Broadband Industry Leaders’ Outstanding Work Recognized by Broadband Forum

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At this year’s Spring Member Meeting in Mainz, Germany, Broadband Forum has recognized the exceptional professionals whose contributions have helped develop universally-adopted open broadband standards and open software as the industry transitions to intelligent, services-led networks that prioritize the user experience.

Distinguishing those whose service and leadership have played significant roles in the advancement of the broadband networking industry, and whose vision continues to inspire the industry’s growth, the 2024 Distinguished Fellow Award was bestowed upon Bruno Cornaglia, Vodafone, and Bernd Hesse, DZS.

Cornaglia has tirelessly worked in driving innovation and the development of standards in broadband. Working as Broadband Forum’s SDN/NFV Work Area Co-Director, Cornaglia’s contributions over the years span strategy, architecture, interface specification, and data models. As TIP Chairman of Fixed Broadband Project Group, an influential industry leader, and a strong advocate of the Broadband Forum CloudCO approach, Cornaglia has encouraged global support of the Broadband Forum’s CloudCO suite of standards.

“I am delighted to be nominated by my peers to receive this prestigious award from Broadband Forum,” Cornaglia said. “Along with my colleagues, I have been privileged to contribute, lead, and play a key role in the development of global broadband standards.”

Industry veteran Bernd Hesse has played a dedicated role in recruiting and rallying industry interest and awareness of the Broadband Forum, with his continued diligence and passion driving the growth of the Broadband Acceleration Seminar (BASe) series of events and webinars. Hesse established the BASe program, aimed at educating the industry and drawing in new members and supporting funds, and helped revolutionize the Broadband Forum’s marketing processes. Hesse established and co-chairs an Executive Advisory Board made up of C-level industry leaders that now meet together on a quarterly basis to help guide the organization’s future strategic direction and work.

Hesse said: “I feel very honored to be recognized by my fellow colleagues and members in helping drive and champion our industry-leading initiatives as BASe Chair and Chief Marketing Officer at Broadband Forum. Our important work continues to lay the foundations for the entire industry to deliver greater value to end-users.”

For demonstrated excellence and outstanding leadership in the advancement of Broadband Forum’s mission, the Circle of Excellence Award was given to: Mathieu Anne, Orange; Nick Hancock, Adtran; Ludwig Paulwels, Nokia; Jeff Hartley, previously with CommScope; and Venkatesh Padebettu, Juniper Networks.

The Outstanding Contributor Award, presented to individuals whose pivotal role has helped drive contributions, innovation, and enhancement in Broadband Forum’s work, was received by: Dennis Edwards, Nokia; Justin Nelson, University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory; Stephane Bryant, MT2; Tom van Caenegem, Nokia; and Kenneth Wan, Nokia.

Broadband Forum congratulates all award winners and nominees, and thanks them for their constant dedication in continuing to shape the future of the industry. For more information 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 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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