Backtalk

Milestones

First Donation: The SCTE Foundation received its first doanation, a check for more than $45,000 from the Tom Polis Foundation.

Road Runner Turns 10: Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner service officially launched on September 10, 1996. Happy birthday! People Arris Appoints Williams

Arris TeleWire Supply appointed Tom Williams to VP of marketing and business development. Williams has more than 10 years of experience in the cable industry, serving in R&D, engineering operations, market development, and product marketing capacities. He previously held executive and engineering positions for Comcast, Fujitsu, KPMG Consulting and Scientific Atlanta.

Ferraro Joins Aurora

Aurora Networks named a 33-year cable industry veteran, Andrew Ferraro, as VP of sales for its northeast region. Prior to joining Aurora Networks, Ferraro worked for Group W Cable/Teleprompter Cable, Reiss Media Entertainment, Arris Group and Confluent Photonics. Letters Do Techs Need Laptops?

That was a question we recently asked in CT’s Pipline. Here’s one answer: My maintenance techs have had laptops since 2001. We have our system maps, for outages and system problems. We look up modems and ping them on DOCSIS and use What’s Up Gold to look at modem performance history. Techs email work logs, timesheets, cable replacement, complaint responses, etc. We use wireless where we have it in our system and can always plug into the tap at the job. We are moving to GPS directions and TOA work order transmissions to the techs, and they will, in turn, code them out on our billing computer when done. Can you say, paperless? We are almost there. And new things are added almost weekly.

 

In 2001, I contacted many manufacturers and Micron gave me more than I could have possibly asked for. Besides being the most inexpensive, the gave me a three-year warranty, free overnight replacement of the case and most anything else that failed…. At the end of the three-year warranty period, they were willing to sell me another one or two years. Our Division Engineering opted out and went with Panasonic Toughbooks for twice the money, initially….

 

A few important issues: A laptop mount flexible enough that it wouldn’t sit in front of the passenger airbag. You can’t shut them off in vans….The mount also had to hold the laptop securely without a wire or strap that would cause the hinge to break if the screen was closed. I also obtained from the manufacturer a visor to block the glare of the sun and to provide concealment of the laptop. I don’t necessarily like to promote a vendor, but Micron laptops and the Xtreme Desk from Mobile Desk are two exceptions at the top of my list.

Ed Misicka, Brighthouse Networks