For fifty years, David M. Fellows has served a key role is reshaping the Community Antenna Television of the past into the Broadband delivery network of today. He was among the first to champion fiber optic systems in the industry when he was at Scientific-Atlanta, and was the first to launch Internet access service while at Continental Cablevision. He led the development of the DOCSIS standard both as head of the DOCSIS Certification Board at CableLabs and as chair of the SCTE Data Standards Subcommittee since inception.
Currently David serves on the Boards of the Cable TV Pioneers and The Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center. He has been a member of the Cable TV Pioneers’ Board since his induction year, 2008, and was the second-longest serving Chair in Pioneers’ history. He has been Chair for the past 30 years of the Data Standards Subcommittee, which sets DOCSIS, PacketCable (IP Telephony), IoT, and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning standards and best practices. An expansion of DOCSIS 4.0 will be standardized this year. Dave participates in many of the SCTE subcommittees and the Engineering Committee, where he served as chair until he timed out after the maximum of six years. Outside of cable, he is an elected volunteer public official and treasurer of Hoback Ranches, WY.
David was the head of technology at Comcast, and CTO of AT&T Broadband, US West’s MediaOne group, and Continental Cablevision. In 1993, he presided over one of the first Internet access launches in Cable history, and later launched the triple-play at Comcast, as well as the converged (Voice, Data, Video) national fiber infrastructure. This infrastructure enabled Project X (the all-IP set-top box), and Project Infinity, which took Video-On-Demand off of satellites and made it a streaming service. He headed the DOCSIS Certification Board at CableLabs in the crucial first years as the DOCSIS standard was developed, certified, and deployed. In between stints at MediaOne and AT&T, Dave was Interim CTO of Roadrunner, and also advised Liberty Global (then UPC) on their digital set-top and Chello Internet launches in Europe. He was president of Scientific-Atlanta’s Transmission Systems Business Division.. He started his career in 1976 as a Member of the Technical Staff at GTE Laboratories, now a part of Verizon, working on digital transformation and fiber optics in the telephone world. He has been on the CableLabs, NCTA, and the SCTE Boards, NCTA program committee, various SCTE show committees, and has presented papers at all of them. At the Loyal Order of the 704, he raises money for the Cable Center.
Dave was awarded the NCTA Vanguard Award, SCTE Hall of Fame, the US West President’s Award, Scientific-Atlanta’s WIN Award, and GTE’s Quality Award, and a Technical Emmy for Hybrid Fiber Coax technology. He was CED Magazine’s Man of the Year. He has written papers for many conferences and magazines, most recently a paper for 2022’s SCTE CableTec Expo and for Broadband Library. He taught the Digital Video Basics course at CTAM, and has been a guest lecturer at Syndeo Institute’s Intraprenuership classes. He holds six U.S. Patents.
David and his wife have endowed The Fellows Family Chair and also The Fellows Family Fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital in support of brain tumor surgery and research. For twenty-five years, their endowment has helped save thousands of children’s lives. Dave was captain of Harvard’s undefeated 1974 intercollegiate championship crew team, and was captain of 1976 US Olympic rowing team in Montreal. He has PanAmerican Games silver and bronze medals. He is a member of Harvard University’s Athletic Hall of Fame, and a Northeastern University Distinguished Alumnus. He is a Knight in the Catholic Order of Malta, and personally serves 400 meals a year to the homeless in his community. He and his wife April have three sons, three daughters-in-law, and seven grandchildren.
