Cable's Referees.

• Author: PETERSON, ERIC

With PCs and TV converging the cable industry naturally wants a piece of this highly lugrative pre. A prerequisite getting the ever-growing number of cable households on the same technological page - a touchy process demanding collaboration between sometimes cutthroat competing cable operators.

Louisville-based Cable Television Laboratories inc., a.k.a. CableLabs is a technical middle ground for cable operators from Brazil to British Columbia and everyplace in between.

"We're the centralized laboratory for the cable industry" explanied Dick Green. CableLabs president and CEO. He compares CableLabs work in cable technology to Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs work as a telephone catalyst. On an international level. Green said. "our mission is to develop better technology for the cable customers."

Incorporated in Boston in 1988 the company relocated to Broomfield the following year. "Colorade and the Denve area are sort of the capital of the cable worlds," said Green Giting the presence of industry grands US West. AT&T and MediaOne. CableLabs has 70 members, representing 85% of American cable operation and 80% of those in Canada, plus a smattering of operators in the Mexican and Brazilian markets.

CableLabs 70 employees - cable specialists that include engineers, physicists and economists -- focus on three major...