JOE GODAS
Joe Godas
Cablevision
Joe Godas is vice president of broadband
technology integration for Cablevision. Godas
received the IP Innovator Award at the SC TE
Conference on Emerging Technologies in 2004. He has
been with Cablevision since 1992.
Cablevision continues to do well with consumers
wanting high-speed data services. How much of
this is due to having gotten off to such a fast start
with your initial 10/1 Mbps offering more than a
decade ago?
We’ve always offered a very fast broadband service
that exceeded our customers’ expectations, even
before speed became a defining characteristic of
Internet connectivity in the home. In 2006, we
completed a value-added speed increase that took
our basic level of Optimum Online service from up
to 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream to 15
Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream, without a
price increase. At the same time, we introduced a
premium tier, Optimum Online Boost, offering
downstream speeds of up to 30 Mbps, 5 Mbps
upstream. And we’ve done all this with scale—we
currently provide high-speed Internet service to
more than 51 percent of the homes passed by our
fiber-optic network, the highest penetration of any
broadband service in the country.
What else on the network infrastructure side have
you exploited to optimize this service?
DOCSIS 1.x and 2.0 have been embraced from their
inception, and we will continue to leverage our
vendor partnerships and operational expertise to
accommodate the ever changing demands placed on
the network. We intend to leverage DOCSIS 3.0 in
a similar manner and will efficiently and effectively
add capacity as needed. We have a high-capacity
fiber-optic network with relatively few homes per
neighborhood node, and we continually monitor the
network so we can take action very quickly to ensure
that our customers continue to enjoy fast speeds and
a highly satisfying Internet experience.
How is your voice/data offering to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) doing? Does the five
lines, unlimited local/long distance, 15 Mbps with
static IP address hit the sweet spot?
Our basic level of high-speed Internet offers sufficient
speed for many small businesses. Those requiring
an even faster level of service or advanced configurations and static IP can always take advantage of
Optimum Online Boost. We also offer the hundreds
of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses
passed by our fiber-optic network option of up to 12
lines of the market’s best phone service—Optimum
Voice. With unlimited calling, advanced features and
an unbeatable flat-rate value price, Optimum Voice
is the phone service of choice for an expanding array
of area businesses.
Have the SIP-based standards activities that Jack
Burton mentioned last year advanced sufficiently?
Call signaling, call bearer and basic features are
interoperating well. Success here has allowed cable
to take a leadership position with industry standards
groups, and we are now invested in achieving standard
SIP provisioning and management.
What challenges on the network and in the
back-office have you faced in serving the SMB
market?
The pent-up demand for a competitive static/persistent
IP service has been a pleasant surprise. Efficient
provisioning, multi-line voice support and additional
IP-based communication features have been carefully
balanced to meet the needs of this market.
Do you see a need at Cablevision to push or trial
fiber deeper on the residential side?
Node segmentation and frequency stacking (adding
QAM channels) is a natural part of doing business
and will continue to be applied as needed to handle
capacity requirements. We’ve just begun to leverage
the fiber-optic and spectral capabilities of the network
and will continue to explore ways in which to do
so efficiently.
When would you expect to begin deploying
DOCSIS 3.0-based service?
We’ve said publicly that our network will be DOCSIS
3.0 compliant this year, and we see it as both an
infrastructure enhancer and a service tier enabler.
We’ve already begun augmenting our infrastructure
to make use of DOCSIS 3.0 features and will be looking
to extend the benefits of the technology to both existing
and new customers alike.
