Telecom veteran Charlie Vogt has taken the helm as new president and CEO of ATX Networks, shortly after stepping down as CEO of Imagine Communications a couple of months ago to become a senior advisor at The Gores Group.
Ken Wildgoose, who served as the company’s CEO for the last 18 years, is moving into an advisor role and will continue to serve on ATX’s board of directors.
“It has been an honor to lead ATX Networks and to be a part of the company’s incredible team of dedicated employees,” Wildgoose said in a statement. “Charlie is a visionary and strategic thinker with a decades-long track record of hyper growth in the service provider and media communications industries. His passion and expertise in conjunction with the company’s talented team and exciting new initiatives in the cable HFC access network and commercial video gateway markets positions ATX for an exciting and promising next chapter.”
Vogt joined Harris Broadcast as CEO in 2013 and split the company into Imagine Communications and GatesAir.
Before Harris and Imagine, Vogt was CEO of Genband, and previously held leadership roles at Accelerated Networks, Adtran, Motorola, and IBM.
SCTE and its global arm ISBE on Wednesday named four new advisors for the organization’s board of directors, including subject matter experts and chairs of select board committees.
Dave Fellows, co-founder and CTO of T-Mobile’s Layer3 TV, was appointed to serve as chair of the Engineering Committee. The appointments also include expanded roles as subject matter experts for three existing committee chairs: Jim Hughes, VP of North American MSO sales for CommScope on the Governance and Nomination Committees; Andy Parrott, SVP of operations for Altice Technical Services on the Learning & Development Committee; and Martha Soehren, chief talent development officer and SVP of Comcast who is on the Compensation Committee.
The new advisors will attend SCTE•ISBE’s next board meeting, which is slated for Feb. 8 in Denver.
Broadcom and RDK Management (a joint venture of Comcast, Liberty Global, and Charter Communications) announced Wednesday they entered into a strategic development agreement to integrate Broadcom’s chipset-level software development kits with RDK’s open source software.
The initiative will provide a common software porting layer to optimize and standardize RDK deployments across CPE suppliers for video and broadband providers around the globe, the companies said.
The agreement will help keep Broadcom SoC SDK versions in sync with RDK version, according to the companies, who noted that historically, each CPE manufacturer uses a slightly different SoC-layer software to support RDK-based devices, even when using the same Broadcom SoC and same version of RDk software.
The two will work together and with partners to coordinate RDK-based code changes to Broadcom SDK porting layer versions, and then synchronize the release of both versions.
“This new collaboration further strengthens our collective ability to meet the needs of service providers around the globe,” Steve Heeb, president and general manager of RDK Management, said in a statement. “By simplifying and streamlining the underlying software, services providers and their CPE suppliers can focus more of their attention on enhancing customer experiences that drive business results.”
The initiative will first focus on Braodcom set-top box SoC’s and RDK-video software, but is expected to expand to include broadband gateway SoC’s and the RDK-broadband software in the future.
“We believe that optimizing the RDK-SoC SDK porting layer will enable CPE manufactures and service providers to deploy and iterate even faster,” Rich Nelson, SVP and general manager of the Set Top Box and Cable Modem Division at Broadcom, said. “Broadcom has supported the RDK since its inception, having shipped millions of RDK-powered chipsets used by leading Video and Broadband services providers, and we look forward to its continued adoption across the globe.”