LIVE FROM ALCATEL-LUCENT TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM 2014: Continued technology innovation is a critical factor in meeting the ever-changing demands of networks, because “we have to build capacity that is doubling every 18 to 24 months, and you cannot do that just by throwing capital at problems”, Kevin McElearney, SVP of network engineering at Comcast, said.

“We can talk about product roadmaps, we can talk about features and functionality, but what I want really is the guy you don’t put in front of customers. The crazy scientist you keep in a back room, because we need to give them the problems that we have so they can think about them very differently than from a product standpoint or a service standpoint,” he said.

While Comcast is generally tagged as a cable company, McElearny noted that this is only part of the business.

“There’s a natonal backbone element to Comcast, there’s our national data centres. There’s our metro networks, our access networks. A lot of people think of Comcast as a cable company, but we have a pretty extensive commercial business, we have a fairly substantial residential business. We work with some of the largest content providers in the world, we have connectivity with international carriers,” he said.

And this provides some challenges when it comes to working with infrastructure suppliers. “We’re really a multi-facted company, which I think drives the vendors a little bit crazy because how do you design products when you can’t put them into particular pockets?” he mulled. “I always say that the customer isn’t always right, and I tell that to the vendors. We don’t always know what we are looking for. Comcast is a lot of businesses, and we all have different requirements.”

Returning to his theme of innovation, he continued: “If I think about the innovation side, it is talking to the Bell Labs types of folk to make sure that we are thinking through what some of these big challenges are.”