scte member focus
You’ve had a varied career, 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? These days I am semi retired but am juggling 3 fun jobs. After leaving Corning in 2023 after a thoroughly enjoyable and successful career, I created my own entity, JS4C which has 3 activities – Telecom Consulting for Telenco Group, Business Development in the UK for a small grower champagne company Champagne Paques. And finally, teaching a professional integration course for 2nd year master students at the University of Reims. I have known the Telenco Group for many years. They are a major European designer and manufacturer of Telecom Network solutions in FTTx, 5G, LAN, Rail, Indoor wireless applications and Data Centres. They recently joined the SCTE. There are many things I enjoy doing both professionally and personally but from a career perspective and working for North American companies I have been lucky to travel often to the US and to almost all European countries. I speak English, French and Spanish fluently and what I enjoy most is immersing myself in different cultures and learning and appreciating our differences. Finding common ground with people and building relationships is the first critical step to understanding the challenges they face within their businesses.
What memories really stand out for you over the years you’ve been involved in this industry? There are many fun, fond memories. Certainly being a major part of the Cabelcon journey where we grew the company from 35 to close to 250 employees during my first 10 years there really stands out. Being acquired by Corning in 2001 was exciting but then becoming fully integrated in 2012 was a very challenging, but memorable period. Corning is an incredible company but going from an entity of some 200 employees and joining a corporation of 50000 was kind of daunting. Having had the chance to work and develop a small start up and then hold a responsible position in a huge global organisation have both been invaluable experiences in my career. The sector has changed a lot in 35 years; what for you is the biggest shift? Bandwidth has become an essential utility such as water, energy and sewage services and it should be universal. The digital divide is a real issue and must be resolved. It is absurd that in some areas you may have 3 companies building FTTH infrastructure in which case ROI for all 3 is very unlikely. A better mechanism should have been put in place where wasted funds in overbuilt areas could have been used to finance broadband services in the remotest areas.
I joined the SCTE over 20
years ago on the recommendation of a customer contact who said it was an excellent environment for networking. I have to say this was very helpful for me at the time to meet some key industry professionals and ultimately develop our business in the UK.
MAY 2025 Volume 47 No.2
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