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Nair named co-chair of SCTE Energy 2020 program

January 16, 2015

Balan Nair, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Liberty Global, has been named co-chair of the cable industry’s landmark “Energy 2020” plan, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE).

Nair will work directly with John Schanz, Chief Network Officer and Executive Vice President of Comcast Cable, to extend to the global market the industry’s collaborative effort to meet ambitious targets for energy use reduction and optimization by the end of the decade.  Energy 2020 targets include:

Reduction of Power Consumption by 20 per cent on a unit basis;

Energy Cost Reduction by 25 per cent on a unit basis;

Reduction of Grid Dependency by 10 per cent; and

Optimization of Technical Facilities and Datacenters Footprint by 20 per cent.

Energy 2020 brings together the collective vision and technology expertise of cable operators and the vendor community to achieve maximum customer uptime and enablement of cable network capacity growth via successful organization, customer and environmental energy solutions.  The program is intended to create alignment on standards and operational practices, to drive design and implementation of equipment, and to create SCTE training resources that will enable workforce teams to optimize technology for maximum efficiency. SCTE Energy 2020 resources will be available worldwide through SCTE’s global brand, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE).

“Maximizing the potential of Energy 2020 requires an international approach that will enable MSOs to leverage global technologies, will expand markets for the vendor community and will increase the value of SCTE resources,” said Schanz.  “The contributions of Balan Nair and his Liberty Global team will be invaluable in helping us to execute on opportunities that can help achieve the targets we seek for our industry.”

“By creating a single set of objectives, cable operators and SCTE are laying the groundwork for a new wave of vendor innovation,” said Nair.  “It’s important that vendors and operators worldwide participate in the creation of standards and best practices in the near term, so that the industry can reap the benefits of more efficient equipment and facilities design in the purchase cycles ahead.”

At SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2014, Schanz and other members of the Energy 2020 team laid out an initial 10 tactical and strategic areas of focus for the program, including: Energy Metrics; Energy Baselines; Access Network Efficiency; Alternate Energy; Energy in Operations; Facility Classification; Energy Efficiency in Facilities; Density and Consolidation; Fleet Optimiwation; and Facility Climate Technology Optimization. Nair is program chair for SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2015, scheduled for October 13th – 16th in New Orleans.

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