The new members include Kevin Foster, of BT; Christophe Alter, from France Telecom; Mauro Tilocca of Telecom Italia; and Marcin Drzymala from Telekomunikacja Polska. Frank Van der Putten of Alcatel-Lucent, Les Brown of Infineon and Phil Skeba of Intel also were re-elected to the board. These strong industry players will help drive the standards work and direction of the Forum, whose activities now involve a much wider scope than its original DSL mandate – including increasing activity around IPTV, fibre deployments and management of the digital home.
Though BT has had a seat on the Forum’s board in the past, this is the first time the other companies have been elected. This strong European presence is representative of the increasing broadband and IPTV leadership coming out of our European members.
In conjunction with the election of the new board members, analyst Point Topic announced the latest IPTV statistics, which revealed global IPTV subscribers topped 10 million in third quarter 2007 – a major milestone and a 27 per cent increase on the previous quarter. Once again Europe is the leading region, having over 6.5 million IPTV subscribers, with France being the country with the most subscribers. Although Western Europe has a strong lead in IPTV deployments, Eastern Europe is beginning to build its IPTV numbers and now has over 297,000 subscribers.
“The DSL Forum has always been an organization that enjoys active engagement from our service provider members, which helps us focus on real world issues and on developing time critical specifications. The guidance we will receive from our new European leaders will prove invaluable,” stated George Dobrowski, chairman and president of the DSL Forum. “With five service providers and six manufacturer representatives on our board, we have the broad expertise we need to continue to excel in next generation broadband specifications.”
The full 2008 Board of Directors is listed below:
George Dobrowski, Conexant – Chairman & President
Tom Starr, AT&T – Vice President & Secretary
Frank Van der Putten, Alcatel-Lucent – Vice President & Treasurer
Kevin Foster, British Telecom
Christophe Alter, France Telecom
Les Brown, Infineon
Phil Skeba, Intel
Heather Kirksey, Motive, Inc.
Greg Bathrick, PMC Sierra
Mauro Tilocca, Telecom Italia
Marcin Drzymala, Telekomunikacja Polska