Ethernet inventor Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe will serve as opening keynote speaker at The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ (SCTE) Conference on Emerging Technologies 2007.

Metcalfe is currently a general partner of Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Mass. He is a director of Polaris-backed Ember, GreenFuel, Mintera, Narad, Paratek, and SiCortex.

Corporate comedian Greg Schwem will deliver the conference’s keynote luncheon presentation the following day.

The Conference on Emerging Technologies is scheduled Jan. 23-25 in Houston. The annual event offers two days of high-level, technical discussions where some of the leading minds in cable telecommunications share their visions for where they believe the industry will be in the next three to five years. ET also features a variety of critical networking opportunities for attendees.

Metcalfe offered an introduction to his own keynote: “The future of Ethernet corresponds to my five favorite prepositions: up, into, across, over, and down.

“Ethernet is moving up toward 100 Gbps in the LAN, into WAN core networks, across the access tele-chasm, over the air, and down into embedded networking. Anybody up for not shared but switched HFC Ethernet?”