Comcast Cable will soon have to get by without its veteran chief engineer. Dave Fellows, Comcast's CTO for the past four years, plans to step down from that demanding post early next year to (wait for it) spend more time with his family.

In a nice twist on his name, Comcast announced earlier today that Fellows, one of the cable industry's leading engineers, will leave his full-time position in January to become an "Executive Fellow" with the company. Executive Fellow Fellows will stay on the Comcast payroll as a part-time adviser and consultant.

North America's largest MSO said it will immediately launch a nationwide search for a new CTO to replace Fellows. A Comcast spokeswoman declined to name any potential candidates.

Fellows, who previously was CTO for AT&T Broadband, MediaOne Group, Road Runner, and Continental Cablevision, has spearheaded Comcast's development of a national IP network. Among other things, he's overseen the creation of a national, fiber-rich IP backbone linking all of the MSO's regional area networks and a common IP provisioning system, known as Bedrock.

But, at age 53, Fellows apparently grew tired of commuting from his family's Boston home to Comcast's headquarters in Philadelphia and technical hub in Denver. "I have been traveling four or five days a week for almost five years," he said, noting that "the time has come to transition into a new relationship with Comcast."

While he's giving up the Comcast CTO job, Fellows will stay heavily involved in CableLabs, the industry's R&D consortium. He said he will remain a member of the CableLabs board of directors and will continue to chair that organization's influential technology advisory board.