Global Broadband Leaders Honored for Key Contributions to Services-Led Networks

Representatives from BISDN, Futurewei, Huawei, InCoax, Liberty Global, Nokia, NTT, Orange, OutSys, Radisys, and Vodafone all recognized at annual awards ceremony

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Broadband Forum has recognized the instrumental contributions of industry leaders over the past year in helping broadband networks become more intelligent and increasingly user focused. The “Broadband Forum Awards” were presented during the Forum’s Spring Member Meeting in Hong Kong this week.

For his long-standing commitment and influential leadership helping to advance the broadband industry forward, drive industry interest, and champion new and innovative work in the Broadband Forum, Jonathan Newton (Vodafone), was presented with the 2025 Distinguished Fellow Award.

Newton has made groundbreaking contributions to Broadband Forum’s standards. This includes introducing the Subscriber Session Steering approach, contributing and guiding efforts on multi-vendor interoperability and Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) disaggregation, and playing a key role in instigating BBF’s Quality of Experience Delivered (QED) initiative.

Newton has also been a keen supporter and contributor to the Forum’s Wireless Wireline Convergence work, and continues to drive new initiatives on improving network latency and quality such as the Forum’s L4S initiative to improve broadband service responsiveness. Newton continues to play a key leadership role and is Co-Director of the Network Architecture Work Area, having previously been Director of the Access & Transport Architecture (ATA) Work Area.

“I am delighted to be nominated by my colleagues to receive this prestigious award from Broadband Forum,” said Newton, Distinguished Technical Expert, Vodafone. “It’s been a privilege to work alongside the industry’s greatest minds on projects that are driving broadband’s evolution from a connectivity-driven to a services-led ecosystem, unlocking greater opportunities for both the service provider and end-user.”

Frank Van der Putten (Nokia) received a Special Recognition Award for his dedication to industry standards and 25 years of leadership in the Broadband Forum as a board member.

Broadband Forum President Manuel Paul said: “Frank’s dedication, expertise, and leadership has shaped BBF in lasting ways. He is a well-deserving recipient of this award and we congratulate him for his lifetime of excellent service and contributions.”

For demonstrated excellence and outstanding leadership in the advancement of Broadband Forum’s mission, the Circle of Excellence Award was awarded to Tom van Caenegem, Nokia, for his continued leadership of the OB-CAS project, and Fabio Giudici, OutSys, for his leadership of the ATA PEAT Project Stream and the initiation of the OB-STAMP project.

The Outstanding Contributor Award was presented to 11 individuals whose pivotal role has helped drive contributions, innovation, and enhancement in Broadband Forum’s work. These individuals were: Hagen Woesner, BISDN; Aihua Guo, Futurewei; Jian Zhu, Huawei, Helge Tiainen, InCoax; Madhura Paduvalli, Liberty Global; Shiya Ashraf, Nokia; Robert Peschi, Nokia; Nadine Staelens, Nokia; Hiroshi Ou, NTT; Hugues Le Bras, Orange; and Hans-Joerg Kolbe, Radisys.

“Congratulations to all of the award winners. The awards reflect the remarkable achievements and progress of the Broadband Forum over the past year during this crucial time for the entire industry,” said Broadband Forum Chairman John Blackford. “We look forward to seeing the innovations and contributions over the next year within our new work area structure, which further strengthens our commitment to enabling services-led and intelligent broadband that provides the applications and services most demanded by users.”

Broadband Forum congratulates all award winners and nominees, and thanks them for their dedication in shaping the future of the industry as we transition to services-led broadband.

For more information about the Broadband Forum, visit: https://www.broadband-forum.org/.

About the Broadband Forum

The Broadband Forum is an industry-driven global standards development organization helping operators, application providers, and vendors deliver better, services-led broadband.

As the industry-recognized center of competence, the Broadband Forum provides an accessible, efficient, and effective community where all broadband stakeholders can collaborate on, develop, and promote open standards and open software. This provides the basis for deployable solutions for the global broadband industry.

The forum publishes interoperable standards and open software, has launched certification programs, and promotes industry education. These best practices and models can be adopted to help realize an effective broadband ecosystem that drives a thriving, services-led broadband industry based on global collaboration, open standards, and open source, maximizing value for all stakeholders.

For more information, visit https://www.broadband-forum.org/. For the latest updates, follow Broadband Forum on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

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