The SCTE at the US SCTE Tech-Expo.

The US SCTE Tech-Expo, 2005 The US SCTE holds an annual convention and exhibition, called its 'Tech-Expo', which is the largest show dedicated to cable telecommunication engineering in the world. SCTE President, Dr. Roger Blakeway, travelled to the USA for the 2005 convention. Here's his report.

The San Antonio Convention Centre.	The US SCTE Tech-Expo, June, 2005. If it's June, hot and high humidity with temperatures in the 90's, it must be time for the US SCTE Expo. This year the show re-visited San Antonio (remember the Alamo?) using the Henry B Gonzales Convention Centre, which is conveniently situated right in the centre of town. With 69 new exhibitors the total was up 5% to 394 and around 10,000 visitors (up 2% on last year in Florida and 10% up on the last Expo in San Antonio in 2002), the show continues to go from strength to strength. The exhibition was divided into two large halls and was always busy. The exhibition is truly engineering focused and is a great mix of suppliers from hand tools, connecters, cable through to full VoD systems. John Clarke, US SCTE President/CEO and recent recipient of our Honorary Fellowship, commented, "The enthusiasm this week was very high. The show floor was busy and energetic and I spoke with many exhibitors who reported record traffic this year. All told, this was a great Expo"

The Cable-Tec Expo also provides a conference, with a comprehensive set of workshop sessions. Careful arrangement and timing provides minimal overlap; for instance the Engineering Conference takes place in the morning and the Exhibition floor opens in the afternoon. The wealth and number of workshop sessions, however, means that it is not possible to attend all of them; an ongoing, if minor, criticism of what is otherwise a superbly organized event. In fact one of the sessions, although run twice, was even more difficult to attend since the number of delegates vastly exceeded the spaces available with queues around the block. The topic? "The big transition: RF to IP Engineer". The Engineering Conference got underway as usual with a CEO Panel Session chaired by well-known author and columnist Paul Maxwell. In spite of technological, regulatory and competition challenges the three senior cable and technology executives, Time Warner Cable Chairman & CEO Glenn Britt, Cisco Systems President & CEO John Chambers and Arris Chairman & CEO Robert Stanzione exuded confidence about the industry's future prospects. They were in agreement that cable is better positioned than xDSL or satellite to meet the growing consumer demand for broadband products and services citing HFC's greater bandwidth, flexibility and efficiency especially as the foundation for an IP-based infrastructure.		The opening ceremony

The RMS Communications stand	They also agreed that cable operators, notorious for their caution, are becoming more aggressive about pursuing new market opportunities, citing such promising areas as VOD, HDTV, DVR, VoIP and commercial services. Bob Stanzione said that cable stood a chance of exceeding analysts' projections that the industry will sign up 20 million VoIP subscribers over the next few years, a figure he regarded as conservative. Glen Britt said his company is now signing up VoIP subscribers faster than high-speed data customers. He also commented that Time Warner has already accumulated more than 500,000 VoIP customers and like several other major MSOs, was talking about integrating wireless and VoIP services including the use of WiFi for voice signals inside the home. There was still a strong market for high-speed data, however, and with the development of the proposed DOCSIS 3.0 standard, due to be completed early next year, cable operators will be able to deliver100 Mbps or more to cable modem subscribers. Britt also cautioned against trying to engage in price wars with xDSL providers. SBC Communications, the largest DSL provider had recently slashed the price of its base product to $14.95 a month, which was less than the cost of their standard dial-up service. Commoditisation was not the way forward, differentiation and diversity of the product range was the competitive edge that cable had.

The CTO panel chaired by Leslie Ellis concentrated more on technology although the business perspective was still in their minds. The latest marketing initiative that cable had to contend with was xDSL providers, such as Verizon using FTTH, as a sales ploy. Tony Werner, senior vice president and CTO of Liberty Media, commented that "Even my grandma knows fibre is good; fibre implies bandwidth and bandwidth implies speed". Even though speed, he commented, is more marketing than reality, noting that systems in Japan are selling speeds up to 40 Mbps., "Technologically, I don't think it (FTTH) is going to have any advantages over what HFC does today". There was some concern from the panel about cable managing its bandwidth. The mantra the cable has got plenty of bandwidth was preached by all but Mike Hayashi, senior vice president of advanced engineering and subscriber technology at Time Warner Cable did agree "If we continue to deploy linear channels we will run out of bandwidth". Times Warner was moving toward both digital simulcast and switched digital video to both conserve bandwidth and offer more targeted consumer services. "It's not a bandwidth issue as much as it is capacity and what we deliver to a customer," said Tony Werner. "We have enough capacity today ... that we can have a switched stream to every device on the network comfortably." The issue is complicated by legacy systems. As well needing to continue an anologue service for the billions of cable ready TV sets they now have their own digital STB equiped customers as well as those who had bought the generic CableCard solution. Time Warner must continue to service over 6,000 'one-way' digital CableCard (since the regulator will not allow disenfranchising them) as well as moving to HDTV. A potential tri-cast rather than simulcast. Paul Woidke, vice president of technology for Comcast Spotlight said that cable networks have the capacity to stream to individual TVs and enable cable to target advertisements, playing into a new advertising era. "The most important thing is that advertising stops being an interruption and starts being information" he said. "There's a lot of fear out there, a whole lot more fear than there should be about the impact of DVRs and other devices to circumvent advertising messages".

The Alamo	Details of the workshop sessions are too voluminous to report here but the SCTE produces a Proceedings Manual and an excellent CD Rom, which gives both PDF and PPT versions of all the papers. Both are available from the US SCTE bookshop on their website. As usual the social side of Cable-Tec Expo, from Arrival Night reception through breakfast receptions, Award luncheon, Expo Evening, Cable-Tec games and Closing Night receptions provided a great opportunity to network and meet old friends. As always the organization was tremendous and congratulations are in order for a very enjoyable and informative week. Next year the SCTE Expo 2006, which will be held in Denver between 20^th and 23^rd June.

Previous SCTE TechExpos. Details of previous SCTE TechExpos are still available on this site. Go here for the 2004 TechExpo. Go here for the 2003 TechExpo.
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