The 'cable' fade-out continues

The demise of "cable" as an industry label continued this week with word that SCTE's flagship annual event, Cable-Tec Expo, has been rebranded as "TechExpo." The new name will take hold starting with this fall's confab, set for September 24-26 in Atlanta.

And the annual event has a new logo to go with the new name:

(Source: SCTE)

As an email distributed by CableLabs, SCTE's owner as of January 2021, explained it this week: "SCTE's flagship event has evolved over the years and now incorporates much more than cable – it is a gathering place that includes new audiences such as policy, security and sustainability."

It's a clear signal that showgoers can expect a broader set of technologies and issues to be on tap. From a whitepaper perspective, this year's event is seeking submissions on topics spanning wireless/wireline network convergence, AI and machine learning, cloud services, energy management and sustainability.

And the show's name change also speaks to the evolving focus of CableLabs, which continues to hoist the DOCSIS flag while also expanding into wireless and a laser focus on fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technologies.

The rebranding of SCTE's annual show is just one more example in a string of them in which the word "cable" has been fully extracted, cast to the periphery or been moved to the back seat.

We went through this exercise back in 2019 as the industry continued to put a greater emphasis on "connectivity," suggesting that The Cable Guy, the 1996 comedy starring Jim Carrey, might require a retitling if Hollywood really, really ran out of ideas and went with a remake:

(Source: Screencap of a DVD cover for 'The Cable Guy' and the amateurish use of Microsoft Paint)

Wholesale, across-the-industry changes have not taken shape, so the "cable" heritage still endures – at least for now.

CableLabs is still CableLabs and the SCTE is still an abbreviation for the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers. The Cable Hall of Fame has not pivoted to become The Connectivity Hall of Fame, and its inductees still take home a statue that is proudly topped with a big, fancy "C." The Cable TV Pioneers also remains unchanged. CableFAX, where I cut my teeth covering this industry back in the DOCSIS 1.0 era, no longer relies on fax-based distribution, but continues to provide a valuable, comprehensive view of daily doings.

Light Reading's Cable Next-Gen Technologies and Strategies, set for next week in Denver for the event's 17^th year, also hasn't wavered – at least not yet. If a name change is in the making, it's a decision that's well above my pay grade.

There are other holdouts. Cable Cable, our redundant friend based in Fenelon Falls, Ontario, Canada, has kept its core brand. But perhaps that's temporary in the wake of its purchase by Rogers Communications in 2020. There are already signs of a future change as the company is now being billed as Cable Cable Powered by Rogers.

But there's a bevy of examples in which "cable" has faded away or been relegated to co-star status:

That's just an illustrative list of examples. No doubt there are plenty more.

But, taken together, it's a clear signal that, with apologies to Bob Dylan, the times, they are a-changin'. The industry is no longer solely about "cable," but instead has evolved to become relatively agnostic at the access network and a platform that can deliver a much broader assortment of services.

Or to put it more bluntly: Change or die. Given that choice, change has clearly become the order of the day for the "cable" industry.