By Steve Harris, Senior Director, Advanced Network Technologies

How prepared are you for the future of cable telecommunications? You’ll have a chance to find out with the return of the SCTE IP Challenge over the next few weeks.

With the support of our friends at Cisco Systems, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers has brought back the challenge in a bigger and better way to help test knowledge and heighten understanding of the Internet Protocol (IP) technologies that will shape our industry in the years to come.

To get involved – see below for the cool prizes you can win – there are three things Read More »

Tags: cable, cable-tec expo, internet protocol, ip, ip challenge, scte, Service Provider

To the 10,000 or so of you who joined us in Atlanta this week for the annual Society of Cable Telecommunication Engineers Expo – thanks for participating in what was one of the more high-energy, momentous Expos we’ve seen in decades. Wow! What a great one this year.

Starting with the ending, really: On the last afternoon of the show, Steve Callahan, Senior Network Engineer for Time Warner Carolinas, earned the grand prize at the first annual “IP Challenge.” (It wasn’t explicitly because he had fans with handheld signs in the audience [see photo to the left] – Steve really did perform the series of router configurations with alacrity and grace – but it didn’t hurt.
Our overall Cable-Tec Expo 2011 observations: While in years past, engineering to-do lists and intentions were overshadowed by doom-and-gloom predictions of cord-cutters, over-the-top video interlopers, and similar perceived calamity, this year’s Expo attendees were in full-tilt “let’s build it” mode.  The over-arching sentiment was that it’s time to auger in and get fully immersed in this overall transition to IP video. To that we say: Bring it!

In our booth, the two main areas of interest were the nuts-and-bolts details of how to get to “TV Anywhere,” as well as the key architectural elements that will enable the all-IP transition. Watch an unofficial “coffee clutch” video interview between our Mark Palazzo, VP/GM, Cable Access Business Unit, and industry technology columnist Leslie Ellis, about SCTE Expo trends. Read More »

Tags: cable-tec expo, ip challenge, scte, Service Provider, videoscape

By Mark Palazzo, VP and GM of Cisco’s Cable Access Business Unit

Just a few more days until the start of this year’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, to be held in Atlanta from Nov. 14-17. We’re excited to see y’all in our fair city! A lot will go on next week, so we thought we’d put out some signposts about where you can find us, what we’re doing, and what we want to show you while you’re there.

Where you can find us and what we want to show you: We’re piling in to booth #1762, where we’ll be showing everything we’re working on to reinvent the television experience. That means:

• The Videoscape Experience: “Videoscape” incorporates cloud, network and client devices to drive new video experiences over traditional and Internet-based networks.  That means freeing viewers from the traditional bounds of time, place and platform, towards the realities of anytime, anywhere, any screen.

Specifically, we’ll demonstrate the integration of linear, on-demand and over-the-top content, with our Media Suite – a full lifecycle content management system, for both managed and unmanaged (consumer-purchased) devices. As in set-tops, soft clients, Internet TVs, tablets, smart phones, you name it.

Also on hand: Ways to distribute media inside and outside the home, using our Media Gateway family of products, as well as our “Conductor” – a standards-based, real-time network and device management tool designed specifically for service providers. Read More »

Tags: cable, cable operator, cable-tec, docsis, ip, ip challenge, scte, scte cable-tec expo, Service Provider, videoscape

By Daniel Howard, CTO and SVP, Engineering of SCTE

As you know, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) continues to strive to provide new and unique ways to both train and challenge the cable workforce and our members.   Through our Chapters, we have been holding a very successful Olympic-style challenge for field-level employees that includes both hands-on skill assessments and knowledge-based contests, and this continues to be a big hit with our members and the industry.  But one thing I kept hearing in meetings with cable executives, managers and at SCTE chapters was the need for SCTE to provide resources and involvement opportunities for the IP engineers and computer scientists in our workforce who manage an increasingly larger portion of the overall network.

I’m therefore proud and excited to announce the new SCTE IP Challenge that we developed in partnership with Cisco as a response to this need.  This new interactive event was created to drive awareness of the importance of foundational IP knowledge among the cable workforce, and it is designed to promote the benefits of IP expertise in the cable industry, as well as leverage thought leadership around IPv6 in particular. Read More »

Tags: cable, Cisco, daniel howard, ip challenge, ipv4, IPv6, QoS, routing, scte, security, Service Provider, society of cable telecommunications engineers