By Sean Welch, vice president and general manager, Cable Access BU, Cisco

It wouldn't be a Cable-Tec Expo without our own Ron Hranac parading a convention badge with a trail of award ribbons cascading nearly to his knees. After all, he's been a (very) active SCTE member since 1979, and is a self-diagnosed RF junkie.

This year, Ron picks up another accolade - and a big one - in the Society's Excellence in Standards award. It's safe to say that since he became part of the prestigious SCTE Engineering Committee, as chair of the Network Operations Subcommittee and Network Operations Subcommittee Working Group#1, he's left his fingerprints on 30+ technical standards and operational practices.

It's a well-known fact, in standards circles, that Ron rather enjoys being an "editing pest," going through standards proposals with a fine-tooth comb ... especially glossaries and abbreviations. (A word to the wise: Make sure you're actually talking about an "acronym," and not an "initialism," around Ron ... foundthatout.

As one of his nominators said: "He's very attentive to the details of our new standards and operational practices, offering a seemingly unending list of ways to improve them, from grammar and format, to technical methods and terminology."

Because he's naturally fascinated with RF in general, and HFC (hybrid fiber coax) in particular, he tends to go above and beyond any variation of "business as usual."

When lots of us were starting to examine the threat of LTE-U to Wi-Fi throughput, Ron was out in the field, investigating claims by mobile carriers that cable signal egress was interfering with the traffic being received by their LTE towers. He and the NOS WG1 team subsequently published a technical report and operational practices to help service providers deal with the interference complaints, going so far as to work with ComSonics to build an iPhone app for it. (!)

We wholeheartedly agree with the choice to award Ron's efforts. His work to develop and publish operational practices and technical reports about UHF signal leakage, ingress, and direct pickup interference - not to mention serving as lead editor of the SCTE/ISBE's Journal of Network Operations - is both substantial and far-reaching.

Naturally, we here at Cisco are feeling grateful and proud to count Ron Hranac as a member of our team. Plus, it's just always great to see a good person get well-deserved recognition!

He'll receive the award at the Wednesday luncheon. For those of you who won't be there, I'll make a solid wager that his response will reflect the spotlight onto his standards-setting colleagues, both in the NOS working group and the SCTE at large. He's very much a "standards and specs are a team effort" and "no one person does it all" kind of guy.

And if you're wondering (we were!), the answer is no: We're told there's no ribbon associated with the Excellence in Standards award. But if this year is like years past, upwards of 15 ribbons will be fluttering off his Expo badge. Be sure to give him a high-five!