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Looking Back and Looking Forward with Rocco Commisso – #Summit23
It could be argued that the broadband we enjoy today rests on a foundation largely built by the original cable television pioneers. Those pioneers and their hustle that built an industry from scratch are heroes to Rocco Commisso. The first half of Commisso’s career was spent learning from those entrepreneurs, especially Alan Gerry, founder of…
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Tom Olson – 1938 to 2019
Memorial ServiceSaturday, November 2nd, 3:30 PM Terzich & Wilson Funeral Home225 E. Rose, Sonora, CA(209) 532-3131 Graveside service Monday, November 4th, 2:00PMMission City Memorial Park420 N. Winchester Blvd.Santa Clara, CA 95050 It is with a heavy heart that I report that, according to informed sources, Tom Olson, the founder of Tomco and Olson Technologies among…
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Tom Olson on Cable TV Pioneer Phil Hamlin
Hamlin and converter were synonymous in the early days of set-top boxes that extended the capability of cable television beyond the limits of broadcast TV. Tom Olson talks of his relationship with this cable pioneer and how he preemptively helped him identify and fix a problem that would have been a serious issue. As a…
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Jerry Laufer – A Perspective on the Cable Industry – from 1960 to the Early 1980s
Jerry Laufer describes his career from the early days in Oregon repairing televisions and building tube amplifiers for an early cable system to his days at Tomco, where he developed some of the first frequency modulation systems used for video transmission in cable television. Along the way, he worked with some cable luminaries, including Monty…
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Worse Than a CableCARD?
“We are getting away from set-tops,” points out Matt Polka, president and CEO of the American Cable Association. Speaking at last week’s WEC 2016 conference, Polka was referring to the migration of his MVPD members’ licensed programming to IP set-top boxes, TVs and hand-held devices through the magic of Apps. He expresses concern that the proposed FCC changes (PDF) – that…
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Vermont as a Brand
With the rise of communications behemoths, it is easy to forget that the acronym CATV stands for Community Antenna Television and that the roots of CATV can still be seen in many of the systems that still exist in rural America. The 60 subscriber “cable network” that Cliff Duncan bought in 1972 was the prototypical early CATV system, as,…
