The fiber optic cable then adjoins to coaxial cable at nodes, and the “coax” (pronounced “co-axe”) then delivers content the rest of the way to customer households. HFC works by threading optical fiber – known for its robust, clean and passive (meaning no amplifiers required) characteristics – in the core of the network. Under the leadership of cable technology pioneer Jim Chiddix, the company’s Oceanic Cablevision division tested and used optical fiber during the 1980s to transport video signals, initially on the island of Oahu.Īfter subsequent lab testing and development, led by Senior Engineering Fellow Louis Williamson in partnership with then-supplier Ortel Corp., fiber-based video carriage was readied for implementation throughout ATC/TWC. It spread ultimately to virtually the entire cable industry, even setting the table for later entrants/competitors such as Verizon Fios.ĪTC coined the term “hybrid fiber-coax” (HFC) to characterize the new technology. Some detail: ATC was the first cable operator (or telephone operator, for that matter) to spearhead the use of fiber optics as a method of transmitting video content. CEO Gerry Levin with an oversized version of the FSN remote in Orlando, Fla.) (Pictured in a MCN file photo: then Time Warner Inc.
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TWC’s technological prowess stems back to major projects in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: such as the seminal two-way, interactive network called QUBE, developed by Warner Cable in the late 1970s ATC’s invention of a way to use optical fiber as a principal medium for transporting signals and data in the late 1980s and, the truly innovative Full Service Network (FSN) – a precursor to the fully-addressable 500-channel, on-demand universe – launched by Time Warner Cable in Orlando in 1994. And many of those enhancements – some dating back 30 years – paved the way to the anytime, anything, anywhere, any-device nature of today’s consumer experience. Time Warner Cable was an assemblage of earlier, smaller predecessors, dating back to the pioneering, 1960s era of the cable television business – companies such as American Television and Communications (ATC) and Warner Cable. Co-founded in 1968 by cable pioneers Monty Rifkin and Bill Daniels, ATC and later TWC led a decades-long charge in technological innovation that created sweeping changes in the way we watch TV and access content.Īs noted in the chronicle of TWC’s corporate history, Making Connections, the passion for dramatic-yet-pragmatic technological advancement as a core strategic tenet was fostered by the company’s visionary leaders. A quintessential example is Time Warner Cable (TWC), an enormously and historically influential cable operator that recently became part of the “new” Charter Communications.
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