The Era Of The Software Defined Operator Is Here - Deutsche Telekom Tells Broadband Forum

ST. JULIAN'S, Malta and FREMONT, Calif., March 13, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Simplification of IP, coupled with NFV and SDN, is creating the Software Defined Operator – a new model for service providers needing to meet the needs of unparalleled broadband demand with agile, cost effective and fast implementation of new services. That was the message given by Axel Clauberg Deutsche Telekom's Vice President of Aggregation, Transport & IP Fixed Access in a keynote address to the Broadband Forum in Malta last week.

Mr Clauberg demonstrated how Deutsche Telekom had provided end to end optimization for a trial with Hrvatski Telekom in Croatia – a network which had gone from a "go" decision to launch of a 100Gb/s network in just three months, bringing network and Cloud technologies together for service production. He also told his audience, comprising some of the world's leading service providers, vendors and research laboratories, that the Software Defined Operator would see changing skill sets needed – for service providers, vendors and processes in the supply chain, and it was critical for the Broadband Forum to keep up their efforts evolving the connected home and collaborating on the developments in SDN and NFV.

The forward looking keynote provided a thought-provoking end to an opening day full of highlights and acknowledgments of success and outstanding contributions to the Broadband Forum. The annual election of directors saw Charles (Drew) Rexrode II of Verizon Communications and Lincoln Lavoie of the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) elected to the Board, to serve alongside Frank Van der Putten (Alcatel-Lucent), Kevin Foster (BT), David Sinicrope (Ericsson), William Welch (Oracle), Marcin Drzymala (Orange), Mauro Tilocca (Telecom Italia SpA), Tom Starr (AT&T), Lowell Lamb (Broadcom Corporation), Manuel Paul (Deutsche Telekom), Sultan Dawood (Cisco Systems Inc) and Les Brown (Huawei Technologies Corporation).

The Board meeting itself saw Kevin Foster appointed as Chairman, with Tom Starr becoming President. David Sinicrope became a Vice President, alongside Marcin Drzymala. Sultan Dawood was appointed as Secretary to the Board and Frank Van der Putten as Treasurer.

There was recognition of individuals who have exceeded expectations in their areas of work – known as the Circle of Excellence awards which were made to Ken Kerpez of ASSIA for his input in empowering the vectored VDSL2 specifications of the Forum, and to Balazs Varga of Ericsson for his contributions to Small Cell extensions.

Three staff from Cisco Systems were presented with Outstanding Contributor Awards, for their working group efforts – William Lupton, Diane Patton and Yves Hertoghs. They were joined by Stefano Galli (ASSIA), Dean Cheng (Huawei Technologies) and Frederic Klamm (Orange).

Retiring Andrew Malis was given a leadership award for his longstanding service to the Board and there were also leadership awards for Moti Morgenstern of ECI Telecom, Alessandro Capurso of Telecom Italia and Dave Christophe of Alcatel-Lucent.

"It is important to acknowledge the work of our members, who provide their expertise and commitment alongside very demanding senior full time roles," said Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh.

"These are people who have made a major contribution to a world approaching nearly 700 million lines of broadband and they will continue to make a difference as the Forum evolves into new work areas such as G.fast, Cloud, SDN, NFV and service chaining."

For more information about the Broadband Forum, please go to http://www.broadband-forum.org or follow @Broadband_Forum on Twitter. For further information please contact Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 7899 914168 or Dana Hare on +44 (0) 1636 812152 or send an email to [email protected] or [email protected].

About the Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum, a non-profit industry organization, is focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband networks. Our work defines best practices for global networks, enables service and content delivery, establishes technology migration strategies, engineers critical device & service management tools, and is key to redefining broadband. Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at www.broadband-forum.org. Twitter @Broadband_Forum.

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http://www.broadband-forum.org/news/download/pressreleeases/2014/BBF_1Q2014.pdf

SOURCE The Broadband Forum