New Orleans — More than any single force shaping the television and broadband industry, technology is driving the biggest change.

Engineers and executives steeped in hardware and software acronyms, domestic and international, picked apart the biggest challenges faced by the industry, spanning mobile, multi-gigabit broadband, the IP video transition and a host of others, at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans last week.

Waxing Wireless

While U.S. cable operators are leaning heavily on WiFi to lead their wireless strategies, Liberty Global has also been pushing hard on quad-play offerings that tie in the MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) model.

Mobile “is becoming the primary computing device,” Balan Nair, the MSO’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, said during a presentation about technology trends and how the operator is handling new forms of competition.

Liberty Global now has about 4.5 million mobile subscribers through its MVNO relationships (that subscriber number is expected to grow to 8 million through the MSO’s M&A activity). Nair said Long Term Evolution (LTE) allows for seamless connectivity, and the technology is on the road to delivering gigabit capacities.

“LTE is here to stay,” Nair said.

But WiFi “is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our story going forward,” he said, noting that delivering a good WiFi experience in the home matters more to many consumers than the wired broadband pipe connecting the home itself.

Nair also shed some light on Liberty Global’s future plans, telling the crowd the MSO is working on its first “WiFi-first” device, which would prefer WiFi access when it’s available and seamlessly fall back to the LTE mobile network when it’s not.

Enabling that seamless transition “is not an easy thing to do,” Nair allowed, adding that Liberty Global expects to introduce the WiFi-first product toward the fourth quarter of 2016.

During the follow-up panel moderated by Cox Communications president Pat Esser, Nair outlined four ways cable operators can enter the mobile game — they can build and operate the network themselves (if they have spectrum); buy another mobile provider; launch a “lite” MVNO whereby the MSO is relegated as a reseller; or introduce a “full” MVNO play where the operator builds out the mobile “core,” keeps call control and essentially rents access to the radios and base stations.

Liberty Global has tried out all four, and Nair was direct about the issues cable operators face with the home-grown route.

“I’ll tell you, building sucks,” he said. Though Liberty Global was able to obtain spectrum relatively cheaply, the MSO shut down its home-grown network about 18 months after launching it.

He said Liberty Global has found the most success, from an operational and economic standpoint, with the full MVNO approach, which allows the operator to control the SIM card that goes in the smartphone.

“In the end, it’s about handsets and price,” he said, noting that he puts the lite MVNO on the “bottom of the list” because the operator has no control — it’s just about renting and selling.

Nair also talked up the positive effect quad-play bundles have on customer retention.

“Over time, the churn rate is discernable between a quad-play and a non quad-play,” he said. “There’s a downside, though. If you screw up with mobile, you lose all four — you lose the whole quad-play.”

Service Agility, IP Video, Cybersecurity

The technology chiefs jumped to other topics during Wednesday’s conversation, including service agility, customer-centricity, the all-IP progression and cybersecurity.

Comcast, fresh off the national rollout of its voice remote, will launch an add-on called “X1 Answers” in mid-November, MSO executive vice president and CTO Tony Werner said.

“You’ll be able to ask, ‘What was the Broncos score?’ ‘How tall is the Empire State Building?’ I think it’s going to change a lot of things,” he said.

The transition to all-IP is foundational to proactive change, Werner and others said. By this time next year, Comcast will have deployed 8 million pure- IP set-tops, which matters to serving video on second screens.

“We have the same number of baby boomers as millennials right now, and the millennials are watching a lot more content on mobile,” Werner said. “If we have 24 million customer relationships and 15 million video starts in a week [on mobile devices] — that’s exponential, and it will probably only continue to grow. If you don’t have video over IP, you’re going to miss a big part of the audience — and it’s a growing part, not a shrinking part.”

Rolling out more features and services more quickly is a big priority for all network operators, execs said.

Liberty Global, which is deploying only Reference Design Kit-based devices and will begin converting to HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Codec) for 4K/Ultra HD video next year, will get to service agility using defined and publishable APIs (Application Program Interfaces), Nair said.

“I just want to build a stack that has almost every functionality covered by APIs — it’s a big transition for us,” Nair said.

For Nomi Bergman, president of Bright House Networks, the near-term product future includes more 10-Gigabit EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network), with an eye toward 100-G EPON. “We’re now helping to create the standard for that,” she said.” Also hot in BHN markets: Its “Echo”-branded whole-home WiFi solution.

“It represents a really nice collaboration between the technology, product and marketing teams,” she said.

On the heels of Tuesday’s Cybersecurity Symposium, Nair described a massive hack in the Netherlands, where 2 million broadband connections were shut down, two nights in a row. The four perpetrators were arrested a couple of weeks ago, and the incident caused Liberty to overhaul its crisis handling mechanisms.

“In dealing with communications, law enforcement, regulatory, PR — as it turned out, what we had wasn’t the most easily translatable during a crisis. We had to rebuild a lot of our processes,” Nair said.

Panelists were also asked to discuss some things they’re working on today. Phil McKinney, president and CEO of CableLabs, said his thinking tends to gravitate to what’s coming tomorrow, noting that his group has been focused on “exponential technologies” — things that are outside the scope of the traditional planning cycle.

He said he worries about “what’s beyond the horizon … so that we don’t get surprised.”

Read more news from SCTE Cable-Tec Expo.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) said this week’s Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans drew more than 8,600 attendees, which was down from 9,100 at last year’s show in Denver, but up 5% from the confab’s 2010 stay in New Orleans.

SCTE said paid full conference registrations at this year’s tech-fest rose 21%, and international attendance surpassed 1,100.

Additionally, the show floor featured nearly 400 exhibitors, in-line with the 2010 show in New Orleans, and a “slight increase” over last year’s Expo in the Mile High City. This year’s show also drew 66 vendors that took part at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo for the first time, SCTE said.

Big topics at this week’s event included DOCSIS 3.1, WiFi and other wireless technologies, cybersecurity, and progress made by the cable industry’s Energy 2020 initiative. Please visit Multichannel News’s show microsite for our extensive coverage from the week.

Next year’s show is set for Sept. 26-29 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. John Schanz, executive vice president and chief network officer of Comcast Cable Communications, has been tapped as program committee chairman for next year’s show.

“From packed educational workshops to the bustling show floor and the success of Expo Evening, the attendance and enthusiastic support for SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015 showed again why Expo is among SCTE’s most valued programs,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE, in a statement. “The active involvement of Pat Esser, the guidance of Balan Nair and the support of CableLabs, NCTA and our MSO and vendor partners helped to shape a program that brought tremendous value to all of our attendees.  We look forward to getting to work immediately with John Schanz and his team as we build on our success next year in Philadelphia.” 

New Orleans -- Turns out that delivering cloud-based DVR services is a whole lot different than delivering video on demand (VOD), even though the “ordering” process looks essentially the same: Open the app, pick the show of interest, push “play.”

That’s because VOD uses caches to store common content, while cloud-DVR (cDVR) requires an individual copy every time someone pushes “play” -- “which renders CDN caching useless -- this is individual to you, so there’s no caching,” said Neill Kipp, distinguished engineer within the Comcast VIPER (Video IP Engineering & Research) division at Thursday’s “Moving Set-Top Functions to the Cloud Session” here at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo (and during which Kipp burst into song on several occasions, in order to manage a sudden case of speaker jitters -- it totally worked.).

Comcast began outfitting its systems with cloud-DVR components in 2014 -- mostly load-balanced “Super8” packagers, DASH-based origin servers, and lots and lots of storage. In one region, serving about 180,000 subscribers, the cDVR array stores close to 16 Petabytes of data.

“It’s a huge deployment, a real big thing -- all those discs, we had to buy, rack, and stack; every six weeks, we’d turn up another system,” Kipp said.

From a usage perspective, the cloud DVR service sees the most action “when nothing’s on,” Kipp said. “What we see is that when popular shows are on, people watch live TV -- but when nothing’s on, that’s when we see spikes.”

Asked why the cDVR service settled on MPEG-DASH (Moving Pictures Experts Group/Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) rather than HLS (HTTP Live Streaming), Kipp and co-presenter Raj Nair, chief technology officer of Ericsson’s Mediaroom line, noted that DASH does a better job of handling multiple audio feeds and multiple codecs

 “HLS throws up its hands and says ‘I wasn’t designed to do that, I was designed to work on an iPad,’” Kipp said, adding: “DASH is a little more powerful.”

When asked if the elimination of local DVR storage signals the end of the set-top box, Kipp gave a provisional yes: “Is  this the beginning of the end of the traditional set-top box? Yes -- don’t make me ship you one, don’t make me roll a truck.”

But whether set-top box, gateway or dongle, “you still need a client,” noted panel moderator Marwan Fawaz, partner with Sarepta Advisors. “The question is whether we’ll still have any local storage in the home.”

AT&T GigaPower. CenturyLink 1-Gig. Google Fiber. Driven by the overwhelming growth of over-the-top (OTT) video, social media and other rich content, the Gigabit Internet era is here for U.S. consumers. They want it now, they’ll switch providers to get it, and they most definitely will not wait for it.

As the longtime residential broadband leaders, MSOs are finally nearing the finish line of a technology that will completely disrupt the competitive landscape and market narrative for Gigabit Internet: DOCSIS 3.1.

The new standard will also finally put the benefits and capabilities of the next generation of broadband delivery technology – the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) – in full view and allow MSOs to compete for Gigabit Internet customers.

As with any product with CCAP’s potential, it comes with competing claims and confusion. So let’s set a few facts straight so the industry can move forward and unleash the potential of Gigabit Internet services and the ultra broadband customer experience.

Will the Real DOCSIS 3.1 CCAP Please Stand Up?

The transition to the DOCSIS 3.1 standard is both imminent and crucial to enabling MSOs with the capacity and speed they need to step into the ultra broadband generation. The challenge is parsing through the reality of CCAP equipment: is it DOCSIS 3.1-compliant now or will it “evolve” there over time? Will it be able to do full spectrum to reach the maximum of 10 Gbps downstream, or is that a future consideration and additional cost?

Advice to MSOs: Networks are built with equipment, not slides. With Gigabit Internet competition heating up, look for CCAP solutions that are fully DOCSIS 3.1 compliant today for both upstream and downstream. Also, understand the roadmap to know what additional investments will be required down the road to actually deliver DOCSIS 3.1 from a CCAP, including potentially needing to rip and replace switch cards, line cards or PHY modules. Underdeveloped technology and expensive card overhauls could add costs, time and complexity to Gigabit rollout plans.

Think Open, Intelligent and Software-Defined

There is also a view that CCAPs designed on open Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) platforms are limited in their ability to scale with DOCSIS 3.1 compared to proprietary hardware designs.

Advice to MSOs: Nobody likes vendor lock-in. ATCA platforms are open and designed to incorporate the latest trends in high speed interconnect technologies, next generation processors and carrier-grade reliability and manageability. More importantly, they are purpose-built as CCAPs based on their intelligent software, which makes them inherently more cloud-ready than proprietary hardware. In fact, there are ATCA-based CCAPs that support full spectrum DOCSIS 3.1 downstream today.

Be Wary of “Headend Hogs”

While the focus is on delivering Gigabit services, the original premise of the CCAP specification cannot be overlooked: a super-dense edge architecture that combines edge QAM and CMTS functionality in a device that saves headend space and power while converging IP services.

Advice to MSOs: While some CCAPs can be up to 75% deeper or weigh four times as much, the key metric to impact the bottom line is power consumption with some CCAPs costing up to $1,200 more per year per chassis to power. Given the size of CCAP deployments in the coming years to support Gigabit services, understanding the cost difference in power consumption and what that adds up to over time is critical. One major U.S. operator that deployed CCAPs in a major market found that they saved more than $5 million in energy costs in just the first year.

It’s the Gigabit World, not the Gigabit Wait

While telco and fiber competitors have seized headlines over the past year through limited fiber-to-the-home deployments in very select markets, MSOs stand on the precipice of Gigabit-enabling their entire HFC footprint and leading the ultra broadband industry for another decade. It will be a game changer and leading the charge will be CCAPs that support full spectrum downstream DOCSIS 3.1 today, effortlessly scale and are ready for cable’s software-defined future while minimizing their headend footprint and power consumption.

--Lisa Garvin is a senior product manager for Casa Systems, a provider of next generation cable edge technologies.

New Orleans -- Participants in the SCTE’s Energy 2020 program, which aims to substantially reduce energy consumption, cost and grid dependency by the year 2020, packed the room here Thursday at Cable-Tec Expo to check in on the progress of the year-old effort.

Astronaut John Herrington joined Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers president and CEO Mark Dzuban, Comcast executive vice president and chief network officer John Schanz, and Liberty Global EVP and chief technology officer Balan Nair to kick off the discussion, in part to underscore the universal importance of energy conservation.

Dzuban summed it up this way: “Energy 2020,” he said. “is the future.”

Herrington, who’s done three space walks, including one in 2002 involving a stream of ions to serve as the grounding strap “so that I wasn’t,” said that Energy 2020 resembles space missions, especially from a partnership perspective. “We had 16 worldwide partners when we built the space station - it was a collaborative effort of people who worked in many cases for competing companies, but the mission was the mission," he said. 

Liberty Global spends $180 million annually on energy, said Nair, at a rate of six to 12 cents per kilowatt hour, which will rise to the 20 cent range by 2020. “Business as usual is not looking very good on that trajectory,” he said. “As an industry, we really need to come together and figure this out. That’s Energy 2020.”

As a quick reminder, here are the overarching goals of Energy 2020:

-Reduce Energy Costs by 25% on a Unit Basis;

-Reduce Power Consumption by 20% on a Unit Basis;

-Reduce Grid Dependency by 10%; and

-Optimize Technical Facilities by 20%.

Session highlights:

-      Components in the outside plant, and particularly power supplies, represent close to 80% of on operator’s total power expenditure, said Joe Jensen, EVP and CTO of Block Communications (which owns Buckeye CableSystem).

-       A financial model and template with six variations for network type – hybrid fiber coax (HFC), RFoG (RF over Glass), and the PONs  (passive optical networks) -- is well underway for all operators to use, to assess their current consumption levels, and adapt, said Gary Mitchinson, head of access engineering for Liberty Global.

-       Nearly a dozen short and long term options exist to lower power consumption in outside plant actives, said Dave Fellows, CTO and co-Founder of Layer3 TV, a startup “next-generation” cable operator, and Rob Howald, VP of network architecture for Comcast. Among them: Relaxing amplifier specs for areas like hum modulation, which matters less in an all-digital world; shutting down high frequency modulators under light traffic load; and taking advantage of peak-to-average power reduction when DOCSIS 3.1-based gear arrives.

Dan Cooper, vice president of critical infrastructure at Time Warner Cable, later outlined SCTE 2020’s accomplishments, noting that 15 standards and practices have been published or are now “in-flight., and progress in establishing the industry’s energy baseline metrics.

Energy 2020 has also managed to significantly expand its buy-in from partners. In January, the initiative counted 95 members across 30 companies, and has since expanded to 299 members spanning 70 companies.

The premise of the initiative that  became Energy 2020 was established by the industry in 2009, that “energy should never be an obstacle to our industry’s growth or competitiveness”

“There is a lot more to do,” Schanz added. “It’s why we call it Energy 2020.” 

New Orleans – Arris introduced its first pair of DOCSIS 3.1 modem models earlier this week – the Touchstone CM8200, which is for direct-to-MSO distribution, and the SURFboard SB8200, a version that Arris will sell at retail.

Arris didn’t have any images of those devices to share at the time, but did have its new retail model out on display and running on a demo connected to its flagship CCAP, the E6000 here at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo.

So, feast your eyes. It does exist.  Arris still hasn’t announced whose chipset is powering it, but my bet is on Broadcom. 

The debate swirling about emerging distributed CCAP (converged cable access platform) architectures is a good news/bad news story today.

The good news? There are multiple options that can be made to work.  The not so good news? It’s not yet clear which approach is “right” one, as some might work better than another depending on the cable operator and its individual needs.

But there is agreement on what’s driving the cable networking world toward more distributed forms of the CCAP, which packs in the functions of the cable modem termination system and the edge QAM to support all services. The general thought is that more distributed architectures will help operators support the surging bandwidth demand that’s being driven by IP video, gigabit broadband services, Ultra HD video, WiFi hotspot proliferation and the so-called Internet of Things.  Cable headends space is expected to become tighter and tighter as more capacity is needed if the industry sticks with integrated CCAP architectures.

While there’s agreement that distributed approaches will help to deal with this future headend space-crunch, there are a set of possible options that have emerged:

1. Remote MAC/PHY that puts the edge QAM in the node
2. Remote MAC/PHY that doesn’t place the eQAM in the node
3. Remote PHY, which places the PHY in the node and the MAC processing in the headend.

“All are good, none are perfect. All have some issues,” Tom Cloonan, chief technology officer—network solutions at Arris, said Thursday at a workshop titled: Distributed CCAP Architectures: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.

Arris recently conducted a study that looked at the pros and cons of each approach, and picked 26 attributes that, Arris believed, are among the most important to the cable operator.  That was then divided into four broader areas: opera tonal cost management, operational east of use, infrastructure compatibility, and design simplicity (which factored in vendor time-to-market).  Arris’s engineers then applied scores  that weighed how well each architecture served each.

Arris then tabulated those results to see how it all shook out. “What’s best?” Cloonan posed. “I don’t have the answer…In the end, I think that all of them are workable solutions and technically feasible.”

Given that, he expects that different MSOs will go in different directions  and possibly bifurcate the supplier market.

Cisco Systems, meanwhile, is fairly fixated on which approach it favors  – remote PHY, which relocates  the physical layer components to the node.

John Chapman, Cisco fellow and CTO of the company’s cable business unit, discussed how resiliency can be applied to a remote PHY architecture, and said part of the debate is whether operators want to centralize the software running the system (with remote PHY) versus a more decentralized form with remote MAC/PHY that puts those software elements in the node.

“It’s fair to say that they both work,” Chapman said. “We can make anything work across all of the designs.”

Chapman noted that the remote PHY approach uses standardized interfaces to connect the headend to the remote PHY devices using pseudowires/tunneling protocols.

While that sort of approach might seem complex and “makes the brain hurt a little bit,” Chapman said remote PHY offers benefits that make it worth it, including higher reliability and the implementation of lower-cost digital optics, higher bit rates for DOCSIS 3.1 and lower plant maintenance costs.

Cisco, he said, is also thinking through how to make the architecture redundant so that there is no single point of failure. While nodes aren’t redundant elements, operators will have methods to apply that establish multiple backhauls to ensure that these nodes stay connected.  Chapman’s suggested approach is to retain an active backup versus building an on-demand backup connection that might take a few milliseconds to fire up.

“It’s a design choice, but it’s not something we mandate,” he said, noting that Cisco will provide the tools to support multiple options. “All remote PHY is, is a pseudowire management scheme.” 

Here’s another snapshot of news and announcements being made at this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans. Please go here to check out our first batch of briefs from Expo, or visit our show microsite. 

-CableLabs (booth 2845) has teed up a handful of tech demos for this week’s show: Spectrum Capture Analysis (tools that analyze data from cable modems with spectrum capture capability);  Ultra HD, including content that showcases High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut (WCG);  CPE Energy Efficiency that’s tied to the industry Energy Efficiency Voluntary Agreements for Set-Top Boxes and Small Network Equipment ; the Internet of Things, featuring interoperability between competing  ecosystems from AllSeen, UPnP, Hue and possibly others.  CableLabs will also show the separation of IPv4 and IPv6 traffic on a home gateway, highlighted by an IPv6-GRE tunnel between a home gateway and a device in the cable provider’s network.

-Casa Systems (booth 3035) said it will show a “live” DOCSIS 3.1-based environment running on its flagship C100G converged cable access platform, and present the results of a  C100G deployment with Time Warner Cable in New York City that  reduced energy consumption and rack space and simplified operations for the MSO by combining video and broadband services on the same platform.

The vendor will also introduce its Remote CCAP Node, which distributes PHY layer functions, and a MobileEdge managed WiFi platform that works in concert with DOCSIS-based network and modem equipment.

-MDSi (booth 2715)  said it will team with Fulcrum Technologies to demonstrate an integrated asset lifecycle management (ALM) system that can recover value from equipment and parts that are no longer needed for their original purpose. The combined system will show how operators can gain visibility and take control of new, existing, and stranded assets.

-ATX Networks (booth 842) will feature its new UCrypt IP to Analog (IP2A), and QAM to Analog (Q2A) gateways. The UCrypt IP2A gateway is designed for conversion of IP video streams to NTSC or PAL analog formats, and is capable of ingesting up to 60 MPEG-2/H.264, HD/SD video streams and convert them to NTSC or PAL. The vendor’s next generation UCrypt Q2A gateway enables MSOs to decrypt select programs from their digital tier and retransmit them in NTSC or PAL analog, and is viewed as a product that can help operators reclaim their analog video tiers.

-Monroe Electronics (booth 1707) will show the Model 216 MultiPort RF Routing System, a new multiple-input, multiple-output switching system. The system enables any of the 16 inputs to be selected and routed to either or both of the two independent outputs via a Web browser or Monroe’s own CrossPoint Control Protocol (MXCP). The product performs over 5 MHz to over 2 GHz with 20db of gain, the company said.  Monroe will also show its One-Net SE, a product that’s used for Emergency Alert System/Common Alerting Protocol compliance management for FCC regulations and FEMA mandates.

-IneoQuest Technologies (booth 425) will demo its latest test and measurement tools for linear and OTT/adaptive network infrastructures, including its IP Digital Video Analyzer (DVA IP) and Audience Measurement Platform (AMP).

-Sencore (booth 1414) said it will introduce new solutions for caption compliance, portable test and measurement devices, an enhanced lineup of HEVC-ready products. Its Video Bridge Advanced Extractor (VB7880) provides real-time caption monitoring and historical archiving to ensure FCC caption compliance, while StreamCast provides encoding, streaming, modulation, recording and local IP playback. Its All-Standard All-Band USB Modulator (DTU-315) is a pocket-sized portable modulator for satellite, cable or terrestrial signals. Also on show will be Sencore’s TV/RF Portable Signal Analyzer (DSA1491), which features a 9-inch color touchscreen display to help troubleshoot and pinpoint transmission issues with digital satellite signals, digital TV broadcast channels, cable QAM channels, and ASI MPEG streams.

New Orleans -- The difference between great innovations that succeed, and great innovations that fail, can be vast, noted Ron Adner, Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and author of the book Wide Lens, during Wednesday’s Annual Awards Luncheon keynote here at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo.

Consider: Thomas Edison is credited for the lightbulb, but it was actually invented 60 years prior. Sony invented the Walkman in ‘79, but Apple cleaned up on the digital version. Sony also invented the first e-reader, in 1990, but Amazon seized the marketplace with a technologically inferior and higher-priced version.

“Edison, Apple, Amazon -- they thought about what else needs to happen, beyond the technological innovation,” Adner (pictured) told attendees. “Edison looked at the lightbulb and saw the systems that needed to be built, and he went out and built them” -- including means to generate and transmit power, and the power meter, to bill for it.

Just delivering on great execution doesn’t necessarily deliver success. Rather, success requires co-innovation and adoption chains -- finding who else needs to buy in, in order to create value. Sony’s e-reader failed in part, he said, because the company didn’t what the kind of buy-in publishers needed.

“As a professor, it used to be that you had to talk about Sony -- that is no longer true,” Adner said. “Sony remains a great company, but they’re not important in the old ways anymore.”

Adner closed by encouraging audience members to ask questions that are normally taken for granted: Where to stand, when to move, who should lead, what’s the risk, and how to win.

“That’s what it really means to ask this question of what else,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that what we know goes out the window, but it does mean there’s an additional layer, and sometimes the layer changes things dramatically.” 

New Orleans – A handful of top industry execs gathered here Wednesday at the General Session to discuss and debate the key technologies and trends that are impacting the industry now, are out on the viewable horizon, and even a few that are hiding behind corners.

And the topics were as diverse as the challenges faced by the industry, spanning mobile, multi-gigabit broadband, the IP video transition, and agile-style models that can enable operators to move at web-speed.

Waxing Wireless

While U.S. cable operators are leaning heavily on WiFi to lead their wireless strategies, Liberty Global has also been pushing hard on quad-play offerings that tie in the MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) model.

Mobile “is becoming the primary computing device,” Balan Nair, executive vice president and chief technology officer, said during a presentation about technology trends and how the operator is handling new forms of competition.

Liberty Global now has about 4.5 million mobile subscribers through its MVNO relationships (that sub number is expected to grow to 8 million through the MSO’s M&A activity), and Nair said Long Term Evolution (LTE) allows for seamless connectivity and the technology is on the road to delivering gigabit capacities.

“LTE is here to stay,” said Nair (pictured, credit: Susan Poag).

But WiFi, he said, “is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our story going forward,” noting that delivering a good WiFi experience in the home matters more to many consumers than the wired broadband pipe connecting the home itself.

Nair also shed some light on Liberty Global’s future plans, telling the crowed that the MSO is working on its first “WiFi-first” device, which would prefer WiFi access when it’s available, and seamlessly fall back to the LTE mobile network when it’s not.

Enabling that seamless transition “is not an easy thing to do,” Nair allowed, adding that Liberty Global expects to introduce its first WiFi-first product toward the fourth quarter of 2016.

During the follow-up panel moderated by Cox Communications president Pat Esser, Nair outlined four ways cable operators can enter the mobile game – they can build and operate the network themselves (if they have spectrum), buy another mobile provider, launch a “light” MVNO whereby the MSO is relegated as a reseller, or introduce a “full” MVNO play where the operator builds out the mobile “core,” keeps call control and essentially rents access to the radios and base stations.

Liberty Global has tried out all four and Nair was direct about the issues cable operators face with the home-grown route. “I’ll tell you, building sucks,” he said.  Though Liberty Global was able to obtain spectrum relatively cheaply, the MSO shut down its home-grown network about 18 months after launching it.

He said Liberty Global has found the most success from an operational and economic standpoint with the full  MVNO approach, which allows the operator to control the SIM card that goes in the smartphone.

 “In the end, it’s about handsets and price,” he said, noting that he puts the light MVNO on the “bottom of the list” because the operator has no control – it’s just about renting and selling.

Nair also talked up the positive affect quad-play bundles have on customer retention. “Over time, the churn rate it is discernable between a quad pay and a non quad-play,” he said. “There’s a  downside, though. if you screw up with mobile you lose all four -- you lose the whole quad play.”

Service Agility, IP Video, Cybersecurity

Other topics of note from Wednesday’s conversation: Service agility, customer-centricity, the all-IP progression, and cybersecurity.

Comcast, fresh off the national rollout of its voice remote, will launch an add-on called “X1 Answers” in mid-November, said MSO executive vice president and CTO Tony Werner.

“You’ll be able to  ask -- what was the Broncos score, how tall is the Empire State Building? -- I think it’s going to change a lot of things,” he said.

The transition to all-IP is foundational to proactive change, Werner and others said. By this time next year, Comcast will have deployed 8 million pure-IP set-tops, which matters to serving video on second screens.

“We have the same number of Baby Boomers as Millennials right now, and the Millennials are watching  a lot more content on mobile,” Werner said. “If we have 24 million customer relationships and 15 million video starts in a week [on mobile devices] -- that’s exponential, and it will probably only continue to grow. If you don’t have video over IP, you’re going to miss a big part of the audience -- and it’s a growing part, not a shrinking part.”

Rolling out more features and services more quickly is a big priority for all network operators, execs said.

Liberty Global, which is deploying solely Reference Design Kit-based devices, and will begin converting to HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec) for 4K/Ultra HD video next year, will get to service agility using defined and publishable APIs (Application Program Interfaces), Nair said.

“I just want to build a stack that has almost every functionality covered by API -- it’s a big transition for us.”

For Nomi Bergman, president of Bright House Networks, the near-term product future includes more 10-Gigabit EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network), with an eye towards 100G EPON. “We’re now helping to create the standard for that,” she said.” Also hot in BHN markets: Its “Echo”-branded whole-home WiFi solution.

“It represents a really nice collaboration between the technology, product and marketing teams,” she said.

On the heels of Tuesday’s Cybersecurity Symposium, Nair described a massive hack in the Netherlands, where 2 million broadband connections were shut down, two nights in a row. The four perpetrators were arrested last week, and the incident caused Liberty to overhaul its crisis handling mechanisms.

“In dealing with communications, law enforcement, regulatory, PR -- as it turned out, what we had wasn’t the most easily translatable during a crisis. We had to rebuild a lot of our processes,” Nair said.

Panelists were also asked to discuss some things they’re working on today. For Phil McKinney, president and CEO of CableLabs, his thinking tends to gravitate to what’s coming tomorrow, noting that his group has been focused on “exponential technologies” – things that are outside the scope of the traditional planning cycle.

He worries about “what’s beyond the horizon…so that we don’t get surprised.”

But when later pressed to identify a theme for 2016, McKinney offered this: “It’s all about multi-gig,” a reference to the emergence of DOCSIS 3.1.

New Orleans -- Heading up this year’s Cable-Tec Expo Awards, Thomas L. Lewis, the president of Radiant Communications, was named the 2015 SCTE Member of the Year.

SCTE said Lewis, a Society member since 1999,  distinguished himself over the past year as secretary of the Maryland-based SCTE Chesapeake Chapter, where he promoted the growing value of SCTE with his devotion to its educational mission—ensuring his chapter’s success by coordinating all meetings, technical training, and communications for the benefit of the cable workforce within Chesapeake’s reach.

“Shocked is probably the only word I have right now,” said Lewis (pictured, credit: Susan Poag), who was unaware of the honor until the moment it was announced here at Wednesday's annual awards luncheon. He said his decade-plus with the Chesapeake Chapter has been a “real journey,” noting that the chapter was teetering on bankruptcy  when he joined but has since blossomed into a “very successful chapter.”

The SCTE on Wednesday also welcomed two new members to its Hall of Fame -- Andrew J. Healy, president, CEO, and founder of VerTek; and Daniel J. McKay, vice president and chief operating officer of C3 Broadband Integration.

Healy, a member of SCTE since 1977, played a key role in the deployment of some of the first fiber networks in the country , and, in the early 1990s, helped to engineer and construct more than 10,000 miles of cable plant across the country annually.

McKay, an SCTE member since 1992, was involved with CableLabs during its startup phase and prior to its move to the Denver area. As vice president of engineering for Coaxial Communications, a small MSO, in the 1990s, McKay promoted SCTE among staff and subcontractors, and persuaded the MSO to absorb the costs of membership and certification testing, which stimulated Coaxial’s strong involvement with SCTE among the MSO’s engineering staff. At Coaxial Communications, SCTE certifications were also factored into performance evaluations and career planning.

Healy said he was “humbled” to be inducted.  “It’s been a helluva ride is all I can say.”

“Today I feel honored and appreciated,” McKay said.

Additionally, outgoing SCTE board of directors chairman Terry Cordova presented his 2015 SCTE Chairman’s Award to Christine Whitaker, senior vice president of operations, at Comcast Cable Communications, recognizing her for significant support of the Society over the past year.

Cordova said that Whitaker, as board treasurer, shared generously of her experience and time in helping to oversee the financial health of the SCTE. Under her leadership, the board approved a new investment policy and implemented a reserve policy in accordance with best practices.

The ANSI-accredited SCTE Standards Program imparted its annual SCTE Excellence in Standards Award for 2015 to Dr. Paul Hearty, vice president, technology standards, Sony Electronics. Dr. Hearty, a vet of the cable industry, was the inaugural chairman of the SCTE Digital Video Subcommittee (DVS) when the group began in 1996, and he has held that chairmanship ever since. Dr. Hearty’s leadership has helped to transform the industry through advanced video standards, new video quality standards, advanced audio standards, and standards for 3D content as well, SCTE said.

Vibha Rustagi, CEO of itaas, a company she founded in 1999 that was acquired by Cognizant last year,  was recognized with The Women in Technology Award, jointly provided by Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT), SCTE, and Cablefax, and sponsored by Bright House Networks. An awardee of seven patents for her engineering proficiency, Rustagi is the founder of itaas, a provider of  video testing, integration and deployment services for traditional set-tops as well as IP-connected devices. She has been an SCTE member since 2010.

“We often hear that content is king, and to that I say technology rules,” Rustagi said.

SCTE Senior Member recognitions were bestowed upon two individuals—Jim Chartre, director of engineering technology, CCI Systems; and Robert Weaver, business process analyst III, Cox Communications. Chartre, an SCTE member since 1990, and Weaver, a member since 1978, were recognized for their demonstration of technical competence, active participation in Society and industry affairs, and high standards of professionalism.

NEW ORLEANS -- DOCSIS 3.1 represents a huge gain in performance for cable broadband services, but after carving out precious bandwidth for the new platform, there will be relatively few D3.1-capable modems on the network to take advantage of that capacity early on.

Cable operators are now grappling with the question of how many DOCSIS 3.1 modems should be on a particular service group before they light up the spectrum that unlocks enormous horsepower for a new wave of D3.1-capable modems that will also support DOCSIS 3.0-based traffic. 

That’s just one issue Comcast has been studying as it continues to trial DOCSIS 3.1, said Jorge Salinger, the MSO’s vice president, access architecture, on Tuesday during a workshop titled: “DOCSIS 3.1 Readiness: To 1 Gig and Beyond.”

Salinger reiterated that Comcast has a “pretty aggressive plan for DOCSIS 3.1,” as field trials continue this year ahead of anticipated deployments in 2016, and talked up the 50% performance boost operators expect to get out of D3.1’s use of ODFM signals and the Low Density Parity Check forward error-correction scheme.

While DOCSIS 3.1 supports two 196-MHz blocks of spectrum, the specification allows operators to allocate a minimum of 24 MHz, Salinger pointed out, noting that it’s possible to proactively deploy DOCSIS 3.1 spectrum to the heaviest users, at least during the early phases of deployment.   

That approach could allow cable operators to supply new modems to that base of users and surgically free up DOCSIS 3.1 spectrum during the transition, he said, adding that Comcast and other operators still have other tools, such as moving to new, more efficient codecs, to create that can be applied to the new D3.1 platform.

Salinger also explained how Comcast might use DOCSIS 3.1 to deliver residential Gigabit broadband services. New hybrid modems, which will support both D3.0 and D3.1 traffic, could create bonded capacity of about 1.7 Gigabits per second, enabling Comcast to offer a “low penetration” 1-Gig service, he said, adding that DOCSIS 3.1 equipment is “developing at a very, very fast pace.”

But he allowed that testing and measuring DOCSIS 3.1-based services and evaluating capacity management with the new platform would provide “a new and different challenge.” DOCSIS 3.1, Salinger added, “will require some operational adjustment but can be deployed on existing plant.”

One company that’s trying to help cable meet the test and measurement challenge of DOCSIS 3.1 is Viavi (formerly JDSU).

Al Ruth, a product line manager at Viavi, presented on how the vendor is using current plant metrics to monitor the health and performance of OFDM-based DOCSIS 3.1 signals as they move through the cable network.

Viavi is currently weighing this in the form of a trial with an unnamed European cable operator in four markets that started with a node selection process, a plant data and analysis phase, and on to the current phase, which involves collecting and analyzing data in the home.

Those tests, Ruth said, involve several elements, including basic carrier-level measurements, modulation error ratio measurements, and ingress noise testing. 

While those trials are not yet complete, Ruth said Viavi has already concluded that it can review these key metrics to predict how DOCSIS 3.1 traffic will perform on the cable network.  

The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) said new field tests of the speedier 2.0 version of the home networking platform achieved net data rates of 400 Mbps or more in 90% of all coaxial outlets, or paths.

Those tests also showed net throughputs of at least 350 Mbps were achieved in 95% of paths, the organization said. The chart shows the percentage of paths delivering a specific data rate or higher for both raw data (PHY) and net (MAC) throughput.

MoCA said the results were based on trials conducted in 205 U.S. homes, noting that all homeowners were volunteers, and that no homes were screened or selected based on construction materials, age, condition of coaxial wiring, or the type of pay TV service being delivered to those homes .

“The completion of the MoCA 2.0 field tests confirms the speed, ease of installation and reliability of our technology,” Charles Cerino, MoCA’s president, said in a statement. “This proves that coax is the high-speed backbone of the home network.”  

MoCA, a technology used in multi-room DVRs and in bridge devices that extend the reach of home WiFi networks, is also conducting similar trials in China, Israel and South Africa.

The organization announced in April that all new product certifications conducted in the first quarter of 2015 were for devices based on MoCA 2.0, a platform that’s designed to support usable throughputs of more than 400 Mbps in “Basic” mode and 500 Mbps in a “Turbo” point-to-point setting when utilizing a single channel. MoCA 2.0 also supports an “Enhanced” mode that uses channel bonding to provide throughputs of between 800 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

More than 30 products have been certified for MoCA 2.0.

John Schanz, the executive vice president and chief network officer of  Comcast, will serve as program committee chair for SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2016, when the annual event returns to the MSO’s hometown of Philadelphia.

In that role, Schanz will spearhead the event’s agenda, ive the content for the event, which will focus on advanced network technologies improved customer experience and energy management. Next year’s show is set for Sept. 26-29 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Schanz succeeds this year’s Cable-Tec Expo program committee chair, Balan Nair, the EVP and chief technology officer of Liberty Global. They both serve as co-chairs of SCTE’s Energy 2020 program.

“John Schanz’s vision of the future and his commitment to innovation have been key factors in shaping the roadmap to cable telecommunications’ future,” said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE and ISBE, in a statement.  “His understanding of the opportunities that lie ahead for the industry will help us create a compelling Expo 2016 program that will benefit all of the stakeholders—operators, vendors and individual members—in cable technology.”

“Through programs such as Energy 2020 and DOCSIS 3.1 training, SCTE has been a catalyst of the transformation taking place in today’s cable industry,” Schanz added. “In the months ahead, the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo® 2016 Program Committee will be developing an agenda that will help operators and technology partners harness the technologies and products that are on the horizon.”

Schanz joined Comcast in 2006, and previously served as EVP of network and data center operations for AOL. 

Multiscreen video specialist Vubiquity has teamed with TV2U Worldwide Pty Ltd to roll out transactional VOD (TVOD) services to under-penetrated markets in Asia and the Middle East.

Under the deal, TV2U will act as Vubiquity’s affiliate in up to seven high-growth markets, including Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.  Other countries covered by the deal include Australia and the United Kingdom, and others may be added to the list at a later date, the companies said.

Vubiquity will also provide  international programming for these new VOD services along with content processing and ongoing promotional support.

In turn, TV2U will provide its video-distributor clients with a TVOD platform that includes single login for access to films and TV series on devices such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, connected TVs and set-top boxes. 

Here’s a snapshot of news and announcements being made at this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans. 

-Guavus has launched Service Reflex 3, a big data analytics application that enables service providers to dynamically improve service quality and enhance customer experience by ingesting, fusing and contextualizing network impacting events with subscriber data in real time. Guavus said the application bridges the gap between Operation Support Systems (OSS) and Billing Support Systems (BSS), helping to  improve operations, reduce the cost of customer care and deliver an enhanced quality of experience. 

-Provisioning and OSS firm Incognito Software Systems (booth 1109) said it is providing complimentary printed copies of its new book, vCPE for Dummies, at this week’s show. The title, published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. with contribution from Incognito, offers practical strategies on how operators can quickly create, test, and deploy new network functions while still keeping capex and opex costs in check. The book centers on the notion of virtual CPE solutions, which allow operators to move device capabilities from the consumer-side device into the cloud. Interested readers can also go here to obtain a digital copy.

-Huawei Technologies (booth 155) has introduced a suite of products aimed at helping cable operators stay competitive in the digital era. At the show,  Huawei will show Hybrid Video Solution and a series of GigaBand Network products spanning Giga Coax, Giga Transmission and Giga Backhaul. Among that group, Giga Coax, Huawei said, creates a converged platform for DOCSIS and fiber-to-the-home, said the company, which now provides cable products to 45 MSOs worldwide.

-Pico Digital Inc. (booth 911) said it will show its Condor cable TV headend system, which uses the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS) for the Digital Video Broadcast standard, alongside its PD1600 “headend in a box” that is packed into a 5-RU (rack unit) form factor.  The company will also highlight its latest line of high-definitions, standard definition and IP encoders, HD QAM set-top boxes, and a mini cable modem termination system (CMTS). The miniCMTS200a can support up to 400 DOCSIS 2.0 modems, or a configuration of 250 DOCSIS 3.0 plus 150 DOCSIS 2.0 modems. The unit offers 16 downstream bonded channels for up to 800 Mbps downstream and four bonded upstream channels – enough for bursts of 120 Mbps.

-Thomson Video Networks (booth 2127) will demo its ViBE family of SD/HD encoding products, which support the MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and HEVC codecs, and a new software release of MediaFlexSUITE, the company's multiscreen delivery management platform. Thomson Video Networks will also feature 4K compression solutions, including the ViBE VS7000, and the FUZE-1, a 1-RU channel origination playout system.

-Broadspeak (booth 3117), a maker of content delivery network and video streaming products, will show its new Bk350 Origin Packager, which lets operators convert recorded and on-demand content into adaptive bit rate streams while securing content with digital rights management encryption. Also on show will be a “CDN in a Box” approach that supports cloud DVR applications and is managed by company’s BkM100 CDNMediator v5.0, and the nanoCDN, a system that creates adaptive bit rate streams for Android-powered set-tops. 

New Orleans -- The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) on Tuesday announced that Tony Werner, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Comcast, has been elected chairman of the organization’s board for the 2015-2016 term.

Werner (pictured) succeeds Terry Cordova, executive vice president and CTO of Suddenlink Communications, who served as chairman of SCTE (and its global brand, the International Society of Broadband Experts) for two terms.

Here at a meeting that coincided with the show, the board also elected three new officers to serve on the executive committee for the coming year: 

-Vice Chairman: Bill Warga, vice president, technology, Liberty Global;

-Treasurer: Christine Whitaker, senior vice president, operations, Comcast; and

-Secretary: Steve Williams, director, access network planning, design and operations, Time Warner Cable.

Following the election, the SCTE board of directors conducted its first meeting with the new board.

“Terry Cordova has provided the tireless commitment and the leadership we’ve needed as we’ve transformed SCTE and ISBE into world-class resources for the global cable telecommunications industry,” Mark Dzuban president and CEO of SCTE, said in a statement. “We look forward to working closely with Tony Werner, his Executive Committee and the entire Board of Directors as we continue to enhance the value of SCTE and ISBE for our operator, vendor and individual members.”

NEW ORLEANS — One of the biggest threats cable operators face today — if not the biggest — is the risk related to cybersecurity, both internal and external.

But hidden in that threat, optimists in the cable industry believe, is a potentially lucrative opportunity as business and residential customers seek answers on how to come to grips with their unique security-related issues.

Both sides of that coin were the focus of John N. Stewart (pictured), the senior vice president and chief security and trust officer at Cisco Systems, who keynoted Tuesday’s Cybersecurity Symposium here.

Operators today are focused largely on ensuring that the networks they build work as advertised, Stewart noted, saying the “next step will be the protect side,” which is becoming increasingly important as more and more of the business becomes digitized.

He also cited some troubling survey data from PricewaterhouseCoopers that indicates just how big of an issue cybersecurity has become — 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 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.”

But protecting those assets is a challenge, in part because the cybersecurity market is fragmented with suppliers and vendors, Stewart said. There are literally dozens of security technology suppliers helping to protect individual companies, he noted.

“There’s something wrong with that,” he said.

Amid all of this, the world is becoming increasingly connected as the so-called Internet of Things continues to blossom. The world is home to 13 billion connected devices today, and that number is expected to rise to 50 billion by 2020, Stewart said.

And there’s also a dearth of cybersecurity expertise, Stewart added, estimating that more than 1 million security pros are needed in the workforce worldwide. 

“One million people don’t get built and trained by next year,” he said. “It’s a long-term problem.”

But there’s an opportunity woven into these challenges: “You can become the security system of your customer,” he said.

Still, making cybersecurity a major priority in every facet of the business will require some shifts in a company’s capabilities and culture. In addition to creating an information security team, security must also be embedded in a company’s IT infrastructure and in every corner of the business.

“It will differentiate your business over time,” Stewart stressed.

But getting to that point requires buy-in from the highest levels of the company, so Stewart challenged engineers to engage with senior leadership on the issue.

While that could help operators protect themselves from internal and external threats, Stewart also issued his final challenge to the industry: “Become the protection arm for your customers.”

In addition to helping to keep hackers off the network, it could also become a revenue stream, as Stewart suggested that some customers would be willing to pay $4 to $5 per month extra for help fending off cyber threats.

Arris said Suddenlink Communications has tapped the vendor's service provider-focused WiFi solution to bring “carrier-grade” wireless connectivity to  commercial customers throughout the MSO’s 17-state area.

Arris’s carrier WiFi platform is comprised of the Aptilo Service Management Platform, Benu Networks Mobile Edge Gateway and Ruckus Wireless ZoneFlex access points and SmartZone controller. The platform will allow seamless handoffs between WiFi hotspots, Arris said.

"Our customers are always looking for new ways to stay ahead of their end users' demands and tap into new vertical markets,” said Tom McLaughlin, SVP of sales, Americas at Arris, in a statement. "Our unique expertise and solutions for commercial Wi-Fi deployments give operators like Suddenlink the ability to succeed in the market with fewer risks and greater scale."

Suddenlink has more than 1.5 million residential and commercial customers. 

Taking deeper aim at cable’s growing metro WiFi market, Ericsson has introduced an 802.11ac Wave 2 access point, the AP 6335.

Ericsson said the product, an “evolution” of the Ericsson BelAir 100SNE cable access point, is a new strand-mounted device that includes an integrated DOCSIS modem and multi-user MIMO, and connects to the cable plant’s power and backhaul capacity.  The new AP 6335 also features  Passpoint Release 2.0 and IPv6 “with full support of all FCC channels,” said Ericsson, which has deployed more than 100,000 cable WiFi access points worldwide.

The new product enters play as cable operators continue to expand their metro WiFi networks. The Cable WiFi roaming consortium of Comcast, Cablevision Systems, Cox Communications, Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable have deployed more than 400,000 WiFi hotspots.

“This robust, high-performance outdoor access point will meet the complex and stringent requirements of cable operators and enable them to meet the demand of data-hungry, Wi-Fi consumers,” Paul Challoner, head of WiFi at Ericsson, said in a statement .

Hitron Technologies Americas will use this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans to trot out the CODA, a DOCSIS 3.1-based cable modem that’s powered by Intel’s Puma 7 chipset.

Hitron (booth 1235) said the CODA, fully-loaded, will support up to 5 Gbps downstream and up to 1 Gbps in the upstream. Like all modems in the initial DOCSIS 3.1 wave, Hitron’s will be a hybrid that supports both DOCSIS 3.0- and DOCSIS 3.1-based transport signals.

The Puma 7 is a dual-core Intel Atom processor that supports third-party 4x4 MIMO WiFi and voice recognition modules, noted Hitron, which delivers more than 1 million DOCSIS products annually to MSOs worldwide. Hitron’s announced DOCSIS modem customers include Videotron, GCI, Mediacom Communications, Suddenlink Communications and Cable One, among others.

“The Intel Puma 7 will enable innovators like Hitron to design true multi-gigabit broadband modems and home gateways with the latest DOCSIS 3.1 technology,” said Keith Wehmeyer, general manager for the cable segment at Intel’s Connected Home Division.

Update: MaxLinear also announced today that  Hitron has selected its MxL278 Full-Spectrum Capture (FSC) digital cable front-end receiver and MxL236 upstream programmable gain amplifier for its new family of DOCSIS 3.1-based consumer premises equipment. 

DOCSIS 3.1 product activity has been heating up ahead of Cable-Tec Expo. On Monday, Arris introduced two D3.1-based models – one for direct sale to MSOs, and another tagged for retail distribution.

CommScope said it will use this week’s show in New Orleans to trot out a new enhanced fiber wall box portfolio designed to simplify installation and reduce the cost of taking fiber deeper into both multi-dwelling unit (MDU) and single-family dwelling unit (SFU) environments.

CommScope, which will show its gear off at booths 633 and 1635, said the fiber wall boxes are tied to the company’s recent acquisition of TE Connectivity’s Broadband Network Solutions business.

Additionally, the company said its mini Rapid Fiber distribution terminal (RDT), previously only available for indoor MDU applications, is now available for outdoor use.

“CommScope recognizes the unique challenges of bringing fiber into the MDU and SFU. Service providers have targeted budgets and timelines to work with. We can help by offering products with the flexibility to adapt to a variety of building types and environments,” said Jaxon Lang, general manager and vice president, BNS, CommScope, in a statement. 

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) has added two execs aimed at enhancing the organization's IT and network operations capabilities.

Deighton Liverpool (left) joins as vice president, Information Technology; and Niem Dang has been named director, network technical operations, and will serve as a visiting engineer at the CableLabs facility in Louisville, Colo.

Liverpool most recently was chief information officer of the Association of Village Council Presidents in Alaska, and has served as chief technology officer and director of information technology for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Philadelphia.

Dang, a 10-year industry vet late of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, started her cable career at Comcast as a senior engineer at GuideWorks, then a joint venture of the MSO and Gemstar-TV Guide International (now Rovi, which left the JV in 2010). She is named on 10 patent filings related to quality of experience, navigation, content delivery and other network functionality. Dang is also a past mentee in the Women’s TechConnect program, a joint effort of SCTE and Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT). She holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

“The hirings of Deighton Liverpool and Niem Dang are indicative of our commitment to the transformation of SCTE and ISBE into world-class engineering resources for the global cable telecommunications industry,” said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE and the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), in a statement. “By bringing in world-class talent from within and beyond the industry, we’re driving results that will benefit cable, its workforce and the customers the industry serves.”

“We are pleased to welcome Niem Dang as the SCTE Visiting Engineer at CableLabs,” added CableLabs CTO Ralph Brown, who is also a board member of the SCTE and ISBE.  “Her participation in our projects will strengthen the great relationship we have with SCTE. The ability for SCTE to be even more tightly plugged into our efforts will speed the deployment of technologies developed through CableLabs.”

-For more news from SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015, please visit the Multichannel News micro-site dedicated to the event.

Complementing its work on the network, Arris has launched two cable modem models – one for direct distribution to cable operators and one for retail sale -- based on DOCSIS 3.1, the cable industry’s multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks.

Arris said the MSO-focused model, the Touchstone CM8200, can support up to 5 Gbps downstream and up to 2 Gbps upstream, enabled through switchable filters supporting a widened upstream of up to 204 MHz, and 1.2 GHz in the downstream. Today, most North American DOCSIS plant uses an upstream of 5 MHz to 42 MHz, but D3.1 envisions a wider upstream path by supporting "mid-splits" that would raise the ceiling to 85 MHz, and a "high-split" that would push it to 204 MHz.

The SURFboard SB8200 has the same technical capabilities of the CM8200, but is tagged for retail distribution.

Arris declined to comment on which silicon provider is powering its new line of D3.1 CPE gear. Broadcom, Intel and STMicroelectronics are among those that are developing D3.1 modem chipsets. Several other modem makers showed off D3.1-based models at a recent interop at CableLabs, including Askey, Castlenet, Cisco Systems, Humax, Netgear, Pace (which is merging with Arris), Sagemcom,Technicolor (which is buying Cisco's set-top and CPE business), and Ubee Interactive. 

The first wave of DOCSIS 3.1 modems will be hybrids that can support both DOCSIS 3.0- and new DOCSIS 3.1 traffic, which will use blocks of OFDM-based subcarriers. On the DOCSIS 3.0 side, Arris’s new line will support the bonding of up to 32 downstream QAM channels and 8 upstream channels.

Arris (booth 551) said both models will be on display at this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans, and will become available in 2016. Arris is also working on expanded line of D3.1 CPE that will include telephony modems and voice and data gateways.

Arris did not announce pricing on the first two models, but initial DOCSIS 3.1 deployments are expected to get underway next year and ramp up in 2017. CableLabs recently opened the door to D3.1 certification and qualification testing. D3.1 modems are expected to cost between 30% to 50% more than D3.0 modems in the early going, and then drop from there as volumes increase, according to industry sources.

Arris’s is also starting to bake D3.1 capabilities into the E6000, its flagship converged cable access platform (CCAP), a high-density chassis that combines the functions of the cable modem termination system and edge QAM.

In a recent interview, Arris director of product management Steve Krapp said the E6000 is software-upgradable to D3.1 in the downstream direction, adding that the vendor plans to introduce a new line card in 2016 that will support a D3.1-based upstream.

At the show, Arris said it plans to show both D3.1 and D3.1 traffic running on the E6000 on a single Downstream Cable Access Module (DCAM) via multiple D3.1 modems, including the new SURFboard SB8200 as well as D3.0 gateways, including the SURFboard SB6800.

At Expo, Arris said it will support Intel, VeEX and Viavi with their respective D3.1 demos, which will all run on the E6000.

DOCSIS 3.1 is getting ready for its close-up, and Comcast likes what it’s seeing so far.

The deployment era for DOCSIS 3.1 isn’t expected to get underway until sometime next year, but one of the operator’s top execs said the emerging multi-Gigabit platform is already performing as advertised during the early trial phases. In some ways, the technology is already beating expectations before it has even been given the official CableLabs stamp.

“We’re validating things that we had as assumptions,” Tony Werner, Comcast Cable’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, said of the trials, which don’t yet involve paying customers. “I am probably more enthused by what I’ve seen so far than what I thought I would be.”

Expect more of that kind of enthusiasm at this week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans, which will offer several sessions and workshops on the emerging DOCSIS 3.1 platform. Vendors, meanwhile, are expected to trot out demos of their DOCSIS 3.1-based network gear and consumer premises equipment.

Among the assumptions Comcast is evaluating are whether cable modem termination systems (CMTSs) can be upgraded to D3.1 via software, and how ODFM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) traffic behaves on the access network.

To achieve spectrum utilization that is about 50% more efficient than the 6-MHz-wide channel used in DOCSIS 3.0, DOCSIS 3.1 is using blocks of OFDM and a new forward error-correction scheme called Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) that will take the place of the current Reed-Solomon approach.

Werner said he is also encouraged that DOCSIS 3.1 will enable Comcast to use 4096-QAM modulation, particularly in the downstream, which will enable the MSO to deliver more bits per hertz than what it is getting today with 256 QAM and DOCSIS 3.0. DOCSIS 3.1 is also expected to enable Comcast and other MSOs to use a variety of modulation profiles.

Comcast isn’t detailing how many D3.1 trials are presently active, but Werner said enough are underway to give it a means of analyzing how the technology is operating on a cross-section of plant and service areas.

As for deployments of DOCSIS 3.1, Werner said to expect Comcast to make some initial headway in 2016 and “lots of progress” in 2017.

Look for more on Comcast’s early work with DOCSIS 3.1 technology in one of the Multichannel News show dailies at Cable-Tec Expo. Visit our 2015 SCTE Cable-Tec Expo microsite for more show-related news.

Take it from a lifelong fisherman: Building an organization is a lot like hooking a marlin. It takes patience, strategy, tenacity, luck and contributions from those around you to get to that pivotal moment when you know you’re on your way to landing your prize.

That’s the way I feel this year about SCTE. After years of hard work, planning and commitment from our team and our supporters, we’re in the midst of a transformational year. If we were off Hatteras, this is the time when I’d be getting ready to bring the catch aboard.

Our transformation isn’t as dramatic as a man-vs.-fish struggle, but you can see it everywhere:  In the new positions we’ve created at SCTE and the quality of the executives who are filling them. In the unprecedented expansion of the training and education services we’re providing, including the internationalization of operations. And, of course, this week at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo — in the exhibitor hall, in the conference rooms, at SCTE Central.

Let me be clear, SCTE’s fundamental mission is the same as ever: to create and implement the training, the certification and the standards that create value for our members and accelerate service delivery and service quality for the industry. A study of members earlier this year showed that SCTE creates business impact in six areas: Custom acquisition and retention; improved customer service; operational efficiency; employee retention; sales opportunities; and equipment optimization. But as the cable industry keeps rapidly growing and evolving, how we accomplish our mission has changed.

Over the past year, we’ve had the opportunity to make many changes. Every one of them has been mapped against the needs of the industry so that everything we do as an applied science organization can deliver maximum impact for our operator and vendor partners and, of course, our individual members.

Here’s a short list of what we’ve accomplished:

- We’ve hired nationally-acclaimed executives such as Reni Gorman and Terry Maloney, who are bringing exciting new approaches in professional education and marketing, respectively;

- Our training and certification regimens are enjoying unprecedented success, including an increase of almost 150% in course registrations and the continued expansion of training for the global market under the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE) banner; and

- SCTE Cable-Tec Expo will be electric — pardon the pun — as it conveys the leaps and bounds by which our industry is increasing its competitiveness, most notably in the management of power consumption and cost through our Energy 2020 program.

To be clear, reeling in this transformation has been a cumulative effort. In training, for example, we’d already established the value of SCTE certification. Through our study we learned that 88% respondents found SCTE training valuable in advancing their careers. And Suddenlink encourages all of its technical employees to become members and take advantage of the SCTE’s training programs. The company believes that a better-trained workforce leads to smoother operations, more satisfied customers and ultimately helps with employee retention.

With the arrival last year of Lindsay Johnston, our senior vice president of operations, we’ve looked at ways of improving, replicating and quantifying the value of our programs, and at developing new opportunities — specifically under the umbrella of our Corporate Alliance Partner program. Among Lindsay’s projects: working with experts such as Reni who are knowledgeable about how people learn, and using those findings to improve our courses and shape our educational materials; continuing to improve the experience at our SCTE-Tuck Executive Leadership Program and SCTE-Georgia Tech Management Development Program programs that are grooming the next generation of cable technology leaders; and using the six-sigma process to improve how SCTE operates and provide greater utility and value for our members.

With our new training methodologies, we expect to be able to start confidently correlating SCTE training with business results within the next 12-18 months. We’ll then be able to use the same quantitative techniques to fine-tune our training and continue to contribute to the success of our members and our corporate sponsors. This will be a big win for everyone.

On the engineering front, we continue to ramp up our technology expertise as we move from an organization that had no engineers just five years ago to one that has become a trusted applied science resource for the industry today.

The transformation here is happening in several ways: The transition of Daniel Howard to SCTE Fellow has enabled us to continue to leverage Daniel’s technical genius, while opening the door for a new CTO who will oversee our Standards Program, our Engineering Committee and our involvement in Energy 2020. At the same time, we have hired Niem Dang, a highly acclaimed member of the Time Warner Cable team, to serve as our first visiting engineer at CableLabs. Niem’s job will be to make sure that our two organizations remain consistently aligned for the good of the industry.

The good of the industry also is driving the work SCTE has taken on as the point organization for cable’s Energy 2020 program, which aims to achieve double-digit percentage reductions in energy cost and consumption. Energy is one of the largest line-item expenditures that MSOs have. SCTE and its members are ramping up our efforts to guarantee that energy consumption and energy costs will not impact the industry’s competitiveness in the future.

If cable is notable for anything, it’s headlong progress. It wasn’t that long ago that cable companies were video-only operations.

Now MSOs offer broadband, VoIP, business services, home automation services, wireless connectivity and more product categories are on the way. We’ve begun to work more closely with individual vendors on training programs that will help our corporate and individual members become more adept not only with the generic properties of new technologies — DOCSIS 3.1 is a good example — but with each manufacturer’s specific implementation of those technologies. And, of course, we continue to seek new ways to globalize that training under ISBE, the international gateway to SCTE’s vast library of educational and certification resources.

Reeling in a big fish is never easy, but it’s always an exhilarating ride. In the same way, SCTE’s journey to a higher plane of technical leadership has rewarded unflagging commitment with a true sense of accomplishment. And as with any good angler, there’s the anticipation of knowing that there is more to be achieved in the future.

--Mark Dzuban is president and CEO of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE)

Altera Corp. is planting its flag in the DOCSIS 3.1 soil with a DOCSIS Remote PHY design that it will show off at next week’s Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans.

Altera (booth #3135) said the platform on show will be powered by its Arria 10 FPGAs and Analog Device’s digital-to-analog converters and analog-to-digital converters, and matched with Capacicom’s MAC and PHY systems.

Altera said its distributed form of the Converged Cable Access Platform, which combines the functions of the edge QAM and cable modem termination system, will support both DOCSIS 3.0 and DOCSIS 3.1, the emerging next-gen IP platform for hybrid fiber/coax networks that’s designed to deliver up to 10 Gbps downstream and at least 1 Gbps in the upstream direction.

Altera said its approach with programmable silicon will allow for the dynamic segmentation of CCAP as either embedded in the node as an integrated headend or, with x86+FPGA as virtualized modules in a datacenter.

"The pent-up demand for new CCAP- capable equipment is evident in the early volume deployments of CCAP gear, and we expect the upward trend in combined CMTS and CCAP channel shipments to continue as operators prepare their networks for DOCSIS 3.1 and remote PHY (physical layer) architectures," Jeff Heynen, IHS Research principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV, said in a statement.

"Our ongoing technology roadmap will enable us to deliver further, and more dramatic power savings in the node, which for the first time, makes full-spectrum, full unicast 4x4 port densities per node viable; dramatically reducing both the MSO's Capex and Opex cost per RF port,” added Umar Mughal, Altera director of the broadcast and cable business unit.

There’s going to be a bunch of big discussions going on in The Big Easy this week as cable’s brightest minds converge for the industry’s annual tech-fest.

And once again the event will offer session and workshops spanning key industry initiatives and topics that are important now and will be soon, including DOCSIS 3.1, cybersecurity, the virtualization of the network (and CPE), and the opportunities and challenges of WiFi.

It’s impossible for one person to see and hear it all, so here we present what’s on our hot list for the week (all times Central Time). Also, to keep up with news and announcements from the show, please visit the Multichannel NewsSCTE Cable-Tec Expo micro-site. 

Cybersecurity

If you are in town before the show officially gets off the ground on Wednesday, you’ll want to catch what you can of Tuesday’s all-day pre-show conference symposium on cybersecurity (Room 294), a topic that has global importance that also extends well outside the cable industry.

Don’t Miss: The 9:15 a.m. keynote from John N. Stewart, senior vice president, chief security and trust officer for  Cisco Systems.

The Big Picture

For a look at how some of the industry’s top execs view the competitive landscape and a look on the horizon on how cable must continue to change and evolve to handle it, Wednesday’s General Session (New Orleans Theater) will fit the bill as execs discuss broadband network investment, energy management, the connected home and business services.

That session, starting at 8:30 a.m., will be led by moderator Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications, who will be joined by: Balan Nair, EVP and CTO, Liberty Global (and the show’s program committee chair); Nomi Bergman, president of Bright House Networks; Phil McKinney, president and CEO of CableLabs; and John Schanz, EVP and chief network officer of Comcast Cable.

Energy 2020 Update

Energy conservation is a front-burner initiative now, taking the form of the SCTE Energy 2020 project. Gear up for important update on the initiative’s progress during a 90-minute session that gets underway Thursday at 11 a.m in Room 283.

Workshops (200-level rooms)

DOCSIS 3.1

While fiber-to-the-premises represents the long-term future, the foreseeable path for multi-gigabit services is expected to travel the path of DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging platform that will be spotlighted throughout the week.

Don’s Miss:

DOCSIS 3.1 Readiness: To 1 Gig and Beyond

Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 2p.m.

Featuring: Jeffrey J. Howe of Arris (moderator), joined by Al Ruth, product line manager at JDSU (now Viavi); and Jorge Salinger, vice president, access architecture, Comcast.

DOCSIS 3.1 & IP Video Traffic Engineering: How to Squeeze 10 Pounds of Stuff Into a 5 Pound Bag

Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 3:15 p.m.

Featuring: Mike Latino, VP, service infrastructure and delivery, Cox (moderator); John Downey, consulting network engineer, Cisco; and Dr. Sean McCarthy, fellow, Arris.

DOCSIS  3.1 Upstream Optimizations: Going Up?    

Friday, Oct. 16 at 2 p.m.

Featuring: Dr. Tom Cloonan, CTO – network solutions, Arris (moderator);  Dr. Ayham Al-Banna, engineering fellow, CTO office – network solutions, Arris; and

Paul D. Brooks, chief architect, access networks and technology, Time Warner Cable.

Load Up on Downloading

While the FCC has not yet announced whether it would pursue new rules that would succeed the CableCard, the commission has eagerly sought potential downloadable alternatives to help spark a robust retail market for set-tops. This week offers a valuable opportunity to get up to speed on some of cable’s top pursuits in this area.

Don’t miss: Beefing up Security with DCAS       

Thursday, Oct. 15 at 10:45 a.m.

Featuring: Ralph Brown, CTO, CableLabs (moderator); Dr. James Alexander, senior director, video engineering, Charter Communications; and Edmond Shapiro, video solutions architect, Cisco.

Video’s Cloudy Present…Future

Have you heard of the “cloud”? Everything’s going there, including video.

Don’t Miss: Moving Set-Top Functions to the Cloud       

Thursday, Oct. 15 at 9:30 a.m.

Featuring: Marwan Fawaz, partner, Sarepta Advisors (moderator); Neill Kipp, distinguished engineer, Comcast VIPER; and Dr. Raj Nair, CTO, Mediaroom Reach, Ericsson.

Waxing Wireless

Can WiFi, cable’s go-to technology for wireless, coexist in harmony with emerging LTE-Unlicensed technologies? The LTE-U camp says yes, and we have the proof, while the cable camp says no, and we have the proof too. The truth falls somewhere in the middle.

Don’t miss: Potential Applications for LTE-U or LAA (License Assisted Access)     

Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 2 p.m.

Featuring:  Tim Burke, VP, strategic technology, Liberty Global (moderator); and Belal Hamzeh, director-network technology, CableLabs; and Sudhir B. Pattar, Ph.D. candidate, Rutgers University.

Distributed CCAP

While centralized, monolithic architectures have dominated cable’s broadband era, there’s a big movement now toward more efficient, distributed networks as MSOs go with high-density converged cable access platforms. But there’s a big debate on which approach is best.

Don’t Miss: Distributed CCAP Architectures: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Thursday, Oct. 15 at 9:30 a.m.

Featuring: Ken Wright, technology advisor, Wright Solutions (moderator); Dr. Tom Cloonan, CTO – network solutions, Arris; and John Chapman, fellow, and CTO of Cisco’s cable business unit.

IPv6

Now that the American Registry for Internet Numbers confirmed that the free pool for IPv4 addresses has run dry, there’s going to be a refocus on IPv6 and its virtually unlimited pool of addresses.

Don’t Miss: Core IP Peering and IPv6

Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 10:45 a.m.

Featuring Kevin McElearney, SVP, network engineering, Comcast (moderator); John Jason Brzozowski, fellow and chief architect, IPv6, Comcast; and Mark Goodwin, IP engineer, Cox.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers said it will erect an exhibit at next week’s Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans to highlight the progress of its SCTE 2020 initiative, and complement that with a special 90-minute session, demos and workshops that also tie into the project.

The “Cable’s Power Innovators” exhibit, which showcase specific operator-vendor milestones in reducing energy cost and consumption, will be located at SCTE Central, the “gateway” to the show floor. 

Exhibit displays and demos will include:

-Comcast’s deployment with Bloom Energy of a power plant at a headend in Berlin, Conn., that uses the company’s solid oxide fuel cell and building on fuel cell technology invented by William Robert Grove.

-Cox Communications’ corporate-wide cable facility deployments of solar power with partners such as Velo Solar, an implementation of the photoelectric effect for which Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

-Liberty Global/Ziggo’s work on edge facility innovation through the efficiencies of Phase Change Material (PCM) with Tizzon in the Netherlands, extending from Lord Kelvin’s laws of thermodynamics.

-Time Warner Cable’s deployment with Casa Systems of CCAP (converged cable access platform) architectures that boosts efficiency across 25 hubs in New York City.

-Proof-of-concept demos of the Adaptive Power Systems Interface Specification (APSIS) that defines software interfaces allowing allow energy measurement and optimization applications to command and control devices within a service delivery pipeline.

-SCTE’s coordination of the elements of energy management under the Energy 2020 umbrella.

The exhibit will also be home to a combined display featuring fleet optimization case studies, including Comcast and Knapheide’s vehicle enhancements through up-fitting and weight reduction; Time Warner Cable and Derive Systems’ vehicle performance improvements through software; and Liberty Global’s Virgin Media and Fleetmatics’ fleet tracking and routing management.

SCTE will also present updates on Energy 2020 next Thursday (October 15)  during a separate 90-minute session that gets underway at 11 a.m. CT (room 283). During that session, former NASA astronaut John B. Herrington, the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space, will speak on "NASA innovation, technology, next-gen and eye on the future.

SCTE said featured energy case studies will be available on the SCTE Energy 2020 Web site next week just prior to the event.

Introduced last year, SCTE Energy 2020 has identified targets that include a 20% reduction of power consumption on a unit basis, a 25% reduction in energy costs on a unit basis, a 10% reduction of grid dependency and an optimization of technical facility and data center footprints by 20%

“In the 12 months since we launched Energy 2020 at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2014, the program is beginning to hit its stride as an incubator of new energy solutions for the industry,” said John Schanz, executive vice president and chief network officer for Comcast Cable and co-chair of the Energy 2020 program.  “Expo 2015 is a tremendous occasion to highlight the many achievements of our talented Energy 2020 team, and to discuss the opportunities that are ahead to achieve double digit percentage reductions in energy cost and consumption.”

“In order to successfully drive change, all players in the supply chain need to work together to keep energy efficiency front of mind during every stage of the product design and development process,” added Balan Nair, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Liberty Global and fellow co-chair of Energy 2020. “Expo 2015 offers a great opportunity to share best practice, evaluate the progress we’ve made so far and at the same time reflect on the areas where there is still room for further improvement.”

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers said it has lined up top execs from Cox Communications, Liberty Global, CableLabs, Bright House Networks and Comcast for the October 14 Cable-Tec Expo opening general session in New Orleans.

For the session, Cox president Pat Esser will moderate a panel that will touch on topics ranging from broadband network investment, energy management, the connected home and business services. He’ll be joined by:  Balan Nair, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Liberty Global (and the event’s program chair);  Nomi Bergman, president, Bright House Networks;  Phil McKinney, president and CEO,  CableLabs; and John Schanz, executive vice president and chief network officer, Comcast.

The session is set to start at 8:30 a.m. at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. 

The event will kick off Tuesday, Oct. 13 with a symposium on Cybersecurity featuring keynoter John N. Stewart, senior vice president and chief security and trust officer for Cisco Systems.

Cable-Tec Expo is slated for Oct. 13-16.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and CableLabs have tapped two renowned cyber-threats experts to keynote the Cybersecurity Symposium, a full-day event set for October 13, in tandem with the Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans.

John N. Stewart, SVP, chief security and trust officer at Cisco Systems; and Chris Roberts, founder and CTO of  One World Labs, will keynote the all-day event, which will address ways in which cable system operators can protect their networks and their customers from cyber-attacks.

Roberts made national headlines last month when he was removed from a United Airlines flight following comments he posted on Twitter claiming he knew how to hack United’s onboard systems. One World is security intelligence firm based in Denver that identifies risks before they’re exploited.

At Cisco, Stewart leads efforts to protecting the company’s public and private customer.

“As last year’s string of high-profile breaches showed, none of our businesses are immune from cyber-attacks,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE and its global brand, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), said in a statement. “The lessons we can learn from John N. Stewart, Chris Roberts and our symposium experts will help us to anticipate, prevent and respond to cyber threats that could jeopardize our services and our customers’ networks in the future.”

The Cybersecurity Symposium is scheduled to begin at 9:00 AM CT at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on Oct. 13.

SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015 is scheduled for Oct. 13-16. 

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers has opened registration for the fifth annual SCTE IP Challenge, which will crown a winner on October 13 at the Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans. 

Before things get that far, SCTE will run two “virtual qualifying rounds” – on May 10-16 and June 7-13— where contestants will be grilled on questions spanning six IP-related categories: Routing, Network Theory, CMTS DOCSIS, Internet Protocol, Configuration, and Multimedia over IP.

The top eight scorers who are SCTE members and work for a cable MSO will be eligible to move on to the live semifinals and final at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015, where they will compete against one another  and last year’s IP Challenge winner, Jamie Griffin of Full Channel, under a Jeopardy-style question format. The semifinals and final will take place before a live audience at the show on October 13 from 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. 

The eight semifinalists will also receive complimentary registrations to this year's Cable-Tec Expo, set for October 13-16. The winner will receive a full-conference pass to Cisco Live 2016 and a full-conference pass to next year’s Cable-Tec Expo, where he or she will defend the IP Challenge title.

“As cable network operators evolve their network infrastructures, a firm grounding in IP is essential for engineering professionals,” said Tim Carnes, director, systems engineering, Cisco, the sponsor of the IP Challenge.

“Building awareness of the value of IP expertise involves a wide range of vehicles, including training, certification and events like the SCTE IP Challenge,” added Steve Harris, senior director, advanced network technologies program development for SCTE and creator of the SCTE IP Challenge.  “We’re grateful to Cisco for their tremendous support, which has helped to nurture this event into one of the highlight activities at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo.”