‘CableLabs 2.0’ to focus on long-term innovation

Phil McKinney

Non-profit research and development body, CableLabs, has announced plans to focus more on longer-term innovation projects.

In a blog post titled ‘CableLabs 2.0’ the US-based consortium’s president and CEO Phil McKinney said that “now is the time to significantly increase the funding in innovation.”

He said this “transformation” would see CableLabs prioritise “game-changing innovations” with three-to-eight year projects gaining equal importance as short-term, one-to-three year projects.

“While most organisations spend a small portion of their budget on longer range innovation, we’ve made the deliberate decision to be aggressive in this transformation to ensure that CableLabs can rapidly build and sustain a significant innovation pipeline for the industry,” said McKinney.

Though McKinney did not make reference to personnel changes, a report by Multichannel News on Friday said that the reorganisation would result in “at least” 30 job losses.

CableLabs said it is currently being supported by 55 members in 33 countries covering 180 million video subscribers.