2022.03.08 – Industry leaders celebrated by Broadband Forum at its annual Q1 Meeting

Industry leaders celebrated by Broadband Forum at its annual Q1 Meeting

Members from AT&T, Axiros, CommScope, Ericsson, Juniper, Net Reply, Nokia, PNSol and TIM were among those presented with accolades

Fremont, California, 8 March 2022 – Broadband Forum has recognized and honored a number of key industry players with a host of awards at its annual Q1 Meeting this week.

Broadband Forum awarded its Distinguished Fellow accolade to CommScope’s John Blackford. Appointed as the Broadband Forum Chairman in 2020, Blackford has made integral contributions for almost two decades. He has trailblazed flagship projects such as the TR-069 protocol, and driven the specification and development of the User Services Platform (USP) in the Broadband User Services (BUS) Work Area and the Open Broadband-USP-Agent (OB-USP-Agent) Project.

“I am grateful to be receiving this esteemed recognition from the Broadband Forum for all my contributions,” said Blackford, who is a Product Management Director with CommScope’s Home Networks business segment. “The work of the Broadband Forum is crucial for the development of open industry standards and an accelerated broadband ecosystem globally. I am proud to be an active participant, because the Broadband Forum continues to drive innovation and growth within the industry.”

The Distinguished Fellow award is presented to individuals who have displayed dedicated service and leadership in the advancement of the broadband networking industry and their vision that continues to inspire industry growth. Blackford’s leadership, innovation and contribution since his first participation in 2004 has provided an exemplary and lasting impact on the Forum and broadband community.

The Q1 Meeting follows another successful year for the Broadband Forum, as it celebrated a ten-year high in membership numbers, with 178 members involved in driving industry standards to strengthen broadband deployments worldwide.

Dave Allan, of Ericsson, received the Special Recognition award due to his profound impact on not only technology and architecture, but the industry as a whole. A Distinguished Fellow since 2010, Allan has an extraordinary history of accomplishments with the Broadband Forum, as a technical contributor and ambassador in addition to his formal leadership roles. Across more than two decades, Allan’s contributions, innovation and leadership have brought the broadband industry from its start with ATM in the mid 1990s, through Ethernet and MPLS to its convergence today with mobile networks through all of the enhancements and change in between.

“One of the great pleasures of my career has been working with the Broadband Forum community. As a group we’ve managed to produce some industry impacting work and have always found ways to enjoy the journey wherever it took us,” Allan said.

In recognition of their sustained excellence in advancing the mission of the Broadband Forum, the Circle of Excellence award was presented to Greg Mirsky, of Ericsson, Rosaria Persico, of TIM, Richard Holme, of CommScope, and Peter Thompson, of Predictable Network Solutions (PNSol).

In addition to his dedicated leadership of the Performance, Experience, and Application Testing (PEAT) Project Stream, Mirsky has made key contributions on notable initiatives such as TR-390 Issue 2, TR-459, TR-471 Issue 2, and TR-304.

Persico was honoured for her dedication in driving significant work items in the Wireless Wireline Convergence (WWC) and Access and Transport Architecture (ATA) Work Areas over a number of years.

Critical to the worldwide adoption of Broadband Forum’s USP, Holme was presented with the award for his initiative and dedication to the ongoing maintenance of the OB-USP-Agent project.

Thompson was commended for his instrumental lead throughout the Broadband Quality Experience Delivered (QED) project, which standardizes improvements for the overall broadband experience and management of network latency, consistency, and reliability.

Also among the accolades was the Leadership award, which was given to three industry notables who have led Broadband Forum work in a variety of positions. Barbara Stark, of AT&T, served as a Work Area leader and Board Member, known for her distinguished work on the globally deployed TR-069 standard and USP. David Allan for more than two decades of leadership across multiple Work Areas and George Dobrowski, a Distinguished Fellow award recipient in 2014, for his continued leadership in the Technical Committee and on the Board.

“To be awarded this accolade alongside Barbara and Dave is fantastic, and I am confident that the Broadband Forum will continue to drive innovation in the industry for years to come,” Dobrowski said. “Following two unprecedented years due to the pandemic, it is more important than ever to take a step back and celebrate the achievements of such hard-working individuals who are helping to shape the future of the broadband ecosystem.”

The Outstanding Contribution award was presented to individuals who have played an integral role in driving contributions, innovation and enhancement in Broadband Forum work . The awards were bestowed to; Al Morton, of AT&T; Antonio Marchetta, of Net Reply; Fabio Giudici, of Outsys; Ludwig Pauwels, of Nokia; Thales Fragoso, of Axiros; and Venkatesh Padebettu, of Juniper.

For more information on Broadband Forum and its work, please visit: https://www.broadband-forum.org/.

VIEW PDF VERSION

–  ENDS –

About the Broadband Forum

Broadband Forum is the communications industry’s leading open standards development organization focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards, and ecosystem development. Our members’ passion – delivering on the promise of broadband by enabling smarter and faster broadband networks and a thriving broadband ecosystem.

Broadband Forum is an open, non-profit industry organization composed of the industry’s leading broadband operators, vendors, thought leaders who are shaping the future of broadband, and observers who closely track our progress. Its work to date has been the foundation for broadband’s global proliferation and innovation. For example, the Forum’s flagship TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol has nearly 1 billion installations worldwide.

Broadband Forum’s projects span across 5G, Connected Home, Cloud, and Access. Its working groups collaborate to define best practices for global networks, enable new revenue-generating service and content delivery, establish technology migration strategies, and engineer critical device, service & development management tools in the home and business IP networking infrastructure. We develop multi-service broadband packet networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market.

Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at https://www.broadband-forum.org/.

Follow us on Twitter @Broadband_Forum and LinkedIn.

For more information about the Broadband Forum, please go to https://www.broadband-forum.org/ or follow @Broadband_Forum on Twitter. For further information please contact Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 7899 914168 or brian.dolby@proactive-pr.com or Josh Wright on +44 (0)7795 615466 or josh.wright@proactive-pr.com.