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Kent Urges Cable Companies to Continue Working Together

Keynote addresses from Charter Communications CEO Jerry Kent, Liberty Digital Interactive (LDIG) CEO Lee Masters, and Weather Channel CEO Decker Anstrom highlighted the annual CableLabs winter conference held in Atlanta February 28 through March 1. Entitled Delivering the Broadband Promise, the conference attracted about 200 people.

Kent, a member of the CableLabs Board of Directors, opened the conference by urging cable operators to continue working together and to not allow distractions to prevent the industry from achieving its vast technology and business potential.

"We currently have a great window of opportunity. For the next few years, no other competitor will be able to match the speed, capacity and, more importantly, the interactive capability that our customers crave," Kent said. "This industry is in [an] excellent position to reap great returns on our investment in the broadband pipe. But there are several issues that we need to address to ensure we don’t fumble the ball."

These issues include:

q Remaining adept with the fundamentals of our business, using means such as continued investment in the industry’s biggest advantage, the local infrastructure, to provide superior customer service.

q Doing a better job on public relations and communicating cable’s strengths and advantages.

q Putting aside industry differences and working together on key industry initiatives. "For in the words of Benjamin Franklin, ‘We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.’ So when we look at AT&T overbuilding us [Charter] with fixed wireless, and when Paul [Allen] makes a minority investment in RCN, when Adelphia Business Solutions applies for telecom status in some of our franchised areas, and as we welcome AOL, albeit with some amount of confusion as to friend or foe, we must put this aside when dealing with the Hill or when working together on critical issues through CableLabs," Kent said.

He added: "On key industry matters we must speak as one voice. In addition, we need to fully embrace the concept of OpenCable™. Currently DBS has an advantage in that over 40,000 retail outlets are promoting their service. We should be proactive in expanding our availability to these outlets and incenting the retailers to sell our digital video and data services to supplement our own marketing and sales efforts."

q Moving from a video operator to a bandwidth manager, meaning accelerating rebuilding and more rapidly deploying advanced services. In Charter’s first reporting quarter as a public company, it beat the street’s year-end projections of digital customers by 35% and modem customers by 50%, Kent said. Over the next three years, Charter will spend more than $3 billion on upgrades, modems and digital set tops.

"Over this network, we are seeking and developing interactive services that are bandwidth hogs. We believe that with our system, bandwidth hogs play to our strength and capitalize on our competitive advantage," he said. Kent also stated that his company will work to ensure that all are able to benefit from the wealth of Internet knowledge.

In his February 29 presentation, Masters focused on three key areas: trends ("consumer friendly devices will prevail"), applications, and the convergence of platforms and technologies. He said that LDIG hopes to work with cable operators to achieve high value for operators, consumers, and his company.

Anstrom, a member of the CableLabs Board of Directors, focused on the need for cable operators and cable programming companies to come together to discuss new technologies and how those technologies can benefit both. He also encouraged establishment of one commonly held set of specifications that cover interactive television. Anstrom said both of these objectives could be worked through CableLabs.

"We don’t presume to tell you what the standard should be," Anstrom said. "Our company, for example, likes ATVEF, the Advanced Television Enhancement Forum standard, which seems to have pretty broad support. But in the end, we’ll work with whatever standard you set … as we trust your good judgment to establish the best standards, just as CableLabs has done with DOCSIS and OpenCable. But please…set a standard," he urged.

The two and a half-day conference was preceded by a double-track set of technical tutorials. Kevin Luehrs, member of technical staff with CableLabs, presented on in-home networking to begin one track. Other speakers on that track were: So Vang, Software Engineer for Advanced Platforms and Services at CableLabs, and Software Engineer Allen Schmitt-Gordon, also of CableLabs. Dr. Mukta Kar, Senior Member of Technical Staff at CableLabs, spoke on MPEG-4 technology. Mark DePietro, Senior Director of Systems Engineering and Technology, Motorola Digital Network Systems, provided a tutorial on the point-of-deployment (POD) removable digital security module, and Rouzbeh Yassini, Senior Executive Consultant to CableLabs, talked about his work on network convergence.

The other concurrent tutorial track began with Carlton Hall, Senior Architect, Global Development for MediaOne Labs talking about next generation tele-management systems. He was followed by Bill Kostka, Project Director for Broadband Internet Access at CableLabs, on the 1.1 version of high-speed cable modems also known as DOCSIS. Nancy Davoust, Technical Lead, PacketCable Security Architectures at CableLabs, and Tom Thompson, Project Director for the PacketCable Testing Program, briefed on PacketCable. J.P. Singh, CableLabs Project Director, presented on CableLabs’ service locator project.

A panel on the additional value cable operators may obtain in their networks from digital technologies, such as high-speed cable modems and advanced digital video devices, followed Kent’s keynote. Comcast Vice Chairman Julian A. Brodsky moderated the session and spoke about venture capital activities within cable operating companies. Others on the panel were Glenn Britt, President of Time Warner Cable; Rich Fickle, a Senior Vice President at AT&T’s National Digital Television Center, who discussed digital video; Kim Kelly, Insight Communications COO and CFO, talked about a digital interactive development by Insight; and Laura Martin, a Director with Credit Suisse First Boston, provided a Wall Street perspective on the added value of digital.

The day ended with an industry update featuring Char Beales, President and CEO of the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing and Michael Hennessy, Senior Vice President for Policy and Planning at the Canadian Cable TV Association.

February 29 began with Masters’ keynote address. Masters said that usage will sop up any glut of bandwidth and that among the new applications he is watching closely are interactive services that deliver education, video-on-demand, electronic commerce, polling, and news and information.

Masters was followed by a panel on the OpenCable software project. The panel was moderated by Don Dulchinos, Vice President of Advanced Platforms and Services for CableLabs, and included Mark Coblitz, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Comcast, and CableLabs’ So Vang.

NCTA President and CEO Robert Sachs offered a Washington update. Sachs was followed by a panel that focused on the move of digital video set tops to retail sale, and the cable industry’s commitment to have POD removable security modules available for digital set tops. Dulchinos moderated that panel, which featured Jim Wood, Vice President of Advanced Technologies, AT&T Broadband, and Doug Semon, Principal Internet Systems Architect, Time Warner Cable.

The afternoon sessions began with CableLabs Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning, Dr. David Reed, moderating a session on business strategies. Featured speakers were Kevin Leddy, Senior Vice President of New Product Development, and Brad Dusto, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Comcast Cable Communications. In addition to discussing different business issues, they reacted to a series of live demonstrations that were conducted by David Scholze, Technology Strategist with CableLabs.

The day concluded with a panel of suppliers discussing cable’s retail opportunities. Leddy moderated a session that included Carl Bruhn, general manager of RCA Broadband Products for Thomson Consumer Electronics; Jeff Brown, distribution sales manager of the Network Products Division of Toshiba America Information Systems; Nick Sargologos, senior marketing manager of Broadband, for Dell Computer Corp.; and Nick Colsey, product manager for Sony Electronics.

Anstrom delivered his keynote address to kick off March 1, and was followed by a block of sessions organized by the CableLabs Strategic Assessment Department. The conference concluded at mid-day.

The CableLabs winter conference also featured demonstrations from 21 companies including: 3Com; Arris Interactive; Auspice, Inc.; Broadband Access Systems, Inc.; CacheFlow, Inc.; Canal+ U.S. Technologies; Cisco Systems; Future Networks, Inc.; IBM; Lucent Technologies; Micrososft; MicroMuse; Motorola; Navic Systems, Inc.; Peach Networks, Inc.; Polycom, Inc.; PowerTV, Inc.; Redback Networks, Inc.; Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.; ShareWave, Inc.; and Transcept, Inc.

The next CableLabs conference will be held this Summer, August 7–9, in Vail, Colorado.