26 – 100 in alphabetical order by company: Scott Caruso, director of strategic ventures, CableLabs
In March 2020, Scott Caruso was named director of strategic ventures at research and development (R&D) initiative CableLabs where he joined in mid-2017. In his current role, Caruso helps entrepreneurs disrupt the connectivity sector through collaborative R&D, product development and business creation.
At 2018’s Global Corporate Venturing Symposium in London, Caruso told GCV in an interview that IP video and live streaming were generating interest. Media providers expect audiences soon to be watching videos that are of much higher resolution than the standard high-definition output.
The adoption of virtual reality technologies could deeply change the landscape for communication, entertainment including films and computer games.
Caruso argued a significant draw for cable and broadband VC activity lay in technologies that reduced latency, the delay that occurs when transferring data via the internet or local area networks. He said: “Any company that is developing a product that leverages high bandwidth and low latency in a symmetrical form is key.
“You can think of a holodeck [a holographic or computer-simulated physical environment] – it is perhaps the ultimate example. To pull that off, you are going to need an infrastructure that fulfils the role broadband did in the past.
“I fundamentally believe you will see metrics where latency becomes a key component of the service you buy or utilise for a given transaction. Latency will be one of those things – I need sub-second or sub-millisecond latency as a guarantee.
“Say there is a medical diagnostic and I am talking to the doctors in the US and you are in India. That kind of engagement, particularly in real time in an overseas operation, means you cannot afford any kind of latency, you cannot afford a hiccup. That sort of stuff is going to happen but not unless someone is really building the infrastructures.”
Caruso added there was also a need for capacity to support our ability to broadcast through platforms such as social media and live streaming, and at higher resolutions. The cable broadband industry is already moving ahead on this, developing telecoms standards that provide faster upload speeds than those used today.
“The infrastructure is moving from predominately a distribution system to much more of a flat model where you can broadcast anywhere and consume anywhere. That means you must have just as big a pipe going up as you have going down.
“That kind of symmetrical change in the infrastructure we are already seeing with [the new cable specification]. It is 10 gigabytes each way, up and down. You can imagine how that disrupts the media industry, I can broadcast in higher quality from anywhere.
“The pipes were not designed for 4K. So advances are going to be driven more by the infrastructure than the production, because it is not the production of 4K video that is difficult, it is the distribution.”
Scott Caruso studied for a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science at New Mexico State University.
