21285 - SCTE Broadband Dec2021 COMPLETE v1

12 Vol. 43 No. 4 - November 2021 Issue As our CEO Roger Blakeway is retiring Broadband Journal it seemed timely to ask Simen Frostad, Chairman of Bridge Technologies to look back in order to look forward. Here he identifies some of the big questions as we progress further in our ability to extract meaning from monitored data. A more-than-just-technical Where to begin? When I was tasked with writing something on the subject of ‘the history of monitoring’ I felt a little daunted. Not because of a lack of knowledge or enthusiasm for the subject – anybody who has ever caught me over a cigar and a glass of champagne at IBC knows I can wax lyrical on the topic for hours. But more because tailoring it to an audience, even a technical one, is a tricky job. As members of SCTE, many of you are likely to be broadband engineers. In which case, you know the topic of monitoring – at least in the field of broadband - as well as I do. You’ve been in the trenches for the same length of time as I have, you’ve watched the troops advance, seen the colours change. Telling you how monitoring has evolved in the broadband industry would be little more than preaching to the converted. But those of you familiar with the work of Bridge Technologies know that we carry a heavy focus on themonitoring of broadcast over IP. And there’s a chance that you know significantly less about the history of monitoring in that field: it’s a history that spans over 100 years, but its convergence with IP monitoring is something that has only occurred in the last two decades. But the big question is, is it a history you want or need to know? If I start rattling on about Marconi, Megawatts, Transport Stream Analytics, Frequency Bands, RF carriers, packets and headends – well look, you are snoring already. How then to tackle the topic? Why had I been tasked with this mission? Why does a history of broadcast monitoring – and its convergence with broadband monitoring - actually matter? And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it matters for the same reason that any account of history matters. Seeing where we’ve been helps us to know where we are going. But I don’t just mean where we’re going technologically. Indeed, technology is one particular area where historical analysis is actually a fairly poor predictor for future direction – disruptive innovation means technology By Simen K. Frostad, Chairman, Bridge Technologies scte long read history of broadcast monitoring Simen founded Bridge Technologies in 2004 with the goal of creating solutions that would simplify the transition to IP. Prior to Bridge, Simen developed the first nonlinear sports editing facility during the 1994 Winter Olympics; built the first multi-camera hard disk recording system for episodic drama production in 1998; and created the world’s first IP/MPLS contribution network for Scandinavian sports coverage. Simen’s in-depth knowledge, 35+ years of industry experience and understanding of the end-to-end broadcast process as well as the enabling technologies has seen him play a leading role in making the future of the broadcast industry possible. Simen K. Frostad, Chairman of Bridge Technologies