1 December 2009 – The Broadband Forum recognized one of its longest serving board members with a special award at the third quarter meeting in Budapest this week.
Frank Van der Putten was presented with the Distinguished Fellow Award – only the fourth person to receive this honor in recognition of the major influence he has had on the direction and success of broadband development.
Frank has been a member of the Broadband Forum for 13 years and a board member for nine years, currently holding the position of Treasurer. He also chairs the Forum’s Finance & Audit Committee, as well as participates in the Green, Fiber and Technical Oversight Committees.
He is Standards Manager for Wired Access Networks at Alcatel-Lucent and, along with his Broadband Forum commitments, is an active member of the ITU-T and ETSI.
Broadband Forum COO Robin Mersh, who presented the award, said: “The Distinguished Fellow Award is a highly prized commendation which is only given to individuals whose sustained efforts in helping the Forum address uncharted territory and advance the industry deserve the highest recognition and whose vision continues to inspire the industry's growth.
I’m delighted to present this award to Frank. He is a great advocate of the Forum’s work and is a very active member playing a crucial part in our work to develop broadband deployment and specifications.”
Another award was presented at the Budapest meeting. Hakan Westin was inducted into the Broadband Forum's Circle of Excellence. Hakan, a strategic product manager at Tilgin, was recognized for his invaluable editorial leadership in the BroadbandHome Working Group; editing TR-106 Amendment 2, TR-106 Amendment 3, WT-131, PD-194 and PD-174 as well as contributing to documents such as TR-069 and PD-181. He brought strong technical insights to the Forum's transition to XML-based data model definitions and always has been a team player who drives team consensus by helping other members to better understand how our work maps strategically to the Broadband Forum's technical roadmap.
For further information about the Broadband Forum, past awards and the upcoming activities and meetings, visit
www.broadband-forum.org.
