By: Jason Hibbard, AT&T Broadband (Comcast)

Created: January 25, 2001

People ask, “What do you do”? I manage the Conditional Access group. Some of the looks I get are priceless. If they are in cable, they smile and walk away, maybe not fully understanding. If they are from the “outside”, they really look at you funny. Conditional access is the fancy word for addressability. That black box that controls all the cable converters. The thing that gets sworn at when it’s down, and forgotten when it’s running. I was one of those guys called an “IC” or Individual Contributor. We had no set working hours, we just worked constantly. Truly addicted to cable. Not there for the fame, we were there for the glory of seeing something we created work. Something no one tried before. Connect this to that and see what happens. It got to the point where I started bringing bits and pieces home to connect together and see the outcome. The collection started to grow. Soon, I had a small headend in my basement, rack and all. Eight modulators, six scramblers, one Scientific/Atlanta System Manager 20 with HEC and ISP, a General Instruments ACC-4000, and an ACC-2000. It was glorious.

Back then, our company was introducing the SA 8600x. I wanted to learn all I could about it. Everything. Right down to the F-connector. The collection continued to grow. The electrical bill was growing too. After all, keeping a headend powered was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? Nobody shuts down a headend, before they go to bed! Besides, when I woke up in the middle of the night, I could run downstairs and try what I just dreamed of. Pure addiction. It got to the point where my very understanding wife would open the cellar door and ask if I was coming to bed. “Be right up!”, I would answer. Sometime I went up after a few minutes, sometimes a little longer. On occasion, she would come back to the door and ask if I was still down there. “Be right up!” (It worked before). “Don’t bother. It’s morning”. I hate when that happens. But hey, look at all the cool things I was learning. Exploring new areas. Trying different combinations. Finding new bugs. This was great! Something was missing though. A billing link! I got a pair of RF modems, found some unused spectrum on my node and connected them to our billing mainframe. Now I had a REAL cable system. Still something missing. Customers! Oh kids! Come down here for a minute. You! Sit in front of this TV. Put your sister in front of that one. OK! What channels do you two want to watch? Nickelodeon? Coming right up! I would provision the services on the converters. Create virtual text channels with their names on it. Now I had their interest. Their name on TV. Dad wasn’t too bad after all. They started learning what keystrokes did what. Eventually I would find the older one down there doing a soft disconnect on the younger one’s converter. Putting up rude messages about her sister on the text channel, after all, they were kids.

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