21285 - SCTE Broadband Dec2021 COMPLETE v1

45 Vol. 43 No. 4 - November 2021 Issue operation in Montreal with a novel set-top box solution, Videoway, and initially applied for the Southampton franchise. They quickly followed this by applying for several London Borough franchises and acquiring existing operations in Greenwich, Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Ealing. My role in the Corporate Office was to integrate the varied technologies from existing franchises and to plan a comprehensive fibre-based system for the whole network, which comprised some 2.4m homes. This was the first deployment of single mode fibre in UK cable networks; by 1995 we had passed half a million homes, providing an interactive, multi-packaged service with the Videoway STB. Still basically an analogue STB, it used digital data in the vertical blanking line interval. It had two tuners and could switch seamlessly between any two channels in the vertical interval, allowing interactive programming such as poker, roulette etc. By the late ‘90s we were operationally cash positive and Videotron had decided to take the money and pull out of the UK. Of the many suitors, Cable & Wireless were eventually successful in taking over both Videotron as well as Nynex and Bell Cable Media. There was lots of coordination and integration of networks at a time when we were also trying to launch a digital service! We eventually launched one in 1998 and I then acted as a consultant looking after standards and, in particular, the introduction of broadband modems. I sat on the board of DVB as the C&W representative and made myself very unpopular by rejecting the DVB Euromodem specification in favour of the US MCNS (later to become DOCSIS) Modem. Together with colleagues from Nortel and Motorola we successfully forced ETSI to adopt the EuroDocsis specification and the rest is history! But you left Cable and Wireless for yet another start-up company, Diva? To be honest, I’m not a large company person. At the start of the Videotron operation, we were in a ‘wild west’ scenario, making instant decisions and getting things done on a day-to- day basis. Even for a multi-million plan to take fibre down to the 300-home street cabinet I received an overnight go-ahead from the parent company in Montreal. With the many layers of corporate management at C&W I had to submit any capital spend above £1K to two separate boards. When I was approached by a head-hunter to join Diva UK, a start-up offshoot of a California-based VoD supplier, I jumped at the chance. We initially had great success in bringing the product to market, significant interest from MSOs across Europe and had negotiated a multi tens-of-millions dollar contract with ntl for all their UK franchises. Unfortunately, before we could sign on the dotted line, the dot.com bubble finally burst and ntl went into chapter 11. This left Diva with a failed IPO and investors withdrawing support for further development. Diva shut up shop in 2001 and I was left with a major career decision. I was suffering acutely at the time from rheumatoid arthritis, which limited my ability to move or stand for any length of time so, at the age of 68, I decided to retire from full time employment and move to Wales to be near my daughter and family. You retired? But you are still here! Yes, I forgot to tell anyone. I had intended to carry on my involvement with the SCTE anyway but in the end stayed on as President and CEO. So, when and how did your involvement the SCTE start? As I mentioned before, Chris Swires first introduced me to the Society and whilst at Westminster Cable I had provided technical papers and hosted several meetings of the Executive Committee. When I joined Videotron my immediate boss, Jean-Charles Dagenais, wanted me to get involved in external relations so, in addition to UK and European standards and the Cable Association technical group, he encouraged me to actively participate in the SCTE. Joining the SCTE Executive Committee was easy – I was the only member who turned up for the 1990 AGM and so, with from the industry Induction into Cable Pioneers