January 15, 2008

Pipeline Profile: Steve Johnson

FCC, EAS, SCTE, and more

Title: Owner, Johnson Telecom, Technical Telecommunications Consulting

Broadband Background: Johnson founded his eponymous consulting firm at the end of 2007 after 23 years with Time Warner Cable, where he last served as senior director, engineering. Earlier in his career he had worked as a consulting engineer with Ronald C. Cotten & Associates and as a project engineer/regional engineer with United Cable Television (now part of Comcast). He has served on the local, national and committee levels of the SCTE and has worked closely with the FCC and other industry organizations.

That was a long spell at Time Warner Cable. Looking back, what gives you the greatest sense of accomplishment?

It was interesting being with a company that was on the forefront of new technology: fiber optics and, more recently, switched digital video being two examples. The work that I did on drop-powered premises equipment also was pretty much started by Time Warner. What I did was roll out the signal leakage program, the flyover program, back in 1990, when the FCC rules first started that.

Little did we know at the time that that would be very important for the two-way applications because by cleaning up the signal leaking out of the plant, we also fixed the breaks in the cable that caused signal to leak into the plant, the ingress. It was important to control that so it doesn't interfere with the return path from our subscribers' homes. We began to see that, as we started rolling out two-way services, the systems that were cleanest, as far as signal leakage, were also the cleanest as far as ingress.

You also worked more directly with the FCC, didn't you?

One of the things that I was proud of was working with FCC in the late '90s on streamlining one of the filing requirements, the annual leakage report, Form 320. These had been filed by community units, basically the franchises. I put together a proposal with the FCC to file by headend. So instead of doing 5,000 forms a year, now we only had to do 500.

That was big efficiency win, wasn't it?

With all the work involved, I figured that for Time Warner, that probably saved $750,000 a year. The FCC trialed it with Time Warner and was pleased with the results and rolled it out as their standard procedure. I'm sure it saved the FCC time and money as well, and other companies in the industry, too.

What about your NEC work?

The National Electrical Code's article 830, which enabled drop powering of premises equipment, is something that Time Warner instigated. It was challenging because it involved working with electricians and telephone people in trying to come up with a safe solution to allow drop-powering equipment on the side of the house. Under the (then) current rules, we were allowed powering, but were limited to 60 volts. But most of the plant was being powered at 90 volts at that time. The new rules allowed us to do plant-powering of premises equipment without having to do a drop-down in voltage. I think that was a big accomplishment.

You racked up a lot of extracurricular hours over the years, too, didn't you?

Time Warner always supported my efforts in industry-related initiatives. One of those was EAS (emergency alert system). The initial work that we did through the SCTE and FCC ended up saving the industry $14 million in equipment costs, by coming up with a more cost-effective solution to accomplish the FCC's goals.

But there a whole lot of other standards work on your resume, right?

I worked with various standards bodies, representing Time Warner Cable. On the SCTE, I've been on the board of directors for 10 years, a member and past chairman of the Engineering Committee, a member of the Digital Video Standards committee and chair of Working Group 3 on that subcommittee, member of Data Standards Subcommittee, and then the chairman of the EAS subcommittee. Within CEA, I've been a member of various standards groups there including R7 (home networking), R4 (digital television), and R8 (digital cable interface) and then also a member of ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee.) And with that I'll quit ….

Why now for a career shift?

I was ready for a little bit of a change. I wanted to leverage my background in EAS and NEC, the work with the FCC, and standards activity to pursue more industry-related activities. So I took advantage of an opportunity I had for early retirement. But I'd been thinking about for a while, and the time was right.

You'll continue with most of your extracurriculars, correct?

I'll continue to serve out the rest of my term as regional director, which goes through June, and I'll continue to be active in the Piedmont chapter and the NEC and FCC work.

You're not relocating from North Carolina, are you?

No. Staying here in NC. It's funny, when we moved here, I wasn't really happy about leaving Colorado, so I said we'll put up with it for three years and see how it goes. It's been five now, and we like it here, and we're planning to stay. We still enjoy our trips back to Colorado from time to time, but we don't have any plans to move there. We bought some mountain property in the Asheville area that we plan to build on some day, but I think it's kind of funny to have mountain property that's only about 3,000 feet elevation when Denver is at 5,280.

And Denver's not even actually in the mountains. Still biking?

Yes. One of the things I'm looking at is being a part-time leader with a North Carolina-based bicycle touring company. I've been on three of their tours as a client, and I'm talking with them about helping out with some of their overflow.