Shane Portfolio, a top network exec, to exit Charter

A big change at Charter Communications' network leadership team is underway amid word that Shane Portfolio, currently SVP of network engineering, recently resigned and will be departing the company next week.

A reason for Portfolio's departure was not announced, but the cable industry vet has a new job lined up at a company that has yet to be disclosed, multiple industry sources tell Light Reading.

Portfolio, a regular speaker at Light Reading-hosted cable tech events, shared word of his coming exit to colleagues and other industry contacts in recent days, sources said. Portfolio declined to comment about his plans, deferring comment to Charter, which confirmed that Portfolio is departing the company.

Update: Charter expects to announce Portfolio's successor in the coming weeks, a Charter official said.

Portfolio joined Charter in late 2022, tasked with overseeing the architecture and engineering of Charter's core access network. He reports to Justin Colwell, Charter's EVP, connectivity technology.

Portfolio previously spent more than 25 years with Comcast, most recently in the role of SVP of network services. He was inducted into the 2020 class of Cable TV Pioneers.

Network upgrade initiative is pushing ahead

His departure comes at an important time for Charter and the evolution of its hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network. Charter is in the midst of a multi-phase network evolution plan focused on multi-gigabit downstream speeds and 1 Gbit/s upstream speeds.

The current phase of that plan, focused on 15% of Charter's footprint, is to upgrade HFC plant to 1.2GHz of capacity alongside a "high-split" upgrade designed to boost the amount of spectrum dedicated to the upstream. Future phases of Charter's plan also include capacity upgrades (up to 1.8GHz in some cases), distributed access architecture (DAA) upgrades, deployments of a virtual cable modem termination system (vCMTS) and a move to DOCSIS 4.0.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based operator is expected to complete those upgrades by sometime in 2026 at a cost of about $100 per home passed.

Portfolio's departure will have no impact on Charter's network evolution plans, a company official said.

Charter is also pushing ahead with fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) deployments in greenfield areas, including markets tied to the operator's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) commitments. Charter is also expected to participate in the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Charter, sources say, is also part of a small group that is exploring a way to run 5G signals on HFC plant in order to deliver services in much higher portions of the spectrum – perhaps as high as 4GHz or 5GHz.