Daniel Howard has become CTO--top engineer among engineers--at cable's technology-focused SCTE. Howard, most recently co-founder/CTO of Digital Furnace (which was acquired by Broadcom) will assist SCTE President-CEO Mark Dzuban in setting educational and other policy goals for the organization. He'll also be the point person dealing with MSO CTOs.
The job presents no small challenge for Howard, who is being asked to move the SCTE--and therefore its membership of technicians and field personnel--from cable's HFC-focused networks to a new era of IP technology that the industry is only beginning to use and about which many of the MSOs have been secretive.
"There are a lot of HFC folks where IP is a second category of technology," Dzuban told FierceCable, noting that the SCTE spent the last six months defining its value proposition and found that "we don't have enough knowledge around some of the forward-looking IP skills."
Howard, in the same interview, said he will help SCTE refocus its attention on IP and help the industry itself understand that "IP technology is where the forward-looking technology and applications are."
For Howard, the challenge is going to be listening to what the industry's top engineers want and then refocusing SCTE to answer those needs. "The education and transition of the cable workforce from an analog mentality to a digital and IP mentality is certainly a hot point," he said.
The transition, he said, won't happen overnight. "You just take that one step at a time: find out where you can do the best good right away and grow from there," he said.
For more:
- see this news release
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