CableLabs

"• ⁠ To accomplish these goals, I sketched out a second list: • Retire from TCI. • Reduce outside public board memberships from 11 to 4. • Remain chairman and controlling shareholder in Liberty. • Remain chairman of CableLabs. • Stay on the Turner board. • Get the government off TCI’s back. • Generate predictable income by deferring TCI compensation payments with stock dividends, which should produce sufficient cash to maintain our lifestyle. • Say nothing publicly about the contemplated change until Bob Magness is comfortable."

"CableLabs drove innovation through a unique collaborative model: a royalty-free licensing system that avoided patent lawsuits and complex payment schemes—the downfall of many tech agreements. This approach helped DOCSIS cable modems spread globally at remarkable speed. CableLabs could sublicense the technology to vendors on the same royalty-free basis, opening the door for smaller players to enter the market and increasing consumer choice. It also reduced reliance on dominant suppliers like GI, which charged for licensing its digital video-compression tech. With no threat of patent litigation, engineers could build on competitors’ designs, cut R&D costs, and speed up improvements."

"Expanding channel capacity with compression was just the first thing CableLabs focused on; since then virtually every major technological advance in the industry has come from this amazing consortium, which later nurtured and advanced solutions to standards for new services such as high-speed cable modems (data), internet telephony (voice), cable Wi-Fi (wireless), and even more sophisticated cable-TV set-top boxes (video). This would lead to huge capital deployment to build and install the new capabilities, ultimately creating what is the backbone of the internet today."

"And there were no standards. Most consumer electronics work no matter where you buy them, but if you bought a cable modem in New York, there was no guarantee it would work in New Jersey, because each cable operator’s architecture was different, and each cable modem sent different amounts of data upstream and downstream. Just as MPEG-2 was the language for digital compression of video, this new platform begged for a similar standard that every supplier could build on. At the CableLabs board meeting on November 30, 1995, although the agenda was packed, I had only one thing on my mind: high-speed cable modems. Urgency was needed because cable operators, working on their own, could not possibly scale this new service quickly enough. Already the local phone companies were preparing to roll out a new ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) service at 10 Mbps data transmission on the existing copper wire telephone lines to homes—but almost all of it downstream."

"John saw, as we did, the cable industry’s massive opportunity with broadband as a conduit linking computers via cable modems. What if we could assemble an alliance of North American cable operators that would offer a nationwide high-speed internet service at speeds unmatched by the telephone industry? With standards already set by CableLabs and the largest operators working in concert, we agreed this new alliance could dominate the field."

"Word spread quickly. Early users saw web pages and videos load instantly—no more waiting, no more screeching noises, and no more tying up the phone line. Always on. Cable modems weren’t just faster than dial-up; they were better in every way. CableLabs’ DOCSIS data transmission standard made it possible. The first version delivered 40 Mbps; today, it supports speeds up to 10 gigabits per second—250 times faster."