Longtime cable technology
executive Jay Rolls is leaving
Cox Communications to
join Charter Communications
next month as chief technology
officer — the latest in a spate
of executive reshuffling at both
operators.
Rolls, who has more than 25
years of experience in the industry,
will take over for Marwan
Fawaz, who unexpectedly
stepped down as Charter’s CTO
in March 2011.
Rolls most recently served as
Cox’s senior vice president of
technology, responsible for technology
and architectures across
all of its communications and
entertainment product lines. He
joined Cox in 1995 as director of
multimedia technology.
At St. Louis-based Charter,
Rolls will lead the operator’s engineering
and architecture teams
and also will serve as the primary
liaison to industry organizations,
including research and development
consortium CableLabs.
Rolls officially starts as CTO on
Aug. 22, reporting to Don Detampel,
Charter executive vice president
of technology and president
of commercial services.
“We’re very pleased to have an
industry veteran of Jay’s caliber
lead these efforts,” Detampel said
in announcing Rolls’ appointment.
“He has a natural affinity
for collaboration that will help
ensure our product, technology
and operations teams work closely
together to exceed our customers’
expectations.”
Detampel himself is a recent
Charter recruit, having joined the
company in October 2010. Most
recently, he was executive chairman
of New Global Telecom, a
wholesale provider of voice-over-
Internet protocol services acquired
last year by Comcast.
Charter had enlisted former
Cox CTO Chris Bowick as an interim
replacement after Fawaz’s
departure.
In a statement, Cox executive
vice president and CTO Kevin
Hart said, “Jay joined the Cox
family 16 years ago, where he
helped us and the broader cable
industry achieve several technology
milestones. While his presence
here will be missed, we are
very happy for Jay and his new career
opportunity.”
Hart, formerly chief information
officer of Clearwire, started with
Cox in June 2011 after the MSO
conducted a 10-month search.
Prior to Cox, Rolls served as vice
president of network engineering
at Excite@Home, a joint venture
of Comcast, Cox, Tele-Communications
Inc. and William Randolph
Hearst III. Rolls started
his career working on communications
cryptography for the
U.S. intelligence community, later
working at BBN Communications
and Alcatel Telekom, where
he spent nearly 10 years in Germany.
