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Archives
 July 1999 Issue
Cover Story
Cable-Tec Expo '99:
Engineering Conference '99
Industry United by Winds of Change
By Jennifer Whalen and Greta Durr
With the pace of technological change and service innovation crashing relentlessly upon the cable industry, many engineers came to the 1999 Cable-Tec Expo to discover how their colleagues are surviving in todays tumultuous environment. They werent disappointed, as chief executive officers (CEOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) from the leading cable companies shared their visions during Expos Annual Engineering Conference.
Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers President John Clark kicked off the opening session by stressing the increasingly significant role the Society has assumed in the cable TV industry over the past 30 years. "Our commitment to training, certification and standards remains as strong and relevant as ever," said Clark, promising to "grow SCTE for the benefit of our members, the industry and its customers."
Future Perspectives: System Leaders Outline the Plan
Although individual panelists, led in discussion by Leslie Ellis of Paul Kagan and Associates, reported varying priorities concerning digital video, high-speed data and voice services deployment, they generally concurred on the need to build today the full-service telecommunications model of tomorrowand to do it quickly in a rapidly changing market.
"Weve put our chips on digital and high-speed data," said Steve Burke, president of Comcast Cable. "We have a healthy respect for the complexity of the business."
Telephony: You make the call
With many cable operators scrambling to launch telephony services, the question of how to deal with Internet protocol (IP) telephony is among the greatest technological challenges facing the broadband industry today.
Bill Fitzgerald, executive vice president at AT&T Broadband & Internet Services, predicted that the support platforms for telephony service provisioning and customer care wont change as deploying voice over IP (VoIP) comes closer to the industrys grasp. "It behooves us today to get those components in place to support whatever technical platforms we choose to deploy tomorrow," Burke said.
"Being in the market is whats most important. The circuit-switched platform is here, and its reliable," added Jan Peters, CEO of MediaOne. "As IP evolves and becomes more robust and reliable, we need to look at the economics of services delivery more than anything else."
Digital video dance
The delivery of many new services over advanced digital set-tops also was a hot topic for the multiple systems operator (MSO) panel. "The muscularity of the new boxes is way ahead of the muscularity of the systems right now," said Burke, adding that it will take a few years for the systems to catch up with the set-top technology.
Barry Babcock, vice chairman of Charter Communications, was bullish on future applications for the new set-tops. "Everything you watch on TV will have VCR functionality & and every transaction will be done on the TV," he said, predicting that the TV set will turn into the personal computer (PC) and the PC will turn into the TV set.
"Early adopters are going to drive the limits of our imaginations," added Fitzgerald.
Consolidation countdown
The CEOs generally concluded that consolidation is one of the most relevant industry trends that will work to facilitate and to expedite new services deployment. "Over time, the competitive landscape is going to become more intense," forecast Peters. "As you go through these changes, it does bring about some turmoil."
With consolidation, panel members agreed, come the challenges associated with bringing new systems into the cluster, securing system upgrades to two-way capability and integrating the systems into the clusters.
"As a consolidator, I can tell you that were running 100 miles per hour," said Charter Communications Babcock. "I cant imagine having a better strategic partner for this than (Microsoft co-founder) Paul Allen."
The name of the game is retain
Reflecting the maturity attained by the broadband industry over the past 30 years, the panel also agreed on the importance of technical staff and training to make the industry strong in the upcoming years. Stock-incentive plans for employees and programs to enhance the technical knowledge of personnel are either under consideration or a current reality in most of the systems represented on the panel.
For the future, James Robbins, president and CEO of Cox Communications, predicted the broadband industrys expansion into uncharted markets. "Weve neglected businesses because for some reason it hasnt been fashionable to go into the business environment." In the next five years, all that is bound to change, he said.
Promising Technologies: CTOs discuss risks and benefits
Of course, it takes more than a vision for the future to guarantee success in todays cable industry. Its up to the chief technical officers at each MSO to see that the network ultimately supports the CEOs vision.
The CTO panelists, moderated by Matt Stump of Cable World, discussed the network upgrades underway with a view toward future scalability and the competitive threats posed by satellite and digital subscriber line (DSL) services.
"We are going after the network upgrades and rebuilds as fast as we can, limited by people and permits," said Tony Werner, executive vice president of engineering and technical operations for AT&T Broadband and Internet Services. He added that AT&T BI&S also is focusing on "10 pilot lights" for telephony this year. "Were getting the equipment installed and the talent trained to go for aggressive deployment next year."
Whats in a node?
A critical issue behind deployment of advanced services such as telephony and high-speed Internet access is ensuring that the network can scale to accommodate future demand. "The beauty and power of the HFC (hybrid fiber/coax) network is that you can subdivide the nodes and reuse the bandwidth again and again," said Tom Jokerst, senior vice president of advanced technologies for Charter Communications. "If the product can scale, the networks under it can."
Right now, Cox Communications is able to meet its advanced service needs with 1,000-home nodes, reported Alex Best, Coxs senior vice president of engineering. "We feel pretty good that (with 1,000-home nodes) the network can support the new services well into the future." He added that new applications with unknown bandwidth requirements, such as streaming video, video-on-demand (VOD) and video telephony, could impact node sizes at a later date.
Werner reported that AT&T B&IS is piloting a new architecture based on a mini-node concept that would support 50-75 homes. This low-power node is small enough to fit into a splitter. The advantage of such an approach is that fiber is pushed deeper into the network, fiber counts are lower, and active components are reduced by 60 to 80 percent. "We think well see a two- to four-year payback on distribution, power and maintenance costs (from the new architecture)," Werner explained.
Also, Werner warned the audience that when you split a node, you need to reprovision service to all those customers. "By going to a smaller node up front, you can avoid that," he said.
Is DSL a threat?
"There is tremendous power in node subdivision. Its basically pennies on the dollar of the original upgrade costs to achieve a factor of 64 increase in bandwidth," added Bud Wonsiewicz, chief technical officer with MediaOne. "It can be done on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis led by revenues. This will be crucial in the battle with DSL."
What will one do with so much bandwidth? "We ought to encourage as much traffic on the network as possible and encourage higher performance," Wonsiewicz continued, "because thats our biggest advantage over DSL and satellite."
Best was more cautious on the immediate threat of DSL because of technical issues such as load coils and bridge taps on the copper plant. "Today, its more press than reality," he said, adding that the Bells are focusing DSL offerings more on business customers than residential ones. But DSL is coming. "We need to take this seriously. We have a window of opportunity and need to keep up the pace."
Wonsiewicz cautioned the audience not to be too complacent about telcos ability to offer DSL. "Ive been a satisfied DSL customer for a year," he said, adding that he cant get cable modem service. "Its very reliable, and its never failed. When the phone companies get their act together, they can reach 60 percent right off the bat. If they clean up their plant, they can reach 70 percent." - CT
Jennifer Whalen is editor of "Communications Technology." She can be reached in Potomac, Md., at , ext. 2057 or via e-mail at .
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