Pivotal time as the industry transitions to services-led broadband

The Broadband Forum’s Board of Directors has selected industry veteran Craig Thomas to be the Forum’s next Chief Executive Officer.

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Craig Thomas will become CEO of Broadband Forum on 1 January 2024 (Photo: Business Wire)

Thomas will be responsible for leading the Forum at a pivotal time for the global broadband industry, reshaping it to transition from connectivity-driven to delivering standards for intelligent, services-led networks that prioritize the user experience.

“We are entering a new era for broadband where speed is no longer a constraint for subscriber services. Innovations in broadband connectivity allow the industry to capitalize on the potential of broadband beyond residential connectivity services,” said Thomas. “We can create additional QoE-sensitive monetized lifestyle services for consumers and open up the broadband network to be a ubiquitous one that also meets business, IoT, and converged services demands.”

Thomas continued: “The Broadband Forum and our members remain focused on driving a broadband ecosystem that end-to-end has increased service differentiation, intelligence, and agility from the cloud all the way to the user's device. Open standards and open software are critical to how operators will build these new, efficient networks.”

Thomas’ term as CEO will start on 1 January 2024, following current Managing Director Ken Ko’s retirement at the end of the year. Thomas has been with the Forum since 2020, serving as Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Business Development. His extensive experience in the telecoms vendor and service provider industry includes roles at Calix, Tellabs, Tiscali UK Business Services, Cosine Communications, Ericsson, and Alcatel / Newbridge Networks.

“Craig's selection as CEO was a natural choice for Broadband Forum and we are confident the leadership transition will be smooth,” Broadband Forum Chairman John Blackford said. “During Craig’s time with the Forum, we have seen a ten-year high in membership and contributions from companies large and small, representing innovative vendors, application and content providers, and network and service providers.”

Broadband Forum develops fixed and wireless-wireline converged open standards and open source software that drive multi-vendor interoperability and certification programs for deployable industry-wide standards, architectures, and best practices. Last year, the organization published 39 new standards, test plans, marketing reports, and open software releases. So far in 2023, new areas of work have been identified and the number of documents and new projects continues to grow.

Read the latest Broadband Forum blog on the industry’s transition to services-led broadband here. To learn more about Broadband Forum, visit: https://www.broadband-forum.org/.

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/.

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