As the chief technology officer, network solutions, at Arris, Tom Cloonan plays an integral role in building the fabric of cable’s broadband future, whether it’s one that will be woven with next-generation hybrid fiber coaxial technologies like DOCSIS 3.1, new wireless broadband platforms, or, in some targeted situations, all-fiber infrastructures.

But no matter which direction that future takes, Cloonan’s experience and expertise expands to all fronts. Having spent a good chunk of his earlier career in the telecom sector, Tom Cloonan didn’t start off as a dyed in the wool “cable guy.”

TELCO ROOTS

Before taking the technology helm at Cadant, a cable-modem termination system startup acquired by Arris in 2002, Cloonan spent 17 years with Bell Labs, where he worked on long-distance switching systems and then shifted to work on optical computing and photonic switching.

“It was a great place,” he said. “People there assumed they’d be there for life.”

But funding levels changed and R&D budgets were cut, prompting Cloonan to apply his focus to ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) switching and IP-router products — areas that presented more stability because they were tied to products with more near-term revenue potential.

That routing expertise came in handy when Venkata Majeti, then the CEO of Cadant, came calling to see if Cloonan would be interested in applying his telco expertise to a young company based in Lisle, Ill., that was trying to elbow its way into cable and the industry’s budding pursuit of high-speed data services.

“I was driven to it by working on the technology, but I didn’t know much about the cable industry,” Cloonan said. “I was sort of deaf, dumb and blind on what the cable space was all about.”

It turned out that the cable industry was ready and willing to embrace ideas that were a natural, intrinsic part of the telco world, such as high availability and redundancy, as MSOs expanded the reach of high-speed Internet services and began to aggressively develop telco-equivalent voice services.

And Cloonan had some help from the Cadant team and a group of mentors that showed him the ropes in the tightly-knit cable industry. Among those he credits with his industry tutelage are Steve Dukes (a former Cadant and Arris adviser who is late of MediaOne Group and Tele- Communications Inc.); cable engineering pioneer Dr. Walter Ciciora; Steve Craddock (the retired Comcast engineering executive); and Nick Hamilton-Piercy (the retired former chief technology officer of Rogers Cable).

HE’S 3.1-READY

Cloonan, now considered to be one of the industry’s top engineering minds, has made good use of that mentoring. He helped Arris and its operator partners develop and deploy several iterations of DOCSIS (from 1.0 to 3.0), and is now preparing them for the next big leap — to the multi-gigabit DOCSIS 3.1 platform.

At the helm of Arris’s network-facing activities, Cloonan has also helped the company become a leader in the development of Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) products that combine the functions of the edge QAM and the CMTS and will serve an important role in the industry’s all-IP transition.

That work has culminated into a big year for Arris. In addition to demonstrating DOCSIS 3.1-based traffic running on its flagship CMTS/CCAP platform, the E6000, at The Cable Show this year, Arris has established a solid lead in the cable access market in terms of revenue share, according to the latest data from Infonetics Research.

Heading into 2015, Cloonan and his team will continue to focus on CCAP, including the integration of edge QAM functions (including elements such as video on demand and switched digital video), into the E6000, while also pushing ahead on DOCSIS 3.1.

Those efforts — which unfortunately make it even more difficult for Cloonan and his wife, Ruth, to find time to take out his 17-foot Bayliner for some waterskiing — will be important as cable operators gear up to deploy 1-Gigabit-per-second broadband services and stay ahead of the bandwidth demand being driven by IP video and over-the-top services.

Cloonan’s view extends beyond the near future, allowing him and his colleagues to “have some fun and project on where technology might go.”

That, he said, includes thoughts about whether the idea of “extended spectrum” has any legs as cable operators continue to use fiber-to-the-premises architectures, like RF over Glass (RFoG) and Passive Optical Network, in targeted situations.

While DOCSIS, which is delivered over HFC, presents some spectral limits, all-fiber networks could enable operators to develop services that reside in the neighborhood of 3 Gigahertz. If so, that, Cloonan said, could open the door to capacities of more than 10 Gbps – in the downstream and upstream direction — perhaps in the range of 20 Gbps to 40 Gbps.

“I’m not claiming that it’s a gimme, but these are exciting, futuristic areas that we’re hoping to take a look at,” Cloonan said.

The cable industry is entering a software-centric chapter of continuous improvement, as engineering workforces build for viewer migration toward TV-everywhere models on connected screens that can access content in and out of the home. The editors of Multichannel News have tapped three executives who’ve played a vital role this year in that bandwidth-steeped sprint to the video applications consumers are clamoring for as Technology Executives of the Year. Their profiles follow.

Sree Kotay, the software shaman and impetus behind the strategy and technological underpinnings of Comcast’s Internet-protocol video rollout, can easily jam 60 minutes of discussion into a 30-minute window, firing off impressively nerdy gems like “it’s not really redundant if it’s sharing nothing,” and “end point consolidation” and “codified infrastructure limits.”

But it’s not for his verbal acuity alone that Kotay, chief software architect for the nation’s largest MSO, is this year’s Technology Executive of the Year in the service provider category. It’s also for his work to convince Comcast and the industry that product differentiation produces material results. “In 2012, TV was a thing you hung on the wall,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “In 2014, TV is a service for every screen in your life.

“If there’s something I’m proud of with X1, it’s that we really demonstrated that a focus on product experience can really move the needle” in terms of churn rate, attach rate of new products, and content monetization, Kotay said.

Other tech highlights of 2014, from Kotay’s perspective:

• A top-down push to focus on customer experience, “from marketing to messaging to care to products — to everything, packaging, the whole nine yards. I believe that a better customer experience starts with better products.”

Recent examples include “Track Your Tech,” an Uber-like way for customers to get a visual on the whereabouts of inbound service technicians; the upcoming XR5 “talking remote,” which enters the marketplace this month, with a microphone button for users to speak, rather than type, a desired TV element; and a significant push to improve accessibility for disabled customers, which launched two years before a federal mandate and includes features above and beyond the regulations.

• Reaching a No. 1 ranking for Comcast’s Xfinity video app, higher than OTT competitors including Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu. “The app moved from a 2.5-star to a 5-star rating. We’re pretty pleased with that.”

• Revamping the X1 installation process to make it as quick and intuitive as possible. “Now, if you get a self install kit for X1, you can plug it in and watch it on X1 faster than installing an Amazon Fire TV — it takes something like five minutes.”

THE 2015 AGENDA

A hyper-vigilant, company-wide focus on customer experience will remain the company’s No. 1 motivation next year, Kotay said, adding that Comcast wants customer service to be its best product. To help make that happen, Comcast recently named Charlie Herrin, who worked with Kotay and led the design team behind the development of X1, as senior vice president of the customer experience.

On the product-development front, the task involves applying what worked with X1 to other parts of the organization, to take the experience-centric mission wider. That means differentiating beyond the TV, especially in broadband services and home automation, “and just lots of domains that are adjacent to the product experience,” Kotay said.

Another priority: Streamlining the ways in which customers digitally engage with Comcast. One intention, which Kotay called “end point consolidation,” aims to lessen app clutter. The work of it involves finding ways to condense what are 20-plus Comcast-specific apps in various app stores.

“There’s a reason for all of them, but maybe not a good reason — we want to clean that up,” he said.

Comcast will also push for scale on X1 “so that we can get serious about what it means to be on a platform like that,” Kotay said. Example: Integration of things like the “If This Then That / IFTT,” a Web-based notification service that enables all manner of useful automations — get a text when the indoor or outdoor temperature hits a certain level, as one of thousands of examples. “From a platform perspective, there will be more and more of those types of opportunities — where it’s symbiotic and enhances another service or product.”

KOTAY CODES

Kotay, 42, is big into travel (“I hit five continents this year — my wife Marci hit six — I missed Africa”) and being with his kids (Nira, 13, and Shainee, 12) as they get old enough to hit the road with mom and dad.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, Kotay codes. “I love coding,” he said, going on to describe “a couple of little projects” that are used internally at Comcast. For example, “I wrote a little web server to do cross-platform debugging of RDK (Reference Design Kit) and HTML5 apps.” (Of course he did.) Speaking of debugging: “We really do still have miles to go and a lot of ground to cover” when it comes to changing perceptions about Comcast, Kotay said.

What makes it all work, Kotay emphasized, is the commitment from Comcast’s most senior leaders to the cultural shifts required for a company-wide concentration on continuous improvement.

“As long as we keep doing the stuff we’re doing, and as long as there’s a passion to keep pushing the boundaries, I’m in,” he said. “[CEO] Brian [Roberts] pushes this top-down, which is important — we need to have the confidence to make the leaps, but we also need to have the humility about how far to go.”

At seven years with Comcast (his longest run yet with any company), Kotay said he’s still fired up. “I still can’t believe I get paid for what I do.”

Snacking on the stream is passe. Watching a whole show online is where it’s at.

That’s an overstatement: People still like watching short content while standing in line or tuning out the subway crowd. But the fact is, according to Nielsen, tablet devices are in 46% of consumer hands, and increasingly are used as a “television set” in and out of the home. People turn on the television set to watch a whole show.

David Wertheimer, president of digital at Fox Broadcasting, and his team worked hard this year to improve the user experience of watching those full shows on tablets and smartphones, via Roku boxes and through the Xbox platform.

“We hit a critical mass this year,” Wertheimer explained, in terms of getting multichannel video programming distributors signed up (via the Fox Networks distribution team) and enabling their customers to watch Hell’s Kitchen, American Idol, Gotham and other Fox programs in a timely fashion, via Fox.com and the Fox Now app.

NEW LOOK ON WEB

“That was a huge thing for us,” Wertheimer said. “We are pushing 20 million installs across all of our apps. So we now have a critical mass of authentication, we have a critical mass of footprint. It’s been a big year for us on the Fox Now front.”

November also saw a key redesign of Fox.com. It’s now easier to watch whole episodes, with a full-width player and full episodes presented on every page of the show sites. The mobile-responsive design optimizes for all devices, which is important because 35% to 45% of traffic to the site is from mobile devices, per Fox.

So far, according to Fox, so good. Video-completion rates (watching from start to finish) are up by 40% and time spent per visit has grown by 16%.

That dedication to making it easier for consumers to sample Fox fare digitally, while rewarding pay TV customers for their business, helped David Wertheimer stand apart as a technology executive in the programming sphere in 2014.

“All of the technical infrastructure that we have been putting in place, and all of the user experience, together with recommendation engines and targeting capability, comes together in a really big way for us in 2015,” the former Paramount Pictures digital-entertainment president said.

“The end result for us is, we ought to, over time, be able to make digital viewing as good as or better than television. That is a high bar, because people enjoy watching television. But I think we can make it even better with some of these enhancements.”

Wertheimer brought that mindset to Fox in October 2011 after three-plus years as CEO and executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, a part of the USC School of Cinematic Arts that brings companies and consumers together to find the best ways to use new technologies in all aspects of the entertainment industry.

After his high-profile stint at Paramount, he was founder and CEO at digital-content creator WireBreak Entertainment. Earlier, he worked for Steve Jobs at the NeXT computer company and was senior director of entertainment alliances at Larry Ellison’s Oracle.

“I think we have crossed into a new era where technology and the content that flows through that technology are inextricably linked,” Wertheimer said. “So I think it’s crucial to understand the capabilities, the opportunities, the pitfalls of the various technologies that are out there and coming down the road.

“That’s why I not only come from Silicon Valley but I spend a lot of time up there, talking to companies up there and [venture capitalists] and evangelizing what we’re doing, learning what other people are doing, thinking about where things are going down the road. Because as much as there is this huge pent-up demand for content, we need to make sure that we’re delivering it to the right people in the right ways at the right time.”

It’s still early in the television digital-viewing evolution, Wertheimer said. Around the third inning, to use a baseball analogy.

HIGH ON ‘TV EVERYWHERE’

Cable-friendly authenticated viewing also is in early days, with positive signs. Wertheimer cited the growth in TV-everywhere awareness tracked by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (Fox is part of those collaborative efforts), and recent stats from Comcast-owned Freewheel that showed authenticated ad viewing jumped 368% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2014.

Fox.com and primary Fox Now “10-foot devices” (e.g., Apple TV and Roku) access is now at 77% of pay TV customers, rising to 97% in January, Fox said. Fox Now primary mobile apps (iOS and Android) are at 63%, rising to 83% in January.

“I think it’s important to reward people who do pay for television,” Wertheimer said. “They deserve to get great benefit from it, and we make every effort to reward people who have providers and can authenticate and do authenticate.”

Using social networks to keep viewers engaged is also a huge concern for Wertheimer and his team. Fox claims the crown of being the top broadcast network in social media terms, with more than 254 million “fans” via Facebook, Twitter and other outlets.

“The goal is how to we keep people engaged, how do we provide a delightful experience for them to view in — and then an engaging experience for them to stay engaged between episodes and between seasons. That’s one of the things that I find so exciting about what we can do at the network that otherwise can’t be done at a pure distribution point.”

If 2014 was a year of improving the user experience, of exploiting the growing digital platforms to find and keep Fox viewers, what specifically is Wertheimer looking forward to in 2015?

“Of course, all of our new shows — Empire on Jan. 7, 2015. The return of American Idol (leading into Empire). You can quote me on that.”

“For us, it’s really about delivering new kinds of experiences that allow people to go deeper and wider than before,” he said. “We’re keeping an eye on emerging technology. We did a really cutting-edge exploration with Oculus Rift at Comic-Con San Diego earlier this year, it was very forward-looking. We’re definitely experimenting with some of these things. Obviously, there’s going to be a huge amount of noise about virtual reality a t CES [ in January] and we’ll see how much this catches on as a consumer proposition.”

It all boils down to engaging audiences and getting them to watch television, which, as he has said (including at last September’s Next TV Summit in Santa Clara, Calif.), is a term that now means watching television content, wherever it might go.

“There will be several things that we can talk about later in the year that I can’t really disclose right now, but it’s going to be exciting. The good news is that this is a great time for TV and we’re just super-excited to be doing the things that we’re doing.”