PHILADELPHIA, PA – Cable needs a strategic approach to energy management and power availability to support growth in new services, said Mark Coblitz, SVP of strategic planning for Comcast Corporation.
Speaking Thursday at SCTE’s Smart Energy Management Initiative (SEMI) forum in Philadelphia, Coblitz outlined the need for “a long view of energy” that encompasses the cable telecommunications ecosystem of operators, programmers, broadcasters, vendors and associations such as SCTE, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs), as well as other network providers, power utilities and university and government labs.
“Given the current course and speed, we are concerned that someday – certainly not immediately, but foreseeably within the next five to ten years from now – we will be faced with the reality that our ability to grow will be constrained by the quantity and timing of obtaining electrical power,” he said in his keynote remarks. “We cannot let that dependency occur.”
Coblitz cited increased demands for Internet services and higher broadband speeds, increased use of IP unicast, high-definition, 3D and multiplatform video services, plus business services and security and home monitoring as factors that are driving new powering needs for cable system operators. In addition, he noted that broadcast and cable programming networks face similar challenges as they seek to deliver new video products.
“We simply do not have control over the availability of the energy we will need to sustain our rapid future growth, but what we can control, working together, is how much power we require, and how we can require less than we otherwise would,” he added. “We must give consideration to the efficiency, availability and reliability of energy throughout the network- and product-planning process, right from the design phase.”
