Light Reading's The Big Telecom Event Attracts an Unprecedented Level of Support From Industry Standards Development Groups and Forums

NEW YORK, June 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Light Reading (www.lightreading.com), the market-leading online community for the global communications sector, has attracted an unprecedented level of support from a diverse set of industry standards development groups and forums around the Big Telecom Event (BTE) (www.bigtelecomevent.com/chicago/). BTE, to be held June 17-18 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, is a demo space and conference that brings real-world, cutting-edge technology demonstrations and business insights to communications service provider executives.

Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large at Light Reading, said, "We are very pleased by the support all of the industry standards development groups and forums collaborating with us around BTE. Bringing all of these groups together at our event will provide attendees with a strong understanding of all the industry resources available to them."

The list of participants is headlined by four organizations that will provide demonstrations as part of BTE's unique demo floor: the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), the Internet Society (ISOC), ETSI's NFV ISG, and the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL).

The ONF, a key strategic partner to BTE, will conduct a workshop on Monday, June 16, in advance of the event and will provide a keynote by its executive director, Dan Pitt, in the opening keynote session on Tuesday, June 17. In its demo space, the ONF will have its experts on hand to answer questions and offer information on the foundation's work in software-defined networking (SDN) and its signature standard, OpenFlow. In addition, the UNH-IOL will provide a demonstration and more information related to its work in testing interoperability for OpenFlow.  

The ISOC, which engages in a wide spectrum of Internet issues, including policy, governance, technology, and development, will have a number of projects to demonstrate as it continues to establish and promote principles to ensure government and commercial support for a healthy, sustainable Internet is available to everyone – today and for the next billion users.

The ETSI Network Functions Virtualization Industry Standards Group is the organization developing the architecture for NFV and coordinating efforts to address its standardization. Established by the world's largest telecom operators, including AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, and Verizon, the ETSI NFV ISG will demonstrate some of the proofs of concept (PoCs) it has authorized, each sponsored by a major telecom operator and conducted by multiple network hardware and software vendors.

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) also will host a Monday pre-event workshop and will participate in the ONF-sponsored panel discussion on the ongoing role of standards that is expected to shed significant light on how the telecom industry can achieve the dual goals of deploying virtualization quickly while maintaining the robustness and reliability of global telecom networks.

ATIS, which develops a range of standards for the North American telecom market, is sponsoring a keynote panel on the second day of BTE that will feature executives of member companies, including Bell Labs CEO Marcus Weldon; Telus CTO Ibrahim Gedeon; David Flessas, senior vice president of network operations center and operations support at Time Warner Cable; and Jay Blum, vice president of network planning at Sprint.

Also supporting BTE in its first year are:

• Broadband Forum
• Dark Fiber Community
• IEEE
• Small Cell Forum
• Smart Rural 

BTE combines the educational power of interactive conference sessions, devised and hosted by Heavy Reading's experienced industry analysts, with multi-vendor interoperability and proof-of-concept networking and application showcases. BTE is geared toward helping attendees understand the business rationale for concepts such as SDN, NFV, small-cell architectures, next-generation policy and charging, big-data analytics, and mobile network security.

To register to attend BTE, click here. Media members interested in attending may email [email protected]. 

Speaking and sponsorship opportunities are available. For more information, contact: [email protected]. 

About Light Reading

Light Reading (www.lightreading.com) combines its research-led online communities and targeted events portfolio to help those in the global communications industry make informed decisions. Lightreading.com is the ultimate source for telecom analysis for more than 350,000 subscribers each month, leading the media sector in terms of traffic, content, and reputation. Light Reading produces targeted communications events and focused one-day conferences each year for cable, mobile, and wireline executives across five continents.

Media Contact:
Meryl Franzman
Beyond Words Communications Inc.
[email protected]
617 739 1769

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SOURCE Light Reading