in California until he joined Tele-Communications in 1989 as director of new ventures. TCI’s international arm, Liberty Media, tapped Fellet to assist in the development of a pay TV operation in New Zealand. What was meant to be a short-term assignment continued for 28 years, the last 18 as CEO.

A member of the Arizona Cable TV Hall of Fame, Fellet has served on the boards of the Arizona and California Cable Communications Associations and for 20 years on the New Zealand Broadcasters Council. John was instrumental in forming the Baseball Federation of New Zealand, coached two men’s national teams and in 2017 was elected to New Zealand’s baseball Hall of Fame. The Howick Hawks baseball complex was renamed Fellet Field in his honor.

JOHN C. FENGER

John Christian (“Chris”) Fenger is executive vice president and chief operating officer for Patriot Media, parent of RCN, Grande Communications and Wave Broadband. His introduction to cable operations was in January of 1980 with NewChannels Corp. in northern Alabama. A year later, Chris was named marketing manager for Rogers Cablesystems in Syracuse, N.Y. In March of 1985, Warner Amex tapped Fenger to be general manager in New Hampshire, tasked with improving operations and growing the system’s subscriber base.

From the mid-1980s through most of the 1990s, Fenger handled senior management assignments with Simmons and Marcus Cable before being recruited in October of 1998 to become senior vice president of Charter Communications’s Western division. Fenger was named president of Bright House Networks’s Central Florida division in October of 2003 and senior VP of operations for Patriot Media’s RCN group in 2011.

Fenger was an active member of the Maryland/Delaware Cable Communications Association and lobbied in Congress for the association and his company during the 1992 and 1996 Cable Act deliberations. During his time with Rogers Cablesystems, he led the company’s United Way campaign and later served as the vice chairman of the Central Florida chapter of the Red Cross and as vice chairman of a Central Florida NPR/PBS broadcast outlet, where he appeared on-air for several fundraising campaigns.

RALPH GALIONE III

Ralph Galione is enterprise account manager, global accounts, for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with responsibility for all Comcast entities. He joined the cable industry in 1981 as a project analyst for Warner Amex/ QUBE. Galione moved to Scientific-Atlanta in 1985 as account manager and was later promoted to VP of sales.

In 2009, Galione moved to Arris as VP of sales, with oversight responsibility for a team of 11 account executives and sales engineers. In 2010, he joined Pace America, where he once again led the Comcast account team. In 2012, he became Neustar’s senior sales director for North America. He then joined HPE in 2016.

Galione was nominated by the S-A senior management team for the CTAM Executive Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2006. While with Neustar, he served as co-representative for the company’s WICT sponsorship. Galione contributed to the cable industry’s fundraising efforts by participating in the Battle of the Bands as lead singer of Ralphie & the Streamers at the Cable Show in 2008 and 2009. He currently serves as HPE’s representative to the Adaptive Spirit Program ad is responsible for coordinating the company’s activities at the inspirational gathering.

Galione was an active member of Wayne Presbyterian Church for 16 years and was a member of the choir. He regularly participated in local outreach events and funded several church initiatives. He served as a Little League baseball coach and leader of the annual fundraiser for the Mother Seton Scholarship fund.

JEAN PRICE GAY

Jean Gay is vice president, global customer financial services for CommScope. She has spent her entire 43-year cable career with the company. She joined CommScope in 1976 as an accounting clerk working with customer receivables. She was promoted to credit supervisor in 1980 and to customer financial services manager in 1986. In her current role, Gay is responsible for directing Commscope’s worldwide credit and collections functions for annual sales in excess of $10 billion.

Jean also serves as board chairperson of the CS Credit Union, with total assets of about $30 million. Gay played a significant role in the establishment of the international division in 1989, expansion of facilities around the globe and numerous mergers and acquisitions. While maintaining a full work schedule and raising a family, she earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration and her MBA in 1995. She is a WICT Betsy Magness Institute inductee from the seventh class and the first member from the manufacturing segment of the industry. She served on the board of CTAM’s North Carolina chapter and on the National and Carolina chapters of Women in Cable & Telecommunications.

Away from the office, Gay volunteers at Safe Harbor Ministry and serves on the board of the Hickory Soup Kitchen and the advisory council of the Hickory Young Professionals. She is an active member of the Highland United Methodist Church, where she teaches Sunday school and serves as a youth leader and as chair of the finance and stewardship committees.

SANDRA K. HOWE

Sandy Howe is executive vice president and president/ Americas for Technetix, Inc., a global leader in advanced technology products, solutions and services for the broadband cable industry. She is responsible for all functions for the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. Her introduction to the cable industry was with Broadband Networks Inc. in 1995, initially as a sales engineer, later promoted to regional account executive.

In 1999, Howe moved to Scientific-Atlanta as senior account manager; she was promoted to director of business development in 2006. During her tenure with S-A, she earned numerous sales awards and was a member of the tech vendor’s Sales Circle of Excellence for six years.

In 2010, Howe was named VP, strategic market development within Arris’s Advanced Technology Group; three years later, she advanced to senior VP, global marketing. She was senior VP and GM for the for Arris’s Consumer Products Group from 2016 to 2018 before joining Technetix.

Howe is a longtime supporter of women and workforce diversity, currently serving as vice chair of the WICT Global Board. Having been a member of NAMIC and SCTE for many years, she is a board member of the SCTE Foundation board and serves as investment adviser on its finance committee. Howe previously served on the Retailer Council board of the Consumer Technology Association.

RICARDO LA GUARDIA

Ricardo La Guardia is regional vice president of sales and WiFi product solutions for Arris International in Latin America. From April 2013 to January of 2018, he was regional VP for Arris in Brazil.

La Guardia joined the cable industry in May of 1992 as Latin America sales manager for CommScope. Four years later, he was promoted to sales manager for all of South America for the company. In 2000, he was promoted to vice president, operations for Brazil. In October of 2006, La Guardia was transferred to CommScope’s corporate headquarters in Hickory, North Carolina, to head up worldwide product management and customer service for the Broadband unit. He returned to Sao Paulo, Brazil in May 2011, where he was VP of Latin American sales for Big Band Networks.

La Guardia received his undergraduate degree in 1989 from Catholic University of Campinas, Brazil, and his MBA from Pfeiffer University in North Carolina in 1992. He is an active board member of the Brazil Cable TV Association and the Porto Seguro School Foundation. Ricardo and his wife are active supporters of the catechism youth group in Campinas, Brazil, and of the Children’s International Villages organization.

GARY LAUDER

Gary Lauder is managing director of Lauder Partners. From 1989 to 2015, he was director and chairman of Active Video Networks, formerly ICTV, where he guided the company’s evolution from VOD to electronic program guides and interactivity. He has also been an investor and director for Hybrid Networks and Terayon, both pioneering cable-modem providers. He was an early investor in Imedia, Big Band and Aurora Networks, as well as a dozen less well-known cable technology innovators.

Lauder’s pioneering introduction of venture capital companies to cable has brought hundreds of millions of dollars for the R&D needs of the industry and contributed to the funding of products essential to today’s broadband systems. He has been involved in industry education and advocacy as a frequent speaker for NCTA, CTAM, CableLabs, the Western Show, Kagan conferences and other events. Outside of the industry, he has been involved with the National Venture Capital Association and the Western Association of Venture Capitalists.

Lauder serves on the board of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, the advisory board of Santa Clara University’s Center for Applied Ethics and is chairman of the Transportation Committee of the town of Atherton, California.

ED MARCHETTI

Ed Marchetti is senior vice president of field operations for Comcast, overseeing technical and workforce operations, network operations and data analytics. Prior to his current posting, Marchetti was senior VP, operations and engineering for the company’s Northeast Division. He entered the cable industry in 1981 as a construction coordinator and maintenance technician for Viacom in Northern California. He remained with the Viacom management team until 2002 when he joined Comcast as vice president of operations/engineering for the California Division. He held positions of increasing responsibility before the move to Comcast corporate in 2016.

Marchetti has been a member of SCTE for more than 20 years, having served on the Golden Gate Chapter board, national board and as treasurer in 2017, when he was honored as SCTE Member of the Year. He currently chairs the national board’s member committee.

Marchetti relishes his family time and enjoys hiking, biking and golf. He is passionate about helping the less fortunate and contributes to the Reach Project Inc., a family drug counseling program. He is a core member of Life Teen, a youth outreach program at his local church.

HIMANSHU PARIKH

Himanshu Parikh is president and founder of iOPENC, a position he has held since 2014. He was engineering manager and software engineer for Tocom/General Instrument from 1978 to 1988 and as a VP and general manager at Scientific-Atlanta from 1988 to 2008.

Parikh joined Cisco Systems in 2008 as director and general manager, responsible for four business units, and was later named chief technical officer of Inovo Broadband. At S-A, he was responsible for for many cable-industry initiatives, including interdiction, MPEG licensing, CableCARDs and high-definition set-tops.

Parikh has served on the boards of several startup companies, including the Celeno advisory board and the database company Square Zero. His passion for new products has led to beneficial relationships with Broadcom, Intel, Sigma Gemtek, Greenwave and a number of MSOs.

A longstanding SCTE member, Parikh and wife Raksha are the proud parents of three children, all graduates of Georgia Tech.

CATHERINE RASENBERGER

Cathy Rasenberger is president of Rasenberger Media. She founded the firm to help develop and launch independent cable networks in the U.S. Rasenberger Media has successfully launched more than 25 of the most notable and highly branded independent networks in the U.S.

Throughout 38 years in the cable television industry, Rasenberger has held pioneering positions in publishing, sales and marketing. With Warner Bros. Television in the early 1980s, she was responsible for marketing and promoting the studio’s movies for the fledgling pay TV services HBO and Cinemax. In 1982, she was associate publisher for Cablevision magazine and national sales director for Titsch Communications.

From 1983 to 1988, Rasenberger was director, international operations and national ad sales manager for ESPN. She joined TV Guide in 1989 as director, cable operations, launching the publication’s newly created cable division. Prior to founding Rasenberger Media, she was senior VP, affiliate sales and marketing at Food Network for six years.

JOYCE REITANO SALAJ (POSTHUMOUS)

Joyce Salaj began her cable career in 1972 as a customer service representative with Manhattan Cable. She was soon promoted to customer service manager, one of only two for the entire customer service team, and by 1983 was customer service manager of the largest U.S. cable system. Among her notable accomplishments with Manhattan Cable (later Time Warner Cable of New York City), Salaj initiated the company’s first automated billing system, which was the foundation for what is now CSG Systems. She was also instrumental in the implementation of a state-of-the-art phone system to better control the MSO’s enormous phone traffic and allow supervisory monitoring of the CSR team.

After taking a hiatus from the workforce to begin a family, Salaj returned to cable in 1991 as director of customer service for Comcast in Eatontown, New Jersey. One of her first initiatives while with Comcast was to allow a floating percentage of customer service personnel to work from home. She received many accolades while with Comcast and was recognized for her influence on the Northeast Region operations that stretched beyond her scope of responsibility.

Salaj was a mentor and role model to many Comcast and Manhattan Cable employees and a strong advocate for a work/life balance for her team members. She was an early advocate for Women in Cable and a regular volunteer at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset in Somerset, New Jersey.

MATTHEW STANEK

Matthew Stanek is senior vice president of network technology operations at Charter Communications. He began his cable journey with the National Division of American Television and Communications Corp. (ATC) in 1985, initially as a bench technician before a succession of promotions to headend technical instructor and project manager. In 1995, Stanek was promoted to the position of director of technical operations for Time Warner Cable’s Austin, Texas, division; in September of 2000 he became VP of engineering.

Stanek was named TWC’s president of network operations and engineering in April of 2010 and in 2014, he became senior VP of network operations, responsible for all core networks, the national data center and voice and WiFi operations. His key achievements included network uniformity and the creation of an analytics tool which is now in use company-wide. He was part of many beta trials and first deployments of digital video, VOD and switched digital video. He holds several patents related to cable network operations and network reliability.

Stanek was elevated to senior member status at SCTE in 1993 and has served on the Global Customer Advisory Board for Cisco Systems. Outside of cable, he has served on the Library Foundation in Cedar Park, Texas, is a licensed youth soccer coach and an advocate for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

TIMOTHY VAAS

Timothy Vaas is vice president of sales for CableServ, responsible for managing expansion of current sales teams, developing growth initiatives and introducing CableServ global markets. Previously, Vaas was a VP with Product Management Consulting Group.

Vaas began his cable television career in 1980 with Magnavox CATV Sales. He would later become regional sales manager for North American Philips, where he managed all sales functions in the Mid- Atlantic, Northeast and Southeast regions. In 1992, Tim joined Pico Products as national sales manager.

Vaas has been an active SCTE member in Arizona, California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and served on SCTE chapter boards in the Piedmont region and in central New York. He was VP of the Dixie chapter and currently serves as a member of the Chesapeake chapter.

Away from his cable duties, Vaas practices taekwondo in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is a speaker for the New Path organization, which provides support and counseling to parents of young addicts in recovery.

BILL WARGA

Bill Warga has been vice president of technology for Liberty Global since 2008. Prior to joining Liberty, he was director of digital technology standards for Comcast. While in this position, he chaired the OpenCable hardware working group and served as a member of the OpenCable certification board.

Warga entered the cable industry in 1989 as head engineer and sales manager for The Garkie Group, providing contract services to CableLabs and designing hybrid fiber coaxial networks. In 1995, Warga signed on with CableLabs, where he installed and tested the first MPEG-2 digital video systems. He also helped design and run a one-of-a-kind sideby- side viewing study to determine which encoding system the cable industry would adopt.

In 2000, AT&T Broadband named Warga as director of digital video technology, charged with upgrading the Headend in the Sky (HITS) platform. He stayed with AT&T Broadband through its merger with Comcast and took on the additional responsibilities of domestic and international standards. He also chaired the joint engineering committee of NCTA and the Consumer Electronics Association for the negotiations of the one-way and two-way plug-and-play agreements with the FCC.

Warga is currently chairman of the SCTE. He led SCTE’s Engineering Committee while serving as Tony Werner’s vice chairman. He was an early champion of the Reference Design Kit (RDK) initiative and a frequent contributor to SCTE Emerging Technologies Events. He remains an active member of the CableLabs Technical Advisory Committee and serves on the board of RDK Management.

Outside of the cable technology world, Warga has served on the board of Word of Life Christian Center in suburban Denver and has participated in countless charitable programs.

THOMAS MACK WILLIAMS IV

Tom Williams is vice president of engineering and technology at Schurz Communications. He began his cable career as an R&D engineer at Scientific-Atlanta, developing and deploying the first U.S. digital set-top boxes. He moved into consulting with KPMG and later joined Comcast as regional director of engineering, where he was first to deploy new technologies including video-on-demand, high-definition digital video recorders, high-speed internet, HDTV and more.

In 2006, Williams joined Arris as VP of marketing and business development. He won two Atlanta Marketer of the Year (AMY) Awards and implemented a company- wide brand transformation and management strategy. Tom returned to consulting as a managing partner with Brightset Consulting, specializing in global marketing and communications strategies for technology companies. He joined the Schurz leadership team in 2016, driving technology strategy Williams is a longstanding member of SCTE, CTAM, the NCTC and WICT. He enjoys mentoring young people interested in technology and advanced video-related careers. He has served on the board of the Baltimore County Technology Council and the technology board for the University of Maryland, driving solutions to serve students and faculty.

An active volunteer in his hometown of Atlanta, Williams enjoys coaching youth sports teams, serving on community technology boards and supporting local and military-owned businesses. He is a member of the American Legion and a Marine Corps veteran. He is also a member of the Marine Corps Memorial Association.

MELINDA C. WITMER

Melinda Witmer started her cable career in 1994, joining HBO as senior counsel, sales and marketing, negotiating cable carriage agreements. She was later promoted to VP and joined the team responsible for negotiating agreements for major studio and independent films. In January 2001, she joined Time Warner Cable as VP and chief counsel, programming, responsible for all content-related legal matters.

In 2006, Wittmer succeeded Fred Dressler as head of TWC’s programming department, serving in several executive roles at the MSO thereafter. She finished her TWC tenure as executive VP and chief video officer, managing a multibillion-dollar programming budget and overseeing all relationships with programmers, movie studios, sports leagues and other content providers. She also served as chief operating officer of Time Warner Cable Networks, overseeing 40 regional and local news, sports and other channels.

Wittmer is currently principal of real estate media and investment firm Look Left Media and serves on the board of broadcast group Tegna and the advisory board to the dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

A longtime WICT member, Wittmer was a consistent presence at senior executive events, a speaker, mentor and a sponsor of several women in the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute program. She was named to the Multichannel News Wonder Women class in 2013 and won the T. Howard Foundation’s Executive Leadership Award in 2014 for her work to advance industry diversity.

The Cable TV Pioneers will induct one of its largest classes ever at its 52nd annual banquet. The class of 25 — 20 men and five women — ranges from programmers to pole climbers, marketers to researchers and engineers to operators, with a top cable journalist in the mix for good measure.

Serving once again as a lead-in event before the SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, the black-tie (or “classy cocktail”) ceremony will convene Monday, Oct. 22, at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta.

Founded in 1966 during the NCTA convention in Miami, Fla., the original fledgling group of 21 entrepreneurs who gathered to draw attention to the contributions of cable television’s tenacious creators has grown to more than 700 men and women over the past five decades plus.

“We have a great class, wonderful sponsors, and we couldn’t be happier celebrating this event in Atlanta, where cable’s success and growth is so deeply rooted,” David Fellows, dinner chair of the Cable TV Pioneers 52nd Banquet, said.

For more about the event and about the history of the Cable TV Pioneers, visit cabletvpioneers.com. Honoree profiles provided by Cable TV Pioneers.

JUDI ALLEN

Judi Allen is a senior vice president with The Nielsen Co. with responsibility for all aspects of sales and service to MVPD clients, a position she has held since 2012. Previously, she had been with Time Warner Cable as vice president of programming and business development. She began her career in cable communications in 1989 as VP of affiliate relations with USA Network. In August 1992, she joined Century Communications as senior VP of marketing and programming. She served on the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing Board and executive committee from 1997 to 2000 and was chair of the pay-per-view conference in her first year of board service. She served on the Strategic Planning Committee for Women in Cable Telecommunications and was honored as Woman of the Year by the Rocky Mountain chapter of WICT in 2007. She has been a frequent speaker for WICT conferences and a repeat mentor in both the Rocky Mountain and New York chapters.

DAVID BALDWIN

David Baldwin joined HBO as a research analyst in December 1978 and was with the network for more than 30 years. A graduate of Penn State University and New York’s Queens College, he was destined for a career in education before receiving the call from HBO. There, he worked alongside Frank Biondi, Jerry Levin, Jim Heyworth and Michael Fuchs in the early years of satellite-delivered premium television. He rose through the ranks of management to the positions of director, vice president, senior VP and finally executive VP for HBO and Cinemax. Among his many accomplishments, he played a key role in the launches of Take 2, Festival and Comedy Central, logging thousands of air miles visiting MSO headquarters to promote the new product offerings. After 31 years with HBO, he retired from his position as executive VP, but was recruited by Starz CEO Chris Albrecht to assist in developing original series. It was an ideal second act in a remarkable career. He has been a featured speaker at Women in Cable & Telecommunications conferences and a guest lecturer at the Penn State and NYU Schools of Communications.

MICHAEL BATES

Michael Bates is a cable industry veteran of more than 40 years. He first signed on with Oxnard Cablevision in southern California as a service technician, with responsibility for system design and construction. Ten years later, he joined American Cablesystems as security manager for operations in New York and New England. In 1990, he moved to Continental Cablevision as general manager. Before joining Comcast in 2003, he was director of security for Media One and AT&T Broadband. At Comcast, he oversees all cable and broadband security operations and manages high-profile investigations. During his long career, he has been involved with numerous undercover operations with local law enforcement authorities, executing search warrants and providing expert witness testimony. He is a two-time winner of the National Cable and Telecommunications “Theft of Service Ideas” Competition and a Broadband & Internet Task Force Security Case Study Competition winner.

JEFF BAUMGARTNER

Jeff Baumgartner is the senior editor for Light Reading, where he covers cable technology news. Previously, he was technology editor for Multichannel News (where he had worked earlier in his career) and Broadcasting & Cable. He began his cable journey in early 1994 when he joined Jones Education Network and Knowledge TV as PR manager. After three years with Jones, he joined CableFAX Daily as Denver bureau chief and later was editor in chief of CED. He has been a primary chronicler of technology innovation in cable and broadband, and his well-researched articles have earned him the respect of all who follow the industry.

LARRY BEAUCHAMP

Larry Beauchamp began his cable career of more than four decades with Maclean Hunter’s Suburban Cablevision as chief engineer for TV-3. His responsibilities at Suburban included design and support for all television studio and mobile production operations. In 1980, he joined Comcast as regional director of engineering and technical operations for the Northeast Division, with oversight for all engineering construction and technical operations. In June of 1990, he was promoted to the position of VP of engineering for Comcast’s Northeast Division where he remained until becoming VP of engineering for the company’s East/ West Division. In 2006, he was named VP of engineering operations for Comcast’s West Division. His operational accomplishments led to his being named to the Comcast headquarters team in 2016, with responsibility for deployment and operations of the Comcast Business Services Networks. He has presented to numerous industry groups including the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and NCTA, and was chosen by Comcast to represent the company at two national shows covering Generation Access Networks and Commercial Business Services.

JANE BULMAN

Shortly after graduating from college in 1977, Jane Bulman began her cable career as local origination program manager for Teleprompter in Wildwood, N.J. She moved to General Electric Cablevision in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1979, then to Showtime’s Southeast Region as district manger for national accounts. While at the network, she was responsible for the launches of Viewer’s Choice, marketing and affiliate relations. In 1988, she became director of marketing for McClean Hunter’s Suburban Cablevision. She was area marketing director for Comcast in New Jersey from 1994 to 1999 and retired in 2016 as a VP, based at the company’s Philadelphia home office. She has been an active member of WICT and CTAM and was a founding member of American Teleservices Association.

CRAIG CUTTNER

Craig Cuttner is senior VP of technology developments & standards for HBO, a position he has held since 1982. Prior to joining HBO, he was a design engineer at CBS Television. He was instrumental in leading HBO from an analog, single-channel offering to today’s multichannel high-definition linear and video-on-demand products. He led the network’s projects to scramble the signal, convert to digital, evolve to HD and introduce HBO On Demand and the IP-based HBO Now and HBO Go services. For the past two decades, he has been a trendsetter for audio and video technical standards, HDTV, 4K and IPTV. Cuttner has been HBO’s spokesperson in multiple industry organizations for more than 30 years, including chairing SCTE’s audio and video encoding standards team, serving as a member of the FCC Advisory Council on Accessibility and as a member of the U.S. State Department’s delegation on global standardization of HDTV.

CHRIS EWING

During his early years in the cable industry, Chris Ewing worked as a sales representative for Southern California-based Western CATV, a family business with MSO clients in Arizona, California and Nevada. In early 1996, he was named general manager for Western, with responsibility for managing distribution, warehousing and front-office operations. He moved to Signal Vision in September 2000 to manage accounts for Comcast, Cox Communications and Mediacom Communications. When Signal Vision was acquired by CommScope in 2007, he was named technical sales manager supporting accounts in the Eastern U.S. He was promoted to regional vice president of sales for CommScope in April 2012. He was an active member in SCTE’s Southern California chapter and had a leadership role in forming the first SCTE Vendor Day. His efforts attracted neighboring chapters to participate, which resulted in more than 75 vendors exhibiting at the show. Profits from the Vendor Day shows provided scholarships for chapter members. He was Southern California treasurer from 1999 to 2001 and served on the chapter board from 1998 to 2006.

HENRY FORE

Hank Fore was a regional vice president with Comcast until his retirement in April 2017. In 1999, following a distinguished military career, he joined Lucent Technologies as the North America regional VP of technical support services. While this was his initial direct involvement with the cable industry, he had been involved with the design, installation and operations of broadband video networks with the United States Army in the U.S. and Germany. He joined Comcast in June 2003 as area VP for the 250,000-subscriber system in Dallas. In December 2005, he received a promotion to turn around a large Northern California system, serving more than 500,000 subscribers. Subsequent Comcast assignments in California and Oregon between 2009 and 2015 brought increased responsibility and produced outstanding results for the company, resulting in multiple Comcast “Region of the Year” awards. Before his retirement, he ultimately had responsibility for a $5 billion Comcast region of 2 million subscribers and 6,000 employees. Fore is a former chairman of the California Cable Television Association, vice chairman of the Oregon Cable TV Association and vice chairman of the executive board of the Texas Cable & Telecommunications Association. He is a member of SCTE and a NAMIC member and mentor.

FRED KAISER

Fred Kaiser is the CEO of Alpha Technologies. He founded the company in 1975 and served five years as general manager at Canadian Dynamics. Under his leadership, the organization has become a global leader with more than $600 million in worldwide sales and 1,200 employees. A tireless problem solver, he has traveled throughout the world meeting with MSOs to establish partnerships and collaborations to further industry objectives. His efforts led to cable’s first primary back-up UPS system and the introduction of DOCSIS-based HFC Gateway devices for WiFi and small cell deployments. The Kaiser Foundations for Higher Education at the University of British Columbia, Western Washington University and Simon Fraser University provide significant funding for scholarships to teach engineering students about power generation and the study of modern digitally controlled power devices. He has supported the SCTE Foundation since its inception and was a founding member of the SCTE Energy 2020 Committee.

VICKI LINS

Vicki Lins is president and CEO of CTAM. Her introduction to the cable industry came in 1996 when she joined Adlink as director of marketing and communications. Over the next six years, she was vice president and senior VP with the company, serving on the executive team that developed award-winning marketing programs and groundbreaking brand partnerships. She directed all creative services functions and helped drive Adlink to an industry milestone of $100 million in revenue. In 2002, she joined Comcast as VP of marketing and communications, and helped lead the integration of more than 90 markets to create the nation’s largest local ad-sales organization. She created and launched Comcast Spotlight and led the consolidation of all ad-sales marketing and communications across the company’s national footprint. While still with Comcast, she was facilitating the startup of Canoe Ventures, helping to develop business strategy and staffing the marketing, communications and creative services teams. Lins accepted her current position with CTAM in 2016. She promotes collaboration among member companies to address the industry’s challenges and oversees CTAM’s initiatives like CableMover.com and TV everywhere. She also manages CTAM’s Co-Op and Educational Boards.

GUY McCORMICK

Guy McCormick’s entire 24 years in the industry have been with Cox Communications. He has held positions of increasing responsibility with Cox, initially with the Cable Advertising Division, where he rose to VP of engineering. In 2004, he transitioned to the cable division as executive director of engineering operations. In 2011, he was promoted to VP of engineering for the cable division with accountability for corporate strategy and field operations. Two years later he was promoted to his current position of senior VP of engineering. Throughout his career, he has participated in CableLabs and CTAM events, and in 2012 he attended CTAM U at Harvard University. He was the keynote speaker at the Fiber Connect Forum in 2015 and recently presented to Georgia state legislators at an NCTA event to promote the industry’s advances in Gigabit services.

GLYNDELL MOORE

Glyndell Moore’s 40-year cable career began in 1968 at Bainbridge TV Cable in southeast Georgia. He was the system’s chief technician when Storer Communications acquired the system and convinced him to take technical leadership of all of the company’s newly acquired operations in Georgia. As Storer’s Southeast Region expanded into Alabama and South Carolina, he was promoted, first to area technical manager for the Mid-South Area, then to regional VP of engineering for the six-state Southeast Region. Following the leveraged buyout that led to Storer’s breakup, he moved to Summit Cable Services as director of technical operations. His responsibilities at Summit included supervising outside personnel, designing and building new headends, FCC regulatory compliance and implementing the first broadband fiber deployment in metro Atlanta. He served two terms on SCTE’s National Board and prepared and delivered programs for SCTE chapter meetings. He was a co-founder and officer of the Chattahoochee Chapter of SCTE and has lectured to Georgia Tech Engineering graduate students. He is a recipient of the 2001 SCTE Polaris Award for innovative use of fiber optics.

ANDY PARROTT

Andy Parrott is senior VP for technical operations at Altice USA. He began his cable journey in the early 1990s, with C-TEC, Cable Michigan and Charter Communications, as a field technician and installer. In 1999, he was named technical supervisor for Charter’s operations in Western Michigan, where he remained until accepting a transfer to Texas to become Charter’s technical operations manager. He was Suddenlink’s corporate VP for technical operations at the time of the company’s acquisition by Altice. He has been an active volunteer for industry causes. He was elected to the board of directors for the Gateway Chapter of SCTE in 2005 and a year later was named to the national SCTE Development Committee. He is a regular volunteer for Women In Cable & Telecommunications and was a featured speaker at WICT’s “Tech It Out” events. He has contributed to Broadband Library magazine for more than 10 years and traveled to South America to volunteer his technical expertise with several Central and South American MSOs.

HOLLY LEFF-PRESSMAN

Holly Leff-Pressman is chief revenue officer for Screen Engine ASI, working with clients across all distribution platforms. Fresh from law school in 1989, she was a litigation associate at an entertainment law firm before joining Viewer’s Choice Television in 1992. While with Viewer’s Choice, she initiated, negotiated and oversaw licensing and distribution of original and event pay-per-view and video-on-demand programming. In 1995, she joined NBCUniversal as senior vice president for World Wide Pay Per View and Video On Demand. Following a nine year stint with NBCU, she signed on with The Nielsen Co. as executive VP for content solutions and media research. She has been at the forefront of industry developments in on-demand viewership as well as the measurement of data and research of that viewership. She was the recipient of a CTAM “TAMI” Award in 2017 and has devoted her time and talents to CTAM’s Marketing, Digital and Research Committees. She is currently on the committee for the Media & Insights Conference and served as the conference’s inaugural co-chair.

ENRIQUE YAMUNI ROBLES

Enrique Robles is the founder and chief executive officer of Megacable. He has been responsible for all aspects of the MSO for the past 36 years. He obtained his first government license in 1982, and through organic growth has expanded to more than 200 cities and 26 states. In 1997, Megacable was the first MSO in Mexico to launch broadband services, then followed with a telephony launch in 2004 and a digital video platform in 2006. By 2007, when Megacable launched an IPO, the company had a reach of more than 1 million subscribers. He is a member of the board of directors of Grupo de Telecomunicaciones de Alta (GTAC), a consortium that has provided 19,000 kilometers of fiber to enable cost savings to make internet access available to many communities across Mexico. He is president of the National TV Cable Company Chamber and a board member of the Organization of Telecommunications Associations & Companies. In addition to his many contributions to Telecommunications advancements in Mexico, he serves as Guadalajara’s Counselor of American Chamber of Commerce, as a board member of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and on the board of the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra.

FRED ROGERS

Fred Rogers joined Warren Braun Consulting in October 1970 as director of laboratory services. Two years later, Braun Consulting became Comsonics, where Rogers managed the repair facility for CATV equipment and was responsible for FCC compliance and testing of clients’ systems. In February 1978, he moved to Jupiter, Fla., to become general manager for Broadband Engineering Inc. and, three years later, co-founded Quality RF Services, developing high-performance, high-reliability RF products for the cable industry. Along the way, he found time to design and build his own cable systems of more than 500 miles in middle Georgia and western Virginia. The success of Quality RF in bringing much-needed specialty RF products to the industry drew the attention of ATX Inc., a Canadian technology company with interests in the U.S. and abroad. ATX acquired Quality RF in January 2001 and asked Rogers to stay on to assist with the transition. He was inducted into the SCTE Hall of Fame and the organization’s Circle of Eagles in 2003. He is a proud member of the Loyal Order of the 704 and has written numerous technology articles for industry trade magazines.

TOM ROGERS

Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Winview Games Inc., chairman of Frankly Inc., chairman of Captify and CEO of TRget Media LLC. A member of the Cable Entrepreneurs Club, he was inducted into both the Cable Hall of Fame and the B&C Hall of Fame. He has won Emmy Awards for his contributions to the development of advanced TV and advertising, and is recognized as one of the most innovative and influential leaders in cable television and the broader media industries. In the early ’80s, Rogers was senior counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Telecommunications Consumer Protection and Finance Subcommittee. He was responsible for drafting numerous communications laws, including the 1984 Cable Franchise Policy and Communications Act, which governed the development of today’s cable industry. From 1987 to 1999, he was the first president of NBC Cable and executive VP and chief strategist of NBC. In addition to responsibility for founding CNBC and MSNBC, he oversaw NBC’s ownership of A&E, AMC, Bravo, Court TV and several regional sports channels. As president and CEO of TiVo from 2005 to 2016, he oversaw the first implementation of Netflix and Amazon streaming to the TV set, and many other TV innovations, while developing new partnerships with cable MSOs and hardware suppliers.

ARTHUR SANDO

Art Sando is founder and Principal of Sando Communications. He was hired by Ted Turner in 1981 as the first public relations director for Turner Broadcasting System and, over the course of the next decade, rose to become the company’s VP of marketing and communications. In addition to Turner’s Atlanta home base, he established offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, London, Moscow and Hong Kong. He was tasked with promoting CNN’s 24-hour coverage of numerous high profile events such as the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. In 1990, he became VP of corporate affairs for COMSAT, now Lockheed Martin, where his responsibilities included corporate communications, investor relations and congressional affairs. In 1995, he became senior VP of corporate communications for King World Productions. He was presented with the NCTA’s President’s Award for outstanding service to the cable industry.

ROB SHEMA

Rob Shema has been the American Cable Association’s executive VP of member services since early 2012. He had joined ACA in 2004 as VP and chief operating officer. He spent seven years with Comcast prior to joining ACA, first as a paralegal working on the acquisitions and financing team. He was promoted to programming manager in 1997 and, a year later, to director of programming. In the latter position, he worked with the team that created local programming network CN8. Another Comcast promotion followed, to senior director of public relations and government affairs. During his tenure with ACA, membership and attendance at the group’s conferences have grown several times over and annual revenues have more than tripled. He has become the go-to guy for members needing help with regulatory issues and a major asset to independent operators.

TONY SPELLER

Tony Speller is senior VP of technical operations for Comcast’s Northeast Division. His area of responsibility covers 14 states, from Maine to Washington, D.C., with 10,000 field employees serving more than 8 million customers. His cable tenure of nearly 30 years has included multiple leadership roles with TCI, AT&T and Comcast. He has been at the forefront of many industry technical milestones, including the launch of digital video and the deployment of high-speed data and telephony of the HFC network. His advanced education includes the UCLA School of Management and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He has managed a number of high-visibility projects, preparing his teams for Pope Francis’s visit to Philadelphia, the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 2017 Presidential Inauguration and the Super Bowl. He has served as an adviser and supporter of charity organizations such as the Greater Houston Partnership, a 10-county economic development organization.

CURTIS SYMONDS

Curtis Symonds is the founder and president of Symonds Synergy Group, a Virginia-based marketing and consulting firm. He entered the cable industry is 1979 with Continental Cablevision as a system general manager. In June 1982, he joined ESPN as Midwest Region director, managing the network’s sales and distribution for 20 MSOs in 14 states. In 1988, he was named executive VP for affiliate sales and marketing for BET Holdings, a position he would hold for 13 years before heading up the T. Howard Foundation. He has been recognized with many industry awards, including NCTA’s Vanguard Award for marketing excellence, the Clyde Award for marketing excellence in Black entertainment and the Walter Bremond “Achieving Against The Odds” Award. Symonds was a director of the Walter Kaitz Foundation for more than 10 years, a founding member of Cable in the Classroom and a Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau board member for 10 years. He has served on numerous CTAM committees and currently serves on the boards of the American Heart Association and Women’s Sports Foundation.

SHAWN TYLKA

Shawn Tylka joined Scientific-Atlanta in January 1995 as corporate communications director, where she was responsible for marketing support, the S-A sales team’s customer programs, trade show presence and media events. Very early in her tenure with S-A, she headed the hospitality team for 250 customer attendees at the 1996 Olympics. When Scientific-Atlanta was acquired by Cisco, she was chosen to lead all cable and media field marketing and to manage relationships with cable associations including SCTE, the Cable Center and CableLabs. Among her many industry recognitions, she has received the Cisco Humanitarian Award, S-A’s “Shining Star” Award and the “Golden Pyramid” Award for marketing from the International Promotional Products Association. She has been a behind-thescenes star at industry events for NCTA, CTAM and the SCTE, collaborating at trade shows on event specifics and creating ancillary events. She also has been involved with philanthropic activities including Women’s Orthopedic Global Outreach, the American Cancer Society’s “Relay For Life” and CURE International, an organization dedicated to the treatment of children with curable diseases.

STEVE WILLIAMS

Steve Williams is the CEO of Austin, Texas-based CATV Design Associates and Williams Communications. He was senior system designer with the Theta Com Division of Hughes Aircraft from 1972 to 1977. Following Theta Com’s sale, he was design department supervisor and design department manager for Communications Properties Inc. and Gulf Coast Cable, respectively, before founding CATV Design Associates. He was instrumental in the design and construction of the first cable systems in San Jose, Calif., and Houston, Texas. In the early 1980s to mid-1990s, he franchised and operated seven systems in Texas and Arizona. He wrote software that was more sophisticated than what was in industry use at the time, saving management time and technical resources. In 2009, he was chosen to design and build a fiber network from Chicago to New York to support high-frequency stock trading. He served on the board of the SCTE Alaska Chapter for five years and has presented at various SCTE Texas chapters. In the mid ’90s, the he was enlisted to represent the Texas Cable Association in the Texas One-Call System.

DAVID ZASLAV

David Zaslav is president and CEO of Discovery Inc., where he oversees all operations for the company’s global suite of brands, including pay TV and digital platforms. Prior to joining Discovery in 2007, he spent 17 years at NBCUniversal, where he participated in the development and launch of both CNBC and MSNBC and negotiated affiliation agreements for those networks. He forged new media partnerships with Comcast and other MSOs and oversaw the distribution of all NBCU content. Under his leadership, Discovery became a Fortune 500 company in 2014 and acquired Scripps Networks Interactive. Together, the combined companies comprise a worldclass portfolio of real-life entertainment brands. He serves on a number of industry boards including Sirius XM Radio, The Cable Center, Lionsgate Entertainment, NCTA, Grupo Televisa and the Paley Center for Media. He has received numerous accolades and awards in recognition of his contributions to cable and industry leadership. He received the Fred Dressler Leadership Award in 2014 and was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame in 2017.

Comcast confirmed that it has contacted about 200,000 broadband subs to secure their MSO-supplied email accounts and reset their passwords after discovering that a Dark Web seller was trying to unload a list of almost 600,000 Comcast email addresses and passwords.

CSO Online, which first reported on the Dark Web sale, said the seller was hawking batches of 100,000 accounts for $300 each, but the final price was $1,000.

A Comcast official said about 30% of the 590,000 records being sold were active, (Comcast ended the third quarter of 2015 with 22.86 million residential high-speed Internet subs). In addition to accessing email, subscribers use those credentials to access TV Everywhere services.

Comcast has not pinned down the exact source of the information being sold -- the data could have been harvested outside of Comcast’s systems via phishing, malware and other schemes.

“We do know that it was not from us,” the official said, noting that Comcast is contacting impacted subscribers about resetting their passwords. “It was not a breach of our system.”

According to CSO Online, commenters speculated that the Comcast list was “recycled information,” and tagged the Dark Web seller as a “scammer.”

Though Comcast said the information that showed up on Dark Web was not sourced though a breach of its systems, cybersecurity has become a critical area of emphasis for the cable industry. At last month’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, organizers dedicated a full day to the topic.

John N. Stewart, the senior vice president and chief security and trust officer at Cisco Systems, keynoted that pre-show Cybersecurity Symposium, noting that cybersecurity threats are a big, if not the biggest, risk posed to cable’s internal and external activities.

During his talk, Stewart presented data from a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey that found that about 90% of “large” organizations suffered a security breach, 50% of the worst breaches were caused by inadvertent human error, and 69% of large organizations were attacked by an unauthorized outsider. Another problem, he said, is that most companies aren’t aware that they are under attack when it happens. Stewart said that 269 days is the average “time-to-detection” rate for many businesses.

“I would call that not winning,” he said, later citing a study showing that 50% of CEOs of companies with at least $500 million in revenues in 10 major economies said they were not prepared for a “major cyber event.”

Of recent note, Cox Communications agreed to pay $595,000 to settle an FCC investigation into its data protections related to a 2014 hack.  

When it comes to preparing tests and setting specs for cable’s emerging DOCSIS 3.1 platform, it’s been full speed ahead at CableLabs.

Development of DOCSIS 3.1 technologies are “slightly ahead of the original schedule that we laid out two years ago when we kicked off 3.1 activities,” Phil McKinney, the president and CEO of Louisville, Colo.-based CableLabs, said in a recent interview. 

With the first DOCSIS 3.1 chips expected to emerge by the end of 2014, McKinney sees 3.1 interops getting underway by the first half of 2015, with certification to follow in the early part of the second half of 2015.

“Then you’ll start to see physical deployments by the end of 2015,” he predicted.

And let there be no doubt that DOCSIS 3.1 is a major priority for the industry.

“Every time I have a conversation with any of the [cable operator] CEOs, typically the first part of the conversation is not about the weather; it’s about the status of DOCSIS 3.1,” McKinney said.

Expect more details on DOCSIS 3.1’s progress to emerge at this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver. On Monday afternoon (September 22), during the event’s pre-show Symposium, Jorge Salinger, the vice president of access architecture at Comcast; and Belal Hamzeh, director and principal architect at CableLabs, are on tap to report on the current status and schedule for DOCSIS 3.1.

CableLabs released the initial product specs for DOCSIS 3.1 last October, and, of recent note, published the cable modem OSS interface specs for DOCSIS 3.1 on June 19. The platform is targeting up to 10 Gbps in the downstream and at least 1 Gbps in the upstream using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and a new forward error correction (FEC) scheme, Low Density Parity Check (LDPC), that will enable operators to use their bandwidth more efficiently and pump out more bits per hertz. 

While McKinney believes we’re yet to see residential apps that require sustained 1-Gig speeds, he says it still makes sense for cable to pursue such capabilities.

“The question we always get is, ‘What the heck do you do once you get 1-Gig into a house? What service requires it?’” McKinney said, noting that 1-Gig could handle 40 simultaneous  4K streams into the house.

“Today, there’s nothing in the marketplace that needs a 1-Gig sustained speed. However, one service today that consumers do value when you get to those kinds of speeds is really not so much the issue of speed overall as it latency, is what I call the ‘fast sync.’  You come into your house and if you could burst to 1-Gig to get your email synchronized, your TV shows onto your iPad because you’re dashing out to a flight…it’s that feeling of having instantaneous  access to your information so you can be productive everywhere you go.”

Multichannel News will feature the full Q&A with McKinney as part of its daily coverage of this week’s Cable-Tec Expo. In it, McKinney also offers an update on CableLabs’ activities around security, 4K/Ultra HD, fiber-to-the-premises technology, and concerns on how Unlicensed LTE could affect the cable industry’s evolving WiFi strategies.

 Please visit our SCTE Cable-Tec Expo micro-site for the latest news and announcements from the tech-fest in Denver.  

Despite the threat of continued industry consolidation of distributors and suppliers, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) expects attendance at this year’s Cable-Tec Expo in Denver to match up with last year’s event in Atlanta. Yes, flat is indeed the new growth.

“Historically, Denver has had strong on-site registrations,” SCTE president and CEO Mark Dzuban said. “We expect to be where we were last year. But some of that is factored into the on-site registrations we’re expecting.”

For those keeping score, last year’s Expo in Atlanta drew about 9,800, a 6% increase from the 2012 event in steamy Orlando, Fla.

Dzuban said the number of new, first-time exhibitors is up 64% for the Denver event, while total exhibitors are up roughly 16%. SCTE, he said, is also seeing a surge in international attendance, which was up 10% heading into the show.

That growth comes against the backdrop of SCTE’s deeper global focus. Earlier this month, for example, the SCTE launched the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), a brand and training division that will supply training and certification resources around the world. It’s also there to “eliminate existing brand confusion” with the Society for Broadband Professionals, a U.K.-based founded in 1945 that also goes by “SCTE.”

While this year’s show will shine the spotlight on specific categories such as DOCSIS 3.1, 4K/Ultra HD, the Reference Design Kit (RDK), energy management, WiFi, a big overarching theme will be customer service, Dzuban said.

“If we look at last year’s Expo being about IP networking and going to all-IP networks and what that technical evolution looks like, this year if really about how do we use science and technology to improve the customer experience in a market that is very competitive, but so are we,” he said, noting that the event will play host to 48 workshops.

And expect a look into the cloud that doesn’t just skim along the surface of what’s evolved into a catch-all buzzword. “We’re not talking about Wikipedia: What is the cloud? This is about how to apply dos and don’ts and best practices,” Dzuban said.

SCTE, like other cable-focused organizations, has been tasked with developing growth strategies amid a consolidating market, which, again, is one of the reasons why it’s been expanding its reach and focus.

“If you look at our mission, the mission doesn’t change” in the face of a consolidating industry, Dzuban said. “It’s expanding our footprint and our relationship with existing MSOs to include – just as CableLabs is absorbing Europe CableLabs and the NCTA [National Cable & Telecommunications Association] having a larger international contingent – the global community.”

But don’t expect Cable Tec-Expo to set up its tent overseas, at least not yet.  SCTE has already locked in New Orleans for the site of its 2015 cable tech-fest, set for Oct. 13-16.