Backtalk

ET Wrapup SCTE President and CEO John Clark welcomes attendees to the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies during the first day in Tampa. D. Quincy Johnson, the director of technical operations for Turner Broadcasting System’s Network Operations Division, this year’s recipeient of the "Young Engineer of the Year," sponsored by Scientific-Atlanta, SCTE and Multichannel News. Birdy Brown receives the Polaris Award from CommScope’s Jim Hughes for late husband Roger Brown, who covered the cable industry for over two decades at CED magazine before passing away last year from cancer. John Leddy, VP network/transport engineering, Comcast Communications, is presented with the IP Innovator Award, sponsored by Cisco Systems. Cable Network and Software Architectures 2010 panelists (l-r) WeiMin Zhang, BroadLogic Network Technologies; Chris Bowick, Cox Communications (moderator), Adam Tom, RGB Networks; Harsh Parandekar, Cisco Systems; and John Carlucci, Time Warner Cable. (Not shown: Lorenzo Bombelli, Scientific-Atlanta and Shamim Akhtar, Comcast.) Wireless Cable panelists (l-r): Bruce Perlmutter, Camiant; Jay Strater, Motorola; Matt Stump, Multichannel News (moderator); Bob Scott, Scientific-Atlanta; Michael J. Rude, Metalink, and Cortland Wolfe, Nortel. Keynote speaker Jim Carroll kicks of the conference with his vision of the future, which includes mass amounts of video from various devices. Whaleback Systems’ Wray West and Mark Galvin at the ET VoIP Lounge. Other companies with on-site presence included Seachange, C-Cor, Belair Networks, Concurrent, Scientific-Atlanta and Narad Networks. Cable executives gathered to rally behind OCAP at the Consumer Elecctronics Show in Las Vegas. CableLabs President and CEO Dr. Dick Green is joined by NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and other industry leaders. Letters The ChicBrocFett Syndrome We admittedly get excited about new acronyms, and the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies is a great place to hear about some good ones, such as TISPAN (see related story on page 10), V-DOC (video delivery over DOCSIS), and STUN and TURN (both NAT traversal related). But it’s entirely possible to carry this too far in the direction of the consumer, as this letter to CT’s Pipeline suggests: My first job was waiting tables at a restaurant, and one of the dishes we served was "Chicken and Broccoli Fettuccini Alfredo." That’s really a lot of words, so on our ticketing system we shortened it to "ChicBrocFett." I remember many confused customer looks when servers would bring the food to the table and ask, "Who had the ChicBrocFett?" The cable industry’s menu of products and services has grown to include so many items – video on demand, high definition receivers, voice over Internet Protocol modems – and they all have their accompanying acronyms. While this helps us internally to describe our products quickly and efficiently, most of the acronyms have no meaning for our customers. I see a familiar look of confusion when subscribers are told, "I’m here to fix your VOD, HD, or VoIP." We should stress to our techs to try and avoid using these shortcuts when they make contact with our subscribers. Help your techs by always knowing what the various acronyms stand for. In your initial training for a new product, try to use the actual meanings to the technicians. This will help you and your customers understand our new products. This small step can turn a good customer contact into a great one. James Messer Comcast Jacksonville, Florida