Oct 17, 2024: The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) awarded a Technology &  Engineering Emmy to LANcity, recognizing the company’s many contributions to residential high-speed Internet access, technology, and their impact on the modern media ecosystem.

LANcity was among four companies receiving Emmy awards for “Pioneering Technologies Enabling High Performance Communications Over Cable TV Systems.” The company’s founder and CEO Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard accepted the award at the Oct. 9th Emmy ceremony in Manhattan, commenting from the stage that “it has been the honor of the lifetime to have been the pioneering force behind these broadband transformations tracing all the way back to 1987.”

The Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards ceremony was hosted by David Pogue, the Emmy-winning correspondent for “CBS Sunday Morning.”

LANcity was a pioneering force in the development of the cable modem from the late 1980s through the company’s acquisition by Bay Networks in 1996. Among numerous breakthroughs invented by the LANcity team was a signature Media Access Control protocol which Yassini contributed free of royalties and in perpetuity to the cable industry and its DOCSIS® cable broadband standard. Their contribution played a key role in unlocking and accelerating the promise of broadband access to the world and to humanity at large.

Yassini’s vision to deliver residential internet to every home via commercial cable TV began in 1987. He and his team accomplished their objectives despite widespread skepticism from the telecommunications, media and investment establishment. Lacking access to venture capital, LANcity persevered with a self-funded approach and with support and encouragement from the computer company Digital Equipment Corp.

In accepting the Emmy award, Yassini commented that “From health care to education to human relationships almost no aspect of the modern life remain untouched by the power of today’s broadband network. This is especially true in the field of the media, government interaction, and in communication, with the ability to connect with and delight audiences is unparalleled in history.”

He went on to thank NATAS and members of the original LANcity team, many of whom attended the ceremony with spouses and partners in a reunion that recognized their energy and contributions to a technology that has empowered people and organizations around the world.

“On behalf of my LANcity team, I want to express that it has been the honor of the lifetime to have been the pioneering force behind these broadband transformations tracing all the way back to 1987, thirty-eight years ago, by inventing the residential cable modem,” Yassini said. “To my colleagues who have been alongside me in this journey, my gratitude is boundless. Please know the Emmy would belong to you and your family too.”

Yassini, the first Iranian American Engineer receiving such an Emmy. Yassini, was also inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame in 2024 for his contributions to the industry.

In this video, Yassini recognizes those who made LANcity a success and sparked the residential cable broadband revolution.

An article about the Emmy ceremony, “The DNA of DOCSIS Gets Its Due With Tech Emmy” written by Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor for LightReading.com, is can be found here.

The program listing recipients in each category of the 2024 NATAs Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards is linked here.

This PDF link provides additional detail including an interview with the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, entrepreneur, inventor and executive, William Wang.

The full video of the Award Ceremony can be found here (sign-in required). Yassini’s acceptance speech appears at minute 51:30.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) was founded in 1955. It is dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, educational and technical achievements within the television industry. It recognizes excellence in television with the coveted Emmy® Award. The Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards are awarded to a living individual, a company, or a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.