He Gave Up the Patent Fees and Got American Homes Online Through Cable TV
In 1991, an Iranian-born engineer used the coaxial cable already in place to move data both ways in and out of homes, then donated the technology royalty-free to the telecom industry to become a global standard — he could have made billions from it.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
The idea everyone called him crazy for
In 1991, Ruzbe Yassini and his team used the coaxial cable that cable TV had already laid across the United States to move data both ways in and out of homes, connecting millions of American households to the internet for the first time. He recalls that bankers, the cable TV industry and every investor reacted the same way: you're crazy, nobody will solve these problems; and even if you do, nobody will care — who wants to connect data at home? The absurdity of that judgment is that they were betting homes didn't need data, while Yassini was betting the infrastructure was already there.
— Ruzbe YassiniTwo jobs pieced together the technical path
Yassini's technical instinct didn't come from nowhere. From 1981 to 1986 at General Electric he learned how TV systems and cable TV systems worked, how audio and video entertainment worked; around 1987 at a high-speed data company called Proteant he learned how high-speed data worked. His judgment was: put high-speed data onto cable TV infrastructure. In the 1980s many people assumed a whole new set of wires had to be laid, and the dream was fiber to the home — fiber itself was fine, the problem was cost. At the time about 56 million US households were already connected to cable TV; digging new trenches, pulling new cable and hiring people would have been extraordinarily expensive.
— Ruzbe YassiniThe hardest part was making data travel back
Coaxial cable had until then only been used to send cable TV programming one way into homes, and the hard part was sending data back the other way. Yassini told the founder of the company he was at, and the reaction was: if anyone wanted to do this, they'd have done it already; besides, who cares about homes being connected? Who would use a computer and network at home? Rejected, he didn't stop — he first got the system running at Rock Island Arsenal, an Army base. But the real question was whether this thing could run not just in the closed network of a government building, but in homes across thousands of villages, towns and cities.
— Ruzbe YassiniThe first field test failed completely
In 1990 he founded his own company and found real homes to test on. A local commercial and residential cable TV company in the small Massachusetts town of Stowe was willing to give them a channel to try. The first trial found that residential cable lines were so noisy they couldn't even find their own signal. He says they didn't call it signal-to-noise ratio, they called it noise-to-signal ratio, the situation was very horrible, and it failed badly on residential cable. This was the most dangerous moment for the whole technical path: running in the lab and on a base didn't mean it could run in real homes.
— Ruzbe YassiniThe pigeon flew
After solving the problems one by one, they ran a second test: transmitting a file from a residential address to the company office, and every time it was the same image of a pigeon in flight. Once the file transfer started, everything ran perfectly over the old residential cable, and the team excitedly called him, shouting that the pigeon was now flying over that network infrastructure. That image is the most concrete success signal in the whole episode — not a metric being met, but a pigeon flying from a home to the office.
— Ruzbe YassiniHe chose royalty-free over billions
Once the technology worked, he didn't go make billions; he licensed the technology to the telecom industry royalty-free. He says people often ask him: don't entrepreneurs usually make money first and then donate a little to become famous? Why did he do it the other way around? His explanation: he comes from a region where most of the problems since the invention of oil have come from that middle stretch of land, and he always thought that if there were a telecommunications system that could do healthcare, education and other good things, it could reduce dependence on oil, both protecting the planet from pollution and giving the people of that region freedom to enjoy everything a democratic society brings. So he believed donating the technology royalty-free and making it a global standard was the cornerstone of his vision at the time.
— Ruzbe YassiniFrom standard to home modem
After the royalty-free licensing made the technology a standard, Yassini went on to build a mass-market cable modem for home use. By 1995 his modems held a considerable share of the US market; just one year later his company was acquired for tens of millions of dollars. The whole thing started with 13 people plus 7 advisors — 20 people pushing a vision into execution, and execution into a tool usable in the home.
— Ruzbe YassiniIn their own words · checked verbatim
The bankers, the cable industry and any investor said, you're crazy, nobody's going to solve those problems. And even if you solve it, nobody cares because who wants to have data connected at their home?
Ruzbe Yassini0:00
My vision was that I could put high-speed data over cable infrastructures.
Ruzbe Yassini3:08
His view was that, well, if anybody wanted to do that, they had already done it. And plus, who cares about the homes being connected? Who would ever use computers and the networking from the home?
Ruzbe Yassini4:10
Instead of calling it signal-to-noise ratio, we called it noise-to-signal ratio. It was very horrible.
Ruzbe Yassini6:11
they called me enthusiastically with yelling and screaming, saying the dove is flying now over that network infrastructure.
Ruzbe Yassini6:11
So for that purpose, I thought donating my technology free without royalties that becomes a global standard was really a cornerstone of my vision at the time,
Ruzbe Yassini7:12
This was a dream that created by 13 peoples and seven advisors, 20 of us got together and we drove our visions to execution and we drove our execution to the useful tools that people could use from the home and it was just a beautiful moment for all of us.
Ruzbe Yassini8:17
Figures
| US households already connected to cable TV at the time | about 56 million | 4:10 |
| Amount the company was acquired for | tens of millions of dollars | 8:17 |
| Team size | 13 people plus 7 advisors, 20 in total | 8:17 |
Glossary
- coax cable
- The copper cable used by cable TV, originally carrying TV signals in one direction only.
- signal-to-noise ratio
- The ratio of signal strength to noise strength; when residential lines are noisy, the signal gets drowned out.
- royalty-free
- Users don't have to pay the patent holder for each product.
How to listen
Founders and engineers interested in infrastructure innovation, open-source motives, and 1990s internet history, especially those working on hardware or the network layer.
The program preview and past-episode clips after 9:17 can be skipped.