July 20, 2010

SCTE Taps Daniel Howard As New CTO

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) has hired Daniel Howard as its first CTO.

Howard has a diverse cable background. He co-founded and served as CTO of Digital Furnace (acquired by Broadcom in 2000), where he continued working as technical director until 2003. Other stints include founding startup interactive-TV company Quadrock Communications; working as a consultant to the Atlanta Public Schools on a thin-client computing project; systems architect at Motorola; and, most recently, serving as CTO for VQLink, where he worked on digital video monitoring technologies.

In addition, Howard co-authored the DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 specifications; while with Broadcom, he was a lead inventor on the company’s primary DOCSIS 3.0 patent. Other industry contributions include the development of broadband growth models for cable system networks; evaluation of such new technologies as IPTV and Synchronous CDMA; and the writing of more than 50 articles, reports and international technical specifications. He holds a BS in Physics and a MS in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech.

“Daniel Howard is exactly the type of candidate we had in mind when we created the position of CTO,” said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE. 

The SCTE is evolving itself to respond to the changes in cable. "The IP domain has totally overwhelmed the local access network," explained Dzuban. "We have a lot of HFC skills here; we don't have embedded IP and IT skills that Daniel brings to the table. Daniel has HFC, optical, IP and IT pieces. We're looking at the whole network, not just a piece of the network."

In addition to his technical skills, Howard brings C-suite experience, which the SCTE hopes to leverage to engage more with industry CTOs. (For more, click here). But he told Communications Technology his first order of business is to crank out a bunch of content. He mentioned white papers, primers, educational courses, live learning and tech facts.
 
“I’m looking forward to enhancing SCTE’s current leadership position in technical education, and to working with my peers within the operator, programmer and vendor communities to accelerate the deployment of the next generation of cable services,” said Howard.

Additionally, Dzuban said the SCTE may launch a journal next year.

-Linda Hardesty