Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) and Lightwave, a unit of business-to-business media and information company PennWell Corporation, today announced the winner of the sixth annual FTTXcellence Award. Ian Williams of TELUS Corporation, headquartered in British Columbia, Canada is the recipient of the award, which honors an individual for his or her contributions to the deployment of optical access networks in North America.
Mr. Williams is a Design Specialist on TELUS' Access Technologies and Outside Plant Support (ATOPS) team. He is a champion of the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) Greenfield network rollout and Brownfield trials underway at TELUS. With more than 29 years' experience in outside plant and fiber optic technologies, he has developed a strong understanding of the advantages and challenges presented by FTTH in the field. Drawing on that understanding, he now trains and mentors literally hundreds of TELUS team members across Canada who are involved in FTTH.
Ultimately, Williams has become a key part of the TELUS team installing and developing value from gigabit passive optical network (GPON) and state-of-the-art outside plant access solutions across the broad diversity of existing access structure and rigorous climatic conditions in TELUS' territory. Through this work, Ian's name is becoming synonymous with FTTH and GPON in the industry and vendor community.
The nomination committee selected Williams from a pool of highly qualified candidates across several industry segments, all of whom were nominated by their peers for the award. He received the award on September 29 during a ceremony at the FTTH Conference in Houston. At the ceremony, a donation was made in his name to One Economy Corporation, a national non-profit organization created to maximize the potential of technology to help low-income families build assets and raise their standard of living.
"Ian Williams is an advocate for the advantages that FTTH networks will continue to bring consumers and service providers in Canada," said Clark Kinlin, president and CEO of Corning Cable Systems. "As the first FTTXcellence Award winner from Canada, we congratulate Mr. Williams on this honor."
"The work of Ian Williams illustrates that FTTH technology promises to provide a wealth of new, high-speed services to homes and businesses across all of North America, not just the United States," said Stephen Hardy, editorial director and associate publisher of Lightwave. "We at Lightwave are pleased to join Corning in recognizing Ian Williams, who has been a leader in bringing these benefits to consumers and other end users."
"I am honored to receive this award recognizing the work TELUS is doing in Canada to bring incredibly fast broadband into customers' homes and using it to bring them services like high definition IP-TV," Mr. Williams said. "It can be challenging work, but having the courage to innovate and beat those challenges is part of our culture as we work to make sure TELUS always stays out on the cutting edge of broadband services."
