The Imagination Mover

Terry Cordova Has Helped Position Suddenlink for Growth on All Fronts

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 12/5/2011 12:01:00 AM

In a few short years, Terry Cordova has essentially overhauled a bunch of cable systems to equip them for the 21st century — letting Suddenlink Communications deliver advanced services that rival those from MSOs 10 times its size.

Cordova, senior vice president and chief technology officer with the No. 7 U.S. cable operator, has been the driving force behind its Project Imagine. Started in late 2009, the three-year initiative is aimed at reclaiming upwards of 60 analog channels in most of Suddenlink’s systems, to carve out room for a host of new services. Project Imagine has let Suddenlink nearly triple its HD-channel lineups, add significantly more video-on-demand and bring high-speed DOCSIS 3.0 Internet access to the majority of its subscribers.

But it has required a lot of moving parts, including deploying digital terminal adapters — DTAs, which are low-cost set-tops limited to receiving linear TV — to customers across all markets undergoing a conversion. All told, Project Imagine has encompassed about 500 individual subprojects, according to Cordova. The St. Louis-based operator had 1.38 million customers at the end of the third quarter.

Still, Suddenlink pushed ahead to move as quickly as possible, while remaining within its $350 million budget for Project Imagine. And as of the end of third quarter of 2011, the project is 77% complete — ahead of the MSO’s original 65%-70% target for this year.

“Certainly, when you embark on a project like this … that’s a lot of activity on the field,” Cordova said. “We have gone faster, although we had to remain cognizant of the impact on the field and care centers. You still have to run the business day-to-day.”

Now, while Cordova is closing in on the finish line on the original scope of Project Imagine, Suddenlink is ramping up its capabilities on the commercial services front where it sees tremendous potential: “It’s going to keep us busy.”

‘QUICK STUDY’

Given his contributions to Suddenlink’s expansion and his technology leadership, Cordova was picked by the editors of Multichannel News as the 2011 CTO of the Year.

“I’m convinced we would not be where we are today without Terry as a member of our management team,” Suddenlink chairman and CEO Jerry Kent said.

Cordova, who got his start in a small Kansas cable system in 1979, joined Suddenlink in 2003. Kent — who has known and worked with Cordova for almost 20 years, including at Charter Communications — praised his CTO’s intellect and management skills.

“He is not only a remarkable engineer but a person of great integrity and foresight, a quick study, and an effective and efficient manager of capital resources,” Kent said. “Overseeing well over $1 billion in investments since 2006, Terry has demonstrated, time and again, that he and his team can deliver outstanding results.”

Cordova returns the compliment, crediting both Kent and Howard Wood, chairman of Suddenlink’s sister company, Cequel III, for providing the latitude to engage in undertaking like Project Imagine and the buildout of Suddenlink’s national backbone.

“They’ve given me an incredible amount of opportunity to go off and do the things we think are going to increase the capability and asset value of what we have here — and doing it all on behalf of our customers,” Cordova said.

Cordova also drove Suddenlink to become the first major MSO to have all of its broadband technicians and installers earn one or more professional certifications from the Society of Cable & Telecommunications Engineers. That, in turn, was a key part of Suddenlink’s raising its customer-satisfaction scores on J.D. Power & Associates by more than 100 points (on a 1,000-point scale) since 2007, according to Tom McMillin, Suddenlink’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

“Terry deserves tremendous credit for leading with a view of always putting the customer first, whether it’s in network design, technical operations or new technology deployment,” McMillin said. “His positive influence extends well beyond the technical walls of Suddenlink.”

In addition to driving change at Suddenlink, Cordova has been actively involved in the SCTE. This past year, he was chairman of the association’s flagship 2011 Cable-Tec Expo, coordinating its addition of more educational tracks and reaching out to new partners, such as Women in Cable Telecommunications. (And that’s on top of his day job.)

“He lives in a circle of people who don’t know a 40-hour week,” SCTE president and CEO Mark Dzuban said. “The commitment is to whatever it takes to get the job done. It’s working hard and it’s working smart, and he does both.”

Cordova doesn’t reflexively treat people from large companies any differently from those at smaller ones, Dzuban said: “It’s not about the hierarchy of the system. It’s about what you can contribute.”

For Cordova, the SCTE provides not only a key center of professional development for the industry but also a sense of community. “There’s the opportunity for collaboration and knowledge-sharing,” he said. “It’s not just about climbing poles and carrying tool belts.”

Outside of work, Cordova gets a real workout with his two teenage sons, who are mad about sports.

“I try to find my balance spending time with them on lacrosse fields and basketball courts,” he said, adding with a chuckle: “Being a 50-year-old guy, I have to keep myself active to keep up with them.”

As for what’s next for Suddenlink, Cordova is focused on how the company’s network architecture will need to adapt to accommodate its delivery of even more services.

The Project Imagine conversion has given Suddenlink a lot of runway to work with. That cleared some 360 Megahertz of space, and Suddenlink maintains a 20-channel analog lifeline lineup that it could decide to go back to reclaim as well. But for now, “I don’t see a need for an old-style bandwidth upgrade to the cable system,” Cordova said.

Meanwhile, Suddenlink is always looking for additional bandwidth efficiencies where it can get them. The MSO is using 3:1 HD compression — meaning it’s delivering three highdef channels in one 6 MHz QAM — and 15:1 standarddefinition compression via its national backbone. But, Cordova said, “we’re not giving up any quality.”

In the near future, the cable industry at a high level is facing inflection points on two fronts, in Cordova’s view: commercial services and TV Everywhere.

With respect to selling data and voice services to businesses, “we’re sitting on the three yard line with 97 yards to go,” Cordova said. “Th ere is so much upside to that segment. Now we just need to operationalize it and allow ourselves to step up the sales force.”

For Suddenlink, the commercial segment includes commercial DOCSIS 3.0 services, HD video services to the hospitality industry, business-class phone and primary rate interface (PRI) lines.

“Even though it’s a great growth engine, you have to spend the time on the operations and fulfillment side,” Cordova said.

Suddenlink is in the process of rolling out commercial DOCSIS 3.0 services that provide speeds of up to 50 Megabits per second downstream and 8 Mbps upstream. However, if a customer is willing to pay for even higher speeds or a 50- or 100-Mbps symmetrical-bandwidth service, Suddenlink will look at running fiber to the premises.

WIRELESS PLAN WORKING

Specifically, Suddenlink’s business of hooking up wireless towers with fiber connectivity has been going gangbusters, according to Cordova. “Looking into 2012, we’re seeing the backlog ramping very nicely. We’re seeing carriers with 50 Meg symmetrical come right back around and want to step it up to 100 Meg symmetrical. And once you have the fiber in place to that tower, you can do that without much effort at all.”

For TV Everywhere, the shift toward consumers wanting access to any piece of video they’re paying for anywhere — and on any device with a screen — will inform the development of cable’s next-generation video architecture, Cordova said. “That inflection point is so powerful, especially to a younger generation. And we’ll have a more-satisfied customer because they don’t feel tethered to their main viewing area.”

At the same time, Suddenlink and other operators are seeing competition increase from all sides. And, although cable has adapted well, “we need to be faster at innovation,” Cordova said.

A good example of that is multiroom digital video recorders, he said: “I would have loved to have that three years ago.” Suddenlink turned to TiVo to supply its next generation of hybrid boxes and plans to deliver the multiroom-capable Premiere Q in 2012.

Cordova cited CableLabs’ establishing an office in San Francisco as helping steer the industry toward up-and-coming companies that have innovative technology.

“I know our vendors are working hard, from the standpoint of innovation,” Cordova said. “At times, though, they are challenged because they need a consistent direction from the MSOs and they’re maybe given too many ideas, different directions on products.”

HYBRID GATEWAYS COMING

As for the shift to IP-delivered video services, Suddenlink is looking to hybrid gateways that will allow a migration “in a graceful manner,” Cordova said.

“We’ve spent a lot of money, from a QAM perspective, so we want a gateway in the home,” he said. “We’ll solve IP inside the home. Then we get the benefit of low-cost IP tunerless devices.” One thing is certain: Suddenlink will look as different five years from now as it did five years ago.

“I’ve been in this business since 1979, and back in 1979, we had 40 channels of analog,” Cordova said. “Looking back on my career, it’s just an incredible business to keep evolving yourself as an industry with more and more capability.”

BIO BOX: TERRY CORDOVA

Title: Senior vice president and chief technology officer, Suddenlink Communications

Age: 50

Current responsibilities: Oversees Suddenlink’s 130-person technical operations and engineering team, including technical training; residential and commercial security operations; carrier and commercial engineering; and network, voice, digital video and data-engineering operations.

Prior experience: Division vice president of engineering for Charter Communications’ Southeast Division, serving about 3 million customers in nine states, from 1999 to 2003. Previously spent 16 years as vice president of engineering at Galaxy Cablevision, a cable operator based in Sikeston, Mo.

Education: Bachelor of science degree in engineering from Kansas State University

Organizations: Longstanding member of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, as a threeterm SCTE board member, currently vice chairman and chairman of the 2011 Cable-Tec Expo program committee; has served on the boards of the YMCA in St. Louis and South Carolina.

Awards: Inducted into SCTE Hall of Fame this year; named to Cable TV Pioneers class of 2011.

SOURCE: Multichannel News research

INSIDE ‘PROJECT IMAGINE’

Cordova has headed Suddenlink’s $350 million, three-year Project Imagine effort since early 2009. Some highlights:

Overall, the project was 77% complete as of Sept. 30, 2011 — ahead of schedule and on budget.

About 60 of the MSO’s 165 distinct cable systems have reclaimed approximately 60 analog channels, freeing up 360 MHz of spectrum.

DOCSIS 3.0 service is available to 84% of subscribers; the operator last year launched 107 Megabit-per-second service in select markets.

Video-on-demand is available to 82% of subscribers, offering up to 8,000 titles with capacity for up to 20,000 hours of VOD.

HD channel counts have grown from an average of 24 to 72, with some markets topping 90.

SOURCE: Multichannel News research