Roll Those Sleeves Up

What an honor to be named chairman of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers board! We’re certainly off to a strong start, and I’m looking forward to a great year. First things first-I’d like to express my gratitude to Wayne Hall for having led the board for the last two years. Under his leadership, we saw the Society move further toward the integration and support of new and advanced broadband technologies. We’ve enjoyed informative new symposiums, successful chapter leadership conferences, and forums on hot topics such as Internet protocol (IP) over hybrid fiber/coax (HFC), voice over IP (VoIP), competition and more. We also are fortunate to have a very dedicated board and committees that work to ensure that SCTE provides the best possible service to its members. Of course, not to be overlooked is our well-qualified staff in Exton. So what’s next? Our HFC infrastructure is very solid. We have many enhanced services and added bandwidth implementations. We’ve moved from video-centric services to interactive and on-demand applications, VoIP, and dynamic networks. We’re now planning for more intelligent networks to include software-managed business rules for bandwidth use, shared RF channel bandwidth for data, digital broadcast, and on-demand content, far beyond switched broadcast. We’re planning for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 3.0, and we’re working through new and enhanced services such as advanced video-centric electronic program guides (EPGs) and search engines, wireless services, in-house gateways, digital simulcast (and all digital), and tens of thousands of hours of content with constant turnover-providing a whole new viewing experience to our customers. This means a lot of work to ensure that we’re ready, especially in these areas: I’d like to thank you for making me your 2005-06 chairwoman. We have a lot of work ahead, and I look forward to getting to it! Yvette Gordon-Kanouff is SCTE chairwoman of the board. Reach her at [email protected].