DSL Forum

Keeping a pulse on technology trends and on service provider/operator networking needs, George is involved in technology and product planning at Conexant, multi-vendor interoperability programs, and positions in standards and industry forums. Previously was CTO of a startup called Ficon Technology, acquired by Conexant/GlobeSpan, which developed and licensed ATM and IP software protocol stacks. George's roots go back to Bellcore (now Telcordia) and Bell Labs where he was involved in research and development of advanced communication systems technologies and their application to large scale operator/telco networking. In parallel with corporate responsibilities, George has held positions in industry and standards organizations such as President of The ATM Forum, on the Board of Directors, and was Chairman of the ATM Forum Worldwide Technical Committee during the 1993-1998 timeframe. George has also had leadership positions in the development of national and international broadband networking standards, T1S1.5 and ITU-T respectively. Co-author of two books "Principles of Signaling for Cell Relay and Frame Relay" published in 1995, and "ATM and SONET Basics" published in 2000; author of numerous articles and conference papers. George has an MSEE from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, a BSEE from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago, and Assoc. Engineering Technology from New Hampshire Technical Institute, Concord, N.H.

Michael Brusca has served as a DSL Forum Board member for more than four years including two as VP Strategy. He has more than 20 years of telecommunications business experience in transport and switching technologies. Michael has led teams in preparation of business cases, strategic network and operations architectures, requirements documents, and deployment guidelines for DSL as well as IP over optics, FTTP, ATM, SONET, Digital Loop Carrier (DLC), Frame Relay, and Digital Cross-connect technologies for Verizon, Bell Atlantic and NYNEX. In addition, he has held leadership positions in product management, project management and regulatory. Mr. Brusca was a major contributor to the founding of an Engineer, Furnish and Install (EF&I) line of business, which today focuses on the deployment of Remote Terminal based DSL. Starting as an engineer at New York Telephone, Michael has managed multi-million dollar budgets that cross a number of organizations. Michael Brusca has a Bachelor of Science degree from Fordham University and an MBA in Marketing Management from St. John's University. Throughout his career, he has received awards for excellence, technical achievement and process re-engineering.

Robin Mersh joined the DSL Forum as Chief Operating Officer in July 2006 and is the senior full time executive. He has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 14 years, starting in sales and sales management for Cable & Wireless and then moving on to BT before meeting his wife and moving to the US in 1999. He now lives in North Carolina. Robin has worked in business development and alliance management for various OSS software companies in the United States, mainly in network and service provisioning and activation for companies like Astracon, TTI Telecom and Evolving Systems, where he negotiated and managed several large OEM agreements. He is originally from Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London in 1992.

Amit Cohen is an Associate Vice President of System Design for ECI Telecom's Broadband Access Division. Since he joined ECI Telecom in 1998 as a system architect, he has played a leading role in the design and implementation of ECI's broadband access product lines, as well as in their deployment in leading telecom operators worldwide. In the past few years, Amit has been instrumental in the standardization of network architectures that enable the delivery of multimedia services over DSL access networks. As part of this effort, he was co-editor of ITU-T H.610 (Full-Service VDSL - System Architecture and Customer Premises Equipment) and DSL Forum TR-101 (Migration to Ethernet Based DSL Aggregation). Amit holds a B.A. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Gavin Young was a founding director of the Broadband Forum and served on the board of the Forum for six years. Gavin has previously led the Network Migration and VDSL working groups within the Forum and is currently overall technical chairman of the Broadband Forum. Gavin is originally from the Isle of Wight. He received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University College of Swansea, Wales, in 1985, and the M.Sc. degree in Communications Engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University in 1986.

Bernard Dugerdil has worked in the Telecommunication Industry for more than 30 years and is currently responsible for coordinating Standards within Freescale Semiconductor. Bernard has been involved in Standards for more than 15 years. He is part of Broadband Forum Technical committee leadership team (and one of the founders of DSL Forum), first contact for Freescale and active participant to ITU-T, member of ETSI Board of Director and member of HGI Board of Director. Bernard is also one of the founders of FTTH Council Europe.

Within the Strategic Marketing department of France Telecom, Christophe Alter is member of a division dedicated to international standards and industry relationships. He is responsible for France Telecom Group' strategy regarding fixed broadband networks standards. Since he first joined the Broadband Forum in December 2004, Christophe Alter has been an active contributor in the Architecture & Transport Working Group. He currently serves as a co-editor of the Working Text 145 "Multi-service broadband network functional modules and architecture", and as a member of the Board of Directors. Christophe Alter worked at Orange Labs from 2000 until 2007, where he was responsible for network architecture designs in a number of projects, including WIFI hotspots and France Telecom's first pilot deployment offering triple play services to residential customers over ADSL access and Ethernet based aggregation. He also served as member of the board and chair of the architecture Task Force of the European collaborative research project "MUSE" - MUlti Service Everywhere. Christophe Alter is an engineer of Ecole Centrale de Lyon, graduated in 2000.

Joel Pennington is the Co-Founder of ClearAccess and the Director of Marketing and Business Development. Prior to ClearAccess, Joel spent over 10 years based in Australia, Europe and the US holding various roles in business advisory firms and companies in the Telecom industry. Most recently Joel held a management position in BearingPoint's Australian practice focused on the development and growth of alliances with strategic software and hardware vendors. Prior to BearingPoint, Joel served as an initial member of Jetstream Communication's EMEA sales team based in London. Joel began his telecommunications career in the US with Nortel Networks were he was selected to participate in Nortel's Leadership Development Program. He was subsequently awarded a long-term expatriate assignment to the UK in 2000 to strengthen Nortel's European DSL business. Joel holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Clemson University in addition to a Masters in Commercial Law and an MBA from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

Steve Plume, is currently a Broadband Product Development Manager for British Telecommunications Plc in the Wholesale arm of the business, based in a small village close to the world renowned BT Research Centre at Martlesham Heath, England. Steve has nearly 25 years of experience in a variety of areas within telecommunications. Steve's currently responsible for managing & supporting all in-life ADSL products within the BT Wholesale product portfolio; this captures all areas of DSL from In-Life Product management, procurement, customer delivery solution design, OSS design with responsibility for product areas of the order and repair interfaces. Steve previously to this roll was the head of the network nursery team for the DSL trails in the UK, managing a small team he was required to ensure platform configuration and technology testing, Steve is proud of the fact that he was there on the initial consumer trials in the late 90's and has enjoyed staying with the DSL technology ever since. Prior to this he was wholly into network build and integration and has worked on both fixed access and wireless telephony networks as well as high security networks. George Dobrowski, DSL Forum Board of Directors; Conexant, Director, Technology and Product Planning Keeping a pulse on technology trends and on service provider/operator networking needs, George is involved in technology and product planning at Conexant, multi-vendor interoperability programs, and positions in standards and industry forums. Previously was CTO of a startup called Ficon Technology, acquired by Conexant/GlobeSpan, which developed and licensed ATM and IP software protocol stacks. George's roots go back to Bellcore (now Telcordia) and Bell Labs where he was involved in research and development of advanced communication systems technologies and their application to large scale operator/telco networking.

Sven Ooghe received an MS degree in computer science from the University of Ghent (Belgium) in 2000. He studied telecommunication networks and computer architectures at the Faculty of Applied Sciences. In 2000, he joined Alcatel's Network Strategy Group in Antwerp, where he initially worked on Policy Based Networking and Quality of Service in access networks. Currently, he works in the Office of the CTO of the Access Networks Division, determining the access strategy and coordinating access architecture related standardization initiatives. He is also actively involved in standardization, mainly in the Broadband Forum.

Peter Macaulay is an independent consultant with 18 years experience in designing, implementing and supporting converged data and voice networks. He holds a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) designation and is a featured guest speaker at several computer trade shows including Comdex, Netcon, DSLcon and the DSL Forum. Peter presents the one day tutorial on DSL and VoDSL technology at the start of the last four DSL Forum meetings with about 150 to 250 attendees. Peter is a member of the DSL Forum technical committee with a focus on Voice Over IP (VoIP) and Voice Over DSL (VoDSL) implementation and testing. He is also a member of BICSI with a focus on high speed LAN wiring. Peter provided ABC News coverage on January 1, 2000 on their Y2K telephone system readiness coverage. During the year 2000 Peter presented a world tour seminar series on VoDSL and G.SHDSL standards and implementation option for the design of voice gateways including Integrated Access Devices (IAD).