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THE MAN WHO REWIRED THE WORLD

This WVU alumnus revolutionized the Internet with cable TV

By West Virginia University

September 23^rd, 2025

While most people struggled with the tedium of dial-up online connections in the 1980s, an electrical engineering alumnus of West Virginia University envisioned a radically different future. Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard asked a groundbreaking question: “Why not use the same cable that delivered television programming to also carry data and voice? And, in doing so, to transform the online experience entirely?”

That idea earned him the title “father of the cable modem” and reshaped the world’s digital landscape. He set the foundation for fast Internet delivery to homes as we know it today. Decades later, he's telling the complete story in his new book, “The Accidental Network,” published by WVU Press, bringing his journey full circle back to where it all began in Morgantown.

Q: So, let’s start with your time at WVU. What did Morgantown teach you?

A (Yassini-Fard): I transferred from West Liberty State College to Morgantown in 1978 to study electrical engineering. I had three years at WVU and graduated in May 1981. Morgantown is where my education and career were built, but the biggest value was the direct networking with the professors and graduate students who passionately taught me everything I needed to know. I was lucky to have some of the best professors and mentors who instilled in me a passion for communication and telecommunication rather than the biomedical field I had originally pursued.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard receiving an honorary degree from then-WVU President David Hardesty in 2003.

Yassini-Fard speaks to the WVU community September 2025.

As a young man, Yassini-Fard works on the circuitry of a television set, showcasing the hands-on experimentation that shaped his career in technology.

Q: After graduating, you had a vision to transform cable TV lines (coax) to carry digital data, voice and video. How did that develop?

A: After graduation, I joined General Electric. We built TVs, VCRs, cameras, all the entertainment devices, and every one of those was going through a piece of a cable known as coax. By 1986, I joined another company doing data networking, connecting computers in universities and corporations over a separate physical network. These two diversified work experiences gave me the idea: "Why am I using a coax cable to connect videos, and then using separate cables to connect data and computers together? Shouldn't there be one cable infrastructure to connect voice, data and video digitally?”

I went to my company founder and chief technology officer in 1987 and said, “Hey, I have this idea. Put data, video and voice over the same physical cable.” My CTO was not excited about putting voice, data and video together. He said, “Get back to your office. Keep doing what you're hired to do,” referring to data networking. “If anybody wanted to do that, it would already be done.” The next day I quit. I said, “I'm not really the type of engineer you need, because you didn't even entertain my logic of interconnectivity.”

So, I went after the dream of putting data and video together, using the existing cable TV infrastructure that was available. That had three barriers. First, there was no product that could do the job. Second, you had to overcome issues tied to the speed of light and the geographic range of transmission. Third, you had to make it affordable to convince the cable industry that putting digital data over the coax is good for their business. We had huge barriers in front of us, but at that age, with that dream, I really had nothing to lose.

Yassini-Fard works in his office just months before his company’s acquisition by Bay Networks.

An early modem prototype, nearly two feet tall and costing about $18,000, is shown beside a newer, modern version.

Yassini-Fard and industry peers at a 1990s technology trade show. A large display promoted "The Digital Channel…Delivering the Information Highway Today,” alongside computers demonstrating new hardware and software.

Q: How did you get people to buy in?

A: I joined a company that originally had high-speed data for enabling terminal connectivity over coax for governments and institutions. I ended up as a vice president of engineering, but the start-up company was in deep trouble. Within a year-and-a-half, I had to oversee sales, customer service and marketing, just to keep the company alive.

While doing that, I continued building my dream to put data, video and voice all together. I came up with the blueprints to achieve my vision. We were a small group of engineers, 13 of us and seven advisers. I kept putting my employees in connection with the customers and helped my engineers to see that there were customers out there who would value this vision.

Then the challenge began; our original cable modems were big dinosaurs, which cost about $18,000 and were half the size of refrigerators. Nobody was going to allow me to put that box in their living room. We either had to shrink the box or reinvent it. We decided that the only way to go was to reinvent it to be future proof. We had to overcome some laws of physics, solve a few key mathematics breakthroughs and develop advanced integrated silicon. From 1989 to 1996 we went through two significant generations of the product. That led us to the creation of the $295 personal cable modem.

My competitors were much bigger companies: HP, Intel, Motorola, Zenith, General Instrument, and Scientific Atlanta. Despite competitive pressures, we persevered to develop category-leading technology. Then, to help advance the technology that we developed, I gave a key element of our architecture for free to the industry standards organization to create what we call DOCSIS, which standardized cable modems so that any cable modem anywhere in the world could work together. That allowed our technology to become the de facto standard.

Q: Why did you decide to give that out as an open standard?

A: There are three reasons. No. 1, we had proven, working technology that was well ahead of our competitors; and I recognized that providing it royalty-free would help the market grow faster. No. 2, the only way you could bring down unit costs below $100 is by having a large volume, and large volume comes with standardization. No. 3, I recognized we needed, colloquially, a “bigger boat” to assure our customers that we had staying power. So, I asked my employees, “What do you guys want to do?” Some said, “We have mortgages, we have bills to pay. With competitors around, we may not be able to survive on our own.” It made sense to be able to have a bigger footprint. As a result, we opted to contribute our technology to the wider world, and ultimately to merge our company with a larger, more resourceful company named Bay Networks.

Yassini-Fard stands beside a stack of binders and modem prototypes, visualizing the years of work that led to high-speed internet.

CED (Communications Engineering & Design) Magazine recognizes Yassini-Fard as "Man of the Year" and father of the cable modem in January 1999.

Q: I'm someone who's grown up with the Internet being ever present. So, I want to ask you, as someone who played such a big role in that, did you ever anticipate how central your invention would become?

A: Back then, for home computers to connect, you had to use phone modems and dial a phone number using an online service like AOL. You’d hear beeps and burps before the modem connected at a very slow transmission speed, and if you were lucky, that connection stayed stable.

But the experience in the corporate world was very different. I saw everybody building these massive corporate buildings where 300-400 people would come in to work at 8 o'clock, just to connect their computers to a high-speed data network. To me, that seemed impractical. Why travel to a place called “the workplace” to sit in front of a screen? Why should I not do that at home? My vision was that what was happening in corporate America could eventually happen in homes. Every home would be an extension.

Think about electricity. A hundred years ago we just had light bulbs. Now you have 50-60 appliances in the home using electricity. I imagined the same with connectivity. Now, your Wi-Fi is connected to refrigerators, dishwashers, dryers, and cameras, and everything is working together as a smart home above and beyond your computer and streaming video.

Did I have a 5-year blueprint? No, it was just my gut feeling that once computer-quality connectivity comes to the home, the applications are limitless. Once you get that digital pipe to the home, what goes across it is just digital bits. In fact, if you fast forward to today, AI can’t get connected and work and be trained if you don’t have the broadband connection. So, the broadband infrastructure was essential to do all that.

Q: Every industry, I think, is using what you and your team created, and that's the story your book tells, am I correct?

A: Correct. The book “The Accidental Network” recounts the transformation of the cable industry from a television-only medium to a breakthrough infrastructure for connecting millions of citizens to a high-speed data network and how my company, LANcity, was able to bring it to light with dedicated team of 20 believers.

Yassini-Fard signs books while visiting the WVU campus September 2025.

Yassini-Fard chats with a member of the WVU community at a book signing.

Q: Why was now the right time to tell your story?

A: If you look at what we used to call the “cable television” industry, before I started this initiative, it was worth less than $100 million. Now its market value is over one trillion dollars globally. I waited years for somebody to tell the story of the cable modem and enabling broadband. Nobody did, and it was time to be able to share.

I'm hoping the book inspires new entrepreneurs to do things for what is right. I hope college students think big, just like we did. Instead of trying to go write an app to sell this or that, try to solve an environmental problem, AI challenge or a society problem through bigger innovation than mine.

I hope that the entrepreneur who is struggling and not able to attain funding learns from the lesson we learned and will be able to pursue their ideas by maintaining faith and persistence and alternative financing.

Q: Were there any specific professors, or moments during your education that ignited your passion?

A: There were four professors. Dr. Corum was my electromagnetic professor, an excellent theoretical and practical visionary professor. Dr. Balanis was a great professor with deep knowledge of antenna design. Together they helped me to learn about satellite communications. My adviser, Dr. Nutter, was on the advanced microprocessor and computer side and inspired me to understand the art of computing and programming. Dr. Cooley taught a variety of electronics courses, which trained me to build electronic gadgets.

Those four professors really changed my entire career, because I originally wanted to study medicine. I came to the electrical engineering department to pursue the biomedical field as a precursor to medical school, and my course changed completely because these professors inspired me to pursue a role in telecommunication and engineering.

Yassini-Fard meets with Tom Devine, teaching associate professor and director of Lane Learning and Mentoring Center at the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, September 2025..

Professor Emeritus Roy Nutter (left) who Yassini-Fard credited as one of his mentors at WVU.

"The Accidental Network" by Yassini-Fard was published through WVU Press.

Kaylea Lantz, electrical engineering student, and Wesam Almubarak, computer and electrical engineering student, meet with Yassini-Fard, September 2025..

From left to right: Anurag Srivastava, chair of the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; WVU President Michael T. Benson; Yassini-Fard; and Pedro Mago, dean of the Statler College, September 2025.

Q: So, you're telling your story with the WVU Press, at your alma mater. Is it a full circle moment?

A: I started my career with WVU, and I've been involved with the college of engineering since I graduated. With this book, I'm icing the cake to what WVU has done for a foreign student who was educated here and stayed connected.

It's a nice, sweet end-to-end story. I graduated from WVU, my brother graduated, my cousin graduated, and my uncle is a retired medical doctor in Wheeling, West Virginia. When you put all that together, it's a good homecoming story.

Q: Do you have advice or words of wisdom for the younger generation and the ones to come who will have even more unfathomable technology?

A: Your generation is blessed with access to the most advanced computing technology at your hand, anywhere, anytime; with instant, global connectivity and high-speed access to information, people, and cultures; and with being computer literate.

Planet Earth needs help with air pollution prevention, water pollution prevention, many agricultural elements and food production to feed a future population of 10 billion people. My advice is to look for real problems that your generation is facing and use these tools to solve those problems.

You have got all the tools in the toolbox, all the knowledge it takes now, and your generation needs you to think big and solve big problems. I hope you guys will cherish the moment that you have, and instead of getting lost in social media, make the generational movement. AI, quantum computing and robotics give you tools. We’ll see what you leave for the next generation.

Footnotes

Story and illustrations by Katie Short. Photos by Megan Rinker; provided by Rouzbeh Yassini.

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FootNotes

Story and illustrations by Katie Short. Photos by Megan Rinker; provided by Rouzbeh Yassini.

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