Billions In The Bubble: Siara CEO Vivek Ragavan (Part 2)

SM: Where was this based?

VR: I took a VP of Engineering role in Pennsylvania. Cable networks were changing while I was there, from pure video signals to data signals. At GI we recognized that bandwidth to the home was most prevalent in cable networks, more so than in telephone networks. Due to the amount of available bandwidth and the emergence of the Internet, it just made sense to use the cable bandwidth to get service to consumers’ homes. That also enabled voice and interactive television services.

SM: What year do you think that transition occurred?

VR: The team I had at GI was one of the visionary teams when it came to cable architecture. That was in the mid 1990s. We transitioned from analog to digital set-tops with access control transmissions. Digital technology also allowed more channels to be put on a network, and our team came out with a 500-channel lineup.

SM: Which meant customers were not only getting broadband but a richer television experience.

VR: Exactly. Even today, if you have a Motorola set-top in your house then it likely came from our team at GI. That vision continued to flow to cable modems, which were an enabler for Voice over IP. We also built optical transmission systems for transporting fiber over the cable. Cable is a hybrid fiber/coaxial system. It uses fiber from the hubs to the neighborhoods. The last mile is coaxial. That setup allows for an increase in overall bandwidth. Telephone companies have essentially copied that format with their efforts to bring fiber out to the curb.

SM: How long were you at GI?

VR: I was there for four years.

SM: When did you leave?

VR: I left in 1996, which is also when I transitioned from a technology role to more of a business role. I felt I had reached my technical pinnacle as the VP of Engineering. I got the opportunity to do that at ADC Telecommunications, where I ran a business unit.

SM: What is the genesis of the first company you founded?

VR: While I was at ADC we developed a technology which was a voice over cable system. It would allow cable companies to compete with phone companies better. Back then it was not obvious, but today cable and telephone companies compete head-to-head in almost every respect, and you really cannot tell the difference between them. The only real differentiation is that cable companies do not offer wireless telephone services.

There are a lot of companies competing to provide the same services. Cable companies realized they had an advantage in terms of bandwidth, and that they could offer better services to both residences and businesses. A lot of companies recognized this and started building equipment to enable cable companies and telephone companies to compete more effectively. GI did that for cable companies and ADC was doing it for telephone companies, although I helped them build their business, which supported cable companies.

There was a lot of turmoil in the industry. TCI, the largest cable company, was sold to AT&T. They acquired other cable properties as well, but could not make money on them so they re-bundled and sold the properties. In the meantime Comcast, who had always been able to make money on it, acquired those properties from AT&T and grew. Comcast today is huge because of their ability to monetize what AT&T could not.

In that turmoil cable companies were increasingly looking for vendors who offered them better equipment. One of the systems I built at ADC allowed the transportation of video over digital fiber links. It was a more efficient way to distribute it to homes. That business was very profitable. I then thought, how could this be extended to data?

We then launched a new business unit to allow those same systems to carry data. This was in 1998, at the boom of the Internet. I wrote an article which was published in a trade journal. Raj read it and gave me a call. I had always wanted to do an innovative startup. He was telling me that they were starting a new company doing similar things, and he asked me to come out and look at it. That is how I ended up joining a company to take technology one step further than Fiberlane had.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Billions In The Bubble: Siara CEO Vivek Ragavan
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