Key Staff Additions

Louisville, Colorado, June 5, 2001—Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs®) announced the addition of a number of key personnel to its complement of staff. Among the new personnel is Paul Whitehead, who became Vice President of Strategic Assessment.

Whitehead's team is responsible for providing strategic assessments of new technologies. These assessments consider the technical, economic, public policy, and strategic issues presented by these new technologies. Further, he is responsible for leading the CableHome™ and Go2BroadbandSM projects, and for identifying and then incubating other new projects that will meet the needs of CableLabs members.

Prior to joining CableLabs, Whitehead worked for U S WEST and was in charge of the technical team that developed and implemented the world's first large-scale deployment of VDSL in Phoenix. Before U S WEST, he worked for Bell Communications Research (Bellcore, now Telcordia), where his teams mainly focused on developing new services. Whitehead earned his M.S. and B.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Other staff additions in the Strategic Assessment Department follow.

Bernd Lutz is Director of the CableHome™ project. He has more than 20 years experience in the Information Technology industry. He held a variety of positions in application software development as well as executive management. Most recently, he was one of the founding members and CTO of Proflowers.com, the third largest on-line flower seller. Prior to Proflowers, he was key in establishing DealDeal.com, one of the larger Internet business-to-consumer consignment and private-label auction companies.

Before his involvement in the Internet, Lutz established a national client-server and groupware consulting division for Sykes Enterprises, Inc. He also was the IS Director for SCC Communications and held management positions with IBM in international software development, project and product management. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences and an MS degree in engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany and an MBA from the University of Colorado.

Perry O'Neil is the Director of the Cable Industry B2B Interface Program (CableB2B™). O'Neil is responsible for directing this CableLabs initiative relating to the relationship between the cable operator and interactive service providers, including Application Service Providers (ASPs) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

He has 20 years experience in the communications industry, building and marketing broadband communications services on optical fiber, coaxial cable, DSL, and wireless. Prior to CableLabs, he led U.S.-based system engineering and product development at Formus Communications, a fixed wireless Internet access and service provider with interests in Europe and South America. O'Neil holds an M.B.A. degree and bachelor's degrees from the University of Colorado.

Raji Raman is Director of Project Requirements for Strategic Planning. In this position she is responsible for providing strategic oversight ensuring that the feature and requirements definition processes for CableLabs' initiatives are consistent and complementary. Raman also will address business, economic, strategic and public policy issues that are of immediate interest to CableLabs Member Companies across Strategic Assessment Department Projects.

Before CableLabs, Raman worked in telecommunications, for cable companies, the FAA and, consumer electronics and supply companies for 30 years. She has deployed Digital Services for AT&T and Suburban Cable (now Comcast). Professional experience spans the areas of data processing, the design, development, operation, and maintenance of large information systems, the development and marketing of consumer electronics products, and over 20 years of experience in Product and Program Management.

Raman has completed course work for her Ph.D. in Business and Public Administration. She also holds an M.B.A in Business and an Advanced Executive Management Certificate from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and a B.Sc. in Statistics from University of Madras, India.

Anthony D. Sachetti is Director of Strategy Development where he is responsible for strategy development within the Strategic Assessment department. Participating as adviser in internal and external projects addressing telecommunications technology assessment, business, strategic and public policy issues of immediate interest to member companies.

Prior to joining CableLabs, Sachetti worked three years for Level3 Communications as the Senior Director of Network Planning & Interconnection Services. Before Level 3, Sachetti worked 6 years for TCI, now AT&T Broadband. While employed at TCI, he helped to build and manage the first TCI-HFC local telephony and high-speed cable modem networks in North America. In addition, Sachetti was instrumental in creating the Network Operation Centers, (or NOC's) that monitored and managed the HFC networks. He holds a B.S degree in Telecommunications from Central Connecticut State University, CT.

The CableLabs® Certified™ cable modem project also has added John Eng, who became Director, DOCSIS Platforms. DOCSIS stands for Data over Cable Service Interface Specification and is the successful cable modem interoperability project that CableLabs has managed for the past four years.

Eng's current responsibility includes the technical lead of DOCSIS 1.x and its evolution into the next-generation broadband communications platform. Eng has worked with the broadband cable industry since 1993. Before joining Cablelabs, he worked in engineering and management capacities with Lucent Technologies and Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq) in system architecture, and new product strategy in the areas of broadband cable and wireless LAN, computer and data communication products design and development. Eng earned Bachelor and Master degrees in Electrical Engineering from New York University.

The CableLabs OpenCable™ project also has added key executives. Jim Fahrny is Senior Security Architect for Application Programs and Services, and is responsible for all copy protection and digital rights management issues, problems, and new requirements in OpenCable. Fahrny has worked in engineering for the past 22 years.

He has written software and performed system architecture for the bar coding industry, the Seawolf submarine, the C-17 aircraft, the F-16 fighter, e-commerce Internet security products, Secure Wireless ASIC devices, and secure telephone equipment (STE) used by the national Security Agency (NSA). This work was performed at 12 different small and large companies including Rainbow Technologies, Hughes Aircraft, Northrop, Delco, General Motors, PhotoGraphic Sciences, and Loral Librascope.

Fahrny holds a Bachelors of Science degree in electrical engineering from California Polytechnic University at Pomona. He also has completed advanced courses in areas including program management, UML tools, object-oriented analysis and design, and C++ programming.

Frank Sandoval is Senior Software Architect on the OpenCable project, which is part of the Advanced Technologies Group. His role is to work with cable operators and vendors to specify set-top box middleware for the next generation of interactive applications. Once the specification has been released, Frank will work with vendors as they implement middleware versions against the specification, and will help manage the internal certification of implementations.

Sandoval has been a software developer creating interactive consumer applications for over 15 years. He has developed games while working for 3DO and Electronic Arts, and developed some of the first applications for the CDi platform as a member of the Philips subsidiary American Interactive Media. Most recently he worked with a small company developing a platform for distributing interactive, procedural graphics objects over the Web. He holds a BA from the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Joseph Weber has joined CableLabs as Senior Technologist for Advanced Platforms and Services. His duties include helping to manage the process to create next-generation specifications for OpenCable, including extensions for high definition television and personal video recorders.

Before joining CableLabs, he worked as a Director of Business Development for Quindi, a streaming media startup in Palo Alto, CA. Prior to that he worked for C-Cube Microsystems as Product Marketing Manager for consumer MPEG-2 encoders for PVR and DVD-recording devices. He also has been an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University, and a lecturer at U.C. Berkeley. He holds a B.S. degree in Physics from Notre Dame; a masters degree in Physics, from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, also from U.C. Berkeley.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org and www.ebif.tv.

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