THE FINAL PUSH IS on for the inaugural SCTE Canadian Summit, to be held at the Toronto Congress Centre February 3-4.
The conference promises to be a key date in the engineering calendar for Canadian cable telecommunications engineers, technicians and vendors looking to share information and broaden their knowledge on challenges like switched digital, DOCSIS 3.0 and other myriad network issues.
While vendor tables have long been sold out, registration for the conference is still open and can be accessed by clicking here. As well, the deadline for nominations for the first-ever young Canadian Engineering Professional of the Year has been extended to Wednesday, January 7, so submit your nominations today (even though the web site says noms are closed, they’re not yet!).
Dermot O’Carroll is Rogers Cable’s SVP engineering and network operations, the Canadian representative on the SCTE National Board and one of the key organizers of the Canadian event, along with senior engineering folks at Shaw Cable, Videotron, Cogeco, EastLink and others. Cartt.ca is the official media partner and O’Carroll chatted Monday with editor and publisher Greg O’Brien about the Summit and some of the technical challenges facing the industry overall. What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: Why did the SCTE choose to do a show in Canada this year?
Dermot O’Carroll: It was a combination of a couple of things. One, we in Canada recognized we have been missing a forum for Canadian operators to get together and talk and exchange information for quite some time and with the changes in the conference schedules in the U.S. this year, where they are all coming together…
GOB: The two “Cable Connection” weeks in the spring and fall.
DOC: …Yes, and with the (Cable-Tec) Expo in the fall, the SCTE was also looking for an opportunity to have other conferences in other venues. They have also – for a number of years – been looking to grow their presence in Canada and with the Ontario chapter in Ontario, which started a number of years ago, growing…
GOB: Sure, that has been growing by leaps and bounds driven by the likes of Rogers and Cogeco and the vendors and small companies.
DOC: …The SCTE felt it was timely to try and provide more service to the Canadians in the form of a conference.
GOB: And the technical challenges of the industry go across any boundaries.
DOC: We all face the same technical and operational challenges and if we can help each other overcome them, then all the better.
GOB: So, what are the top-line topics which will be covered at this year’s conference?
DOC: Some of the obvious technology topics will be things like DOCSIS 3.0, switched digital video – and that they relate to other challenges in the network like spectrum management and how to get more content into the spectrum. Those are some of the hot topics.
We might also see some discussion on network architectures such as access architectures, whether it be RF over fibre or PON, etc. – all about getting more capacity to the home.
GOB: Are there any issues peculiar to Canada that the conference will be addressing?
DOC: The other one I hadn’t mentioned was the whole tru2way consumer interface and I think in Canada we have somewhat of an opportunity in that the U.S., because of their regulatory requirements there for tru2way (formerly OpenCable), were forced to go into that area before us. I think we have the opportunity to look at what they’ve been doing and learn from it and maybe take a revised approach in Canada.
GOB: What are some of the main challenges you see facing Canadian operators right away this year, as opposed to a few years down the road? What will be the biggest top-of-mind, immediate issue getting the most attention at the Summit where engineers will be saying “okay, I have to deal with this when I go to the office tomorrow”?
DOC: Spectrum management is one of the biggest things facing all of us. As the number of HD channels grow, and as the use of HD grows, we will want to launch more and more services in high definition and get VOD in high definition out there and we want to deliver greater broadband services, so I think all of us are facing “how best to deliver those services on our network and how to expand our spectrum capacity within the network” – and I think that’s one thing common to all of us.
GOB: Are there any issues that will be discussed that are important but maybe a ways off? Things that won’t need to be dealt with until 2010 and beyond but we will still be talking about at the Summit?
DOC: The areas we’d be looking at there would be how we contemplate what the U.S. has done in moving towards tru2way – and changing the user interface. What can we learn from that? What do we need to do in Canada to improve that customer experience.
And there may be some opportunities to go beyond – to look at the learnings from the U.S. in terms of the customer interface and the customer experience coming out of their tru2way experience – and is there an opportunity to do something different?
GOB: Let’s talk a little now about the young engineer award. With the deadline for entry now on Wednesday, what was the impetus behind establishing that award and what is the SCTE hoping to achieve with it in Canada?
DOC: One of the things we’re trying to do is create greater interest in the whole SCTE culture and the reality is that the technology and the skills that are in the cable industry in Canada have been changing significantly over the past number of years. And a lot of people think of the SCTE as related to HFC and RF engineering and don’t think of it so much when you think of the IP world or the voice world.
And, there are a lot of young engineers joining the industry from college or from the telephone world and haven’t grown up in the cable culture and are not as familiar with the SCTE and we want to bring it to their attention that the SCTE is for all – it’s telecommunications engineering, not cable engineering.
And, there are a lot of young engineers in Canada who are doing great work in advancing the knowledge and technology of the industry and this is an opportunity to recognize them and show them the value of participating and joining up.
…There haven’t been forums in Canada for a number of years to exchange information and also to recognize our people and I think this is an opportunity to bring those people who are working diligently in the back rooms doing great work but not getting their peer recognition for it, to the forefront.
