scte member focus
Member FOCUS Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Adams CEO, AXP Systems Engineering GmbH
What got you interested in a career in broadband/ telecoms and how did you get started? As a callow youth, I was interested in science, but I was not particularly into electronics. It was a pragmatic choice to study electrical engineering. My father was a professor in it; I had experienced some previous exposure to the subject. After graduating in 2001 with a master’s degree from the University of Hawai‘i, I started working as an engineer in my father’s company, planning and integrating broadband networks. It was the era of big multimedia upgrades in Germany, bringing internet services to customers‘ homes. The first five years were hard. I was somewhat slow in fieldwork, but it showed early on that I was the kind of person who could explain how things work. Being able to finish my doctorate degree at the University of Darmstadt in conjunction with my work as a managing director of a medium-sized multimedia network, completed the academic foundation necessary for later work with both SCTEs (UK & US) and CableLabs. You’ve had a varied career across engineering and in academia and you clearly have a lot of strings to your bow. How would you best describe what you do, and what do you enjoy best? 25 years in communications have left their mark. I have done a lot of jobs in the broadband industry over the years: engineer, project leader, managing director, auditor, chief science officer, chief technical officer, subject matter expert, instructor and professor. Most of these were connected to teaching engineers and technicians in the industry or at university, next to the daily work of running a project or business. When the DOCSIS 3.1 standard was conceptualised in 2014, I started working with SCTE US and devised an industry training to be taught to network operators in the USA and worldwide. Consequently, I have become known in the industry as a ‘cable professor’, a specialist for modern communications technology. A couple of years ago, I was tenured as a professor for communication systems engineering and now focus on training engineers
10
MAY 2026 Volume 48 No.2
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker