SCTE Crowns ‘Emerging Technologies Awards’ Winners

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers announced the winners of its "Emerging Technologies Awards" Wednesday.

The SCTE also said Broadbus Technologies Inc. chief technical officer Tom Jokerst will preside as program-subcommittee chair for next year’s SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies, set for Jan. 11–13 in Los Angeles.

Jokerst has held cable technology positions with Charter Communications Inc., Cable Television Laboratories Inc., Continental Cablevision and Cable Information Systems.

The three winners were honored at the SCTE’s Conference on Emerging Technologies in Dallas.

The winners are:

• "Polaris Award," sponsored by CommScope Inc.: Cox Communications Inc. data- and transport-engineering manager Brad Bignall, for successfully leading a team in the conversion from an existing Internet-service provider to Cox’s high-speed-data service.

• "Star of Integrity Award," sponsored by C-COR.net Corp.: Comcast Corp. vice president of digital-video engineering Harry Reichert, for his contributions to the cable industry, including the deployment of Comcast’s digital-video, video-on-demand and HDTV services.

• "IP Innovator Award," sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc.: Cablevision Systems Corp. director of network-systems integration, corporate engineering and new technology Joe Godas, for his leadership in the design, implementation and promotion of Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification for use as an out-of-band channel for digital set-top boxes.

The SCTE said its Emerging Technologies Awards are made possible through the generous support of CommScope, C-COR.net, Cisco, Broadcasting & Cable, CED magazine and Multichannel News (B&C and CED are sister publications to MCN).

The award sponsors presented each award recipient with an award and contributed $10,000 to the SCTE in their honor.