Fiber Broadband Association honors industry leaders at Fiber Connect 2023

(UI) – The Fiber Broadband Association announced several award winners at Fiber Connect 2023 this week. The awards are presented each year at the Fiber Connect event to celebrate outstanding contributions to the fiber broadband industry.

This year, Brendan O’Boyle from Preformed Line Products (PLP) won the 2023 Photon Award, and Northern Colorado Community Fiber won the 2023 Star Award. S&N Communications won the Gene Scott Education Award, and Stephen Hardy won the Fiber Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Photon Award honors a Fiber Broadband Association member who, through volunteer contribution, has demonstrated a high level of dedication to the organization and has contributed greatly to the industry.

O’Boyle is a long-term active member of the Fiber Broadband Association. He helped create the Deployment Specialists Committee and devotes countless hours of service to the Committee, the broader Association, and its events. He led the arduous effort to craft the first Fiber and 5G whitepaper and played a critical role in the development and rollout of the Fiber Broadband Association’s Optical Telecom Installer Certification (OpTIC Path™) workforce development program.

The Star Award recognizes a person, community, or company that has gone above and beyond what is expected in the advancement of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH).

NOCO Community Fiber is a partnership between municipality-owned communications utilities and the county they empower. It is dedicated to the delivery of reliable, high-quality, affordable fiber broadband and has demonstrated that this critical connectivity is achievable when communities collaborate on creative solutions and profitability is removed from the equation.

Collectively, the city-owned broadband utilities in the partnership have stood up the option for Fiber-to-the-Premise to over 125,000 addresses in five years. Now, with an additional $10,000,000 in county and state funds, NOCO Community Fiber is working to serve 2,650 rural and harder-to-access locations, with more to come as financial resources are available.

The Gene Scott award recognizes a person, community, or institution that has significantly impacted the advancement of education in the fiber industry.

S&N Communications is a provider of turn-key infrastructure construction, power distribution construction, gas construction, design, and underground utility locating services. The company has been an enthusiastic supporter of FBA’s Optical Telecom Installer Certification (OpTIC Path) workforce development program.

Among its many contributions to the OpTIC Path program, S&N Communications leveraged its practical experience employing fiber optic technicians to develop the popular “Documentation, Values, and Success in the Field” module for the OpTIC Path course. The module distinguishes FBA’s program from other fiber optic training courses by highlighting actions to help make technicians successful in the field, including a focus on safety, craftsmanship, documentation, and customer service.

S&N Communications also served as a valued participant in the OpTIC Path Train the Trainer classes, implemented new video recording tools for the course, and continues to enthusiastically promote the program to state organizations. In 2022, it pioneered a partnership with the Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives (VMDAEC) to leverage the OpTIC Path program, expand training focus, grow the fiber technician workforce, and support intense fiber network construction plans across the U.S. 

The Fiber Broadband Association announced it presented Stephen Hardy with a Fiber Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his more than 40 years of covering the industry. Hardy, who retired on June 30, 2023, as Editorial Director for Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report, has been a trusted pillar of the fiber broadband editorial community, leaving an editorial legacy that will be difficult to match.

Hardy wrote thousands of stories and millions of words as he interviewed tech titans, innovative thinkers, market visionaries, and companies that reshaped markets. After completing his master’s degree at Brown University in 1981, he began his career at Telecommunications Magazine as Managing Editor before serving other publications that included the Journal of Electronic Defense, Portable Design, Lightwave, and Broadband Technology Report. During his tenure at Lightwave, the publication received awards from Folio and the American Society of Business Press Editors for editorial excellence.

Fiber Connect is the world’s largest fiber broadband conference, where the industry collaborates on best strategies for the investment, deployment, and operation of next-generation gigabit broadband networks.

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