Photos From the Field: 2011 FTTH Council Conference & Expo

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The Fiber to the Home council's annual Conference & Expo wraps up today with a panel that includes National Broadband Plan author Blair Levin, and our own occasional guest blogger Tom Cohen. I'm really looking forward to today's panel and the last few hours with our customers. Before I head downstairs though, I thought I'd share some early photos from the show and a brief write-up of yesterday's panels.

2011 FTTH Conference & Expo

Update from Thursday's sessions

Even though there had already been two full days of interesting workshops, sessions and conversation, the FTTH Conference didn't officially kick off until the yesterday morning's opening session. This year marks the council's tenth anniversary, so conference chair Kyle Hollifield and Dan O'Connell, the current FTTH Council president, kicked off the day with a recap of the group's accomplishments. This year, over 80 new companies have joined the worldwide council, including 40 in Latin America and highlight videos from some of the council's founding members recounted how the changes in the industry have made FTTH a viable and growing technology.

After these opening remarks, Virginia Ruesterholz, president of Verizon Service operations spoke to the audience about FIOS and their overall business program. Ms. Ruesterholz stated that Verizon believes that the industry has an opportunity, if not an obligation, to bring advanced broadband to homes and businesses in order to enable the advanced applications that have become important to everyday life. She also believe that the large and small service providers can and should partner on finding answers to the questions that all providers face when migrating to FTTH including:

• How can we move customers from copper to fiber services elegantly?
• How do we address the growing presence inside a customer's home (for example, wiring and system set-up)
• How do we drive the applications and services that can merge mobile, WiFi and FTTH to create opportunities in the business and home

I'd be interested to hear what you think the answers to some of these questions are.

There was much more that happened yesterday and will take place today, so look for another update from me early next week. Until then, I hope you have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the Photos from the Field.

-Rebecca