SCTE NEWS
Graham Bell Senior Manager, Access Network Engineering - Liberty Global
Each year the SCTE offers bursaries to help with travel and hotel costs for our members to attend important and educational trade shows and events across the industry. This is open to ALL individual members, so do make sure you take advantage of this incredible membership benefit. Last year seven SCTE bursaries were awarded for ANGA COM in May, five from IPKO in Kosovo, one from ARDING, also in Kosovo and a final winner from the UK. Don’t miss out on this incredible membership benefit in 2026 and beyond! The general sense of chaos you often feel at the conference was exacerbated with three large unexploded WW2 bombs being uncovered in the centre of Cologne. The resultant evacuation zone created a sort of siege mentality within the Messe with everyone staying in the halls longer on the Wednesday before they could return to their hotels. Fibre was still a strong theme with various innovations to help drive the ongoing build- outs with new tooling or more efficient solutions. Early 50G PON solutions were also quite prevalent amongst the major players in the market. ‘AI’ tools are now often included as part of the management systems, demonstrating that these tools I was hoping to return to ANGA COM in 2025 as I could see there was a great range of vendors and conference sessions that looked to be of real interest to me and for my role within the Liberty TECH Fixed Network Access department at Liberty Global. I was therefore delighted when my bursary submission was accepted by the committee. It was interesting to sense a slight change from the last year where fibre really appeared to be the only game in town. In 2025 it felt as though there was more of a balance and a good amount of fresh ideas to go and check out.
How do I apply? Please write up to 300 words on why you would benefit from a bursary and email it to office@theSCTE.eu Winners will be notified prior to each event. Please make your application and your subsequent report (for the lucky winners) your original work! No ChatGPT please. Application deadline for ANGA COM is 31 March 2026, and 1 June 2026 for IBC. automation which may assist with the lab-based engineering and testing of access technologies that my department is responsible for. It was good to see a few of the vendors presenting different and innovative solutions to overcome the challenge of improving broadband to existing MDUs (Multi-Dwelling Units) that smartly repurpose existing in-building coaxial cabling, while integrating with XGS-PON networks or indeed R-PHY. I came away with some decent leads; we have started to have follow up conversations in areas such as lab/test and network automation, orchestration, device emulation/simulation, network resource booking and scheduling, test tools and various components for our lab builds. This is a great result. As always, ANGA COM isn’t just about tech, it’s about people. This year saw an excellent turnout from European operators, making for great exchanges of ideas, insights and naturally, a few well-earned beers. Thank you to the SCTE for making it possible for me to be there.
are starting to move from buzzwords to useful features in real deployments. One vendor stirred important conversations about the operational challenges of fibre networks, stressing the importance of early diagnostics and long-term reliability as more providers transition from coaxial infrastructures. Cable and DOCSIS provided quite a bit of excitement as well this year. DOCSIS 4.0 is really starting to take off with the main vendors all demonstrating D4.0 RPD prototypes, amps and passives as well as the three big players all showing off their vCMTS products. There seems to be real momentum in this field now, and 2026 may actually see some build outs starting to happen. It was also interesting to hear that there is a genuine path emerging to further the development of DOCSIS, continuing to utilise the existing
investments in coax to even higher speeds – DOCSIS 5.0 perhaps?
I was interested in some of the solutions around emulation, simulation and test
SCTE Bursaries
What’s included? E ach bursary package for either ANGA COM or IBC in 2026 includes pre-paid flights and hotel accommodation for up to 3 nights (courtesy of the SCTE) and entrance to the full conference programme (courtesy of ANGA or IBC as appropriate). The full terms and conditions of the bursary can be found on our website. At the end of the event you will be expected to write a report of your experiences, what you gained from attending and to highlight any specific areas that you found valuable or of specific interest.
We look forward to hearing from you!
SEPTEMBER 2025 Volume 47 No.3
9
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