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Karen Brown
The top MSO engineers are looking toward the Western Show with a variety of items on their "to see" list.
While some, including AT&T Broadband and Internet Service's Tony Werner, are interested in specific technology advances, others such as Comcast Corp's Steve Craddock are looking for the innovation no one has heard about yet.
Craddock, VP-new media development for Comcast, said the show gives him the chance to see a wide range of vendors all in one place, and look at prototypes he has only studied on paper.
"Often, we get an opportunity to see other technologies that we may have overlooked because everybody's just out there showing their wares," Craddock said. "More than once, I've actually discovered a neat little technology or a neat little product or a neat little company that I wasn't aware of before that I see that fits into stuff that I'm doing."
Taking a chance on these innovations often leads to technical projects for Comcast in the months following the show.
"You see a lot of neat stuff that by itself might not draw your eye so much, but as you start to look at where the pieces to the puzzle fit in a year, 15 months from now, you see a neat little solution for a problem that you've been wrestling with now for the last six months," he said.
While innovations are part of the lure of the show for Jim Chiddix, CTO Time Warner Cable, the event itself has become more about meetings and policy than trolling for hardware.
"It has gotten to the point where shows are meeting venues," Chiddix said. "But it is always fun to wander around the back corners of the show and look at the little booths and the newer vendors. Occasionally there are gems there and it is reminiscent of a more entrepreneurial age in the industry."
This year, Chiddix said he isn't really looking for any particular technical solution for Time Warner. He said he expects to see a lot of modem products, digital set-top box wares, Video-on-Demand servers and transport equipment.
The latter item is of interest to Chiddix because Time Warner has nearly completed its fiber-optic plant upgrades.
"More and more of our capital spending is focusing on interconnections between headends and hubs," he said.
Chiddix noted that, in general, with consolidated cable companies becoming dominant, the shows are not a place to come and buy.
"People used to go to these shows with purchase orders in hand, and they would write them up," he said. "With the changes in the industry over the years that has become less the case."
Home networking innovations and anything from the modem manufacturers dealing with self-provisioning will top the list of items AT&T BIS's Werner will be looking for at the Western Show. The EVP engineering and technical operations CTO said he will also be interested in seeing any progress in Internet Protocol-switched telephony, particularly at the CableLabs Inc. display on IP interoperability.
In particular, Werner said he want to see if IP equipment has been "ruggedized" to meet higher carrier-grade manufacturing standards.
"If we start providing lifeline telephone, they have to take telephone equipment out of the consumer grade and go to a carrier-grade capability," he said.
Meanwhile, top of the shopping list for MediaOne Group's Bud Wonsiewicz is interactive products.
"I'm looking for anything that will bring our customers better features than what is offered by satellite," the SVP and CTO said.
"I do think that people will not want the Web on TV but the ability to say 'Yes, I want more information' about this ad or a program would be one example," he said.
"We're in a very tight race with the satellite for attention," he said.
Other items Wonsiewicz will be looking for are high-speed data, the latest generation of DOCSIS modems and cable telephony, both circuit and IP-switched.
"Certainly a lot of people are working on this and I think we will expect to see more of this than there was at the National Show," he said.
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