scte member focus
he let me know that he’d be retiring and where I could find a link to the application if I were interested. What would you tell a young entrant just about to get started in this industry? First, I would congratulate them on the choice of profession. Then I would point out, that engineering consists of project- oriented endeavours and therefore there might be some busy days ahead. So, work precise, work hard, apply yourself. Never give up. Learn to love it and try to keep a holistic view of the industry. It is easy to lose yourself in the details. See the forest, not just individual trees. Those who see the bigger picture can act more wisely. Cable’s advantage is the collegiate way the industry interacts; they say cable never loses anyone. It is easy to build networks across companies in this industry, which is important. Ask questions, find friends, people who share your vision. The challenges of the future are not solved by one alone. You are entering an edge-of-technology industry, second to none. But before you get started, you should become a member of the SCTE, for that is your professional family throughout your career.
AI and ML - what are your thoughts? Overhyped bubble leading to not very much in the end or the end of the world as we know it? AI used algorithms and special parallel processors to identify patterns within large amounts of data; it sorts existing data in new fashions and very fast, it’s elaborate data-crunching. AI can improve processes to make the existing workforce more efficient and existing systems more potent. It is a great tool to have at hand. AI-systems can process a lot of information and do amazing things on specific applications but lack understanding of what they process. Without realising it, our human world is one of artificial concepts that only work because everybody believes in them working. Money is a prime example, so is the stock-market or the concept of a national state. The world most likely will not end when machines learn to think in concepts like humans, but at this point there exists no technology that enables them to do so. Therefore, we could be looking at a bit of a hype, because I wonder a bit whether the institutions currently financing the construction of massive AI-data centres are fully aware of this fact. How has your academic career intersected with the commercial one, and what have been the benefits? My father had started his engineering company in 1990 after a decade of being
a communications engineering professor. That combination proved to be very potent, because his students would do their practical training in the company, work on projects and then do their thesis work on broadband-related topic. We could hence train our own specialists who needed no onboarding time after graduation, which gave us the edge. Over the course of more than 30 years we supplied the German and international communications industry with well over a hundred trained communications engineers who learned this business from us. I quickly got involved in teaching university classes after entering the industry, slowly taking over my father’s work in this respect, as of 2016 as an associate professor. Have you had any mentors over the course of your career and how did they help you? Next to my dad who was my first teacher, I have had three mentors who have profoundly changed the course of my career. There is Günther Stein, at that point in 2009 CEO of a large engineering and integration company called Cableway, who was the first to entrust me with a position of responsibility (CTO) in the active industry. Then there is Daniel Howard, in 2015 CTO of the American SCTE, who believed in me, motivated me, and got me involved with content creation and training of DOCSIS 3.1 in the United States and worldwide. And finally, there is Prof. Dr. Dieter Schwarzenau, who preceded me at my current position in Magdeburg and who was of wonderful assistance during my onboarding, after
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MAY 2026 Volume 48 No.2
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