FBA presents Star and Photon Awards at Fiber Connect 2023

The Fiber Broadband Association today announced the winners of its Photon Award and Star Award 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.

“The Fiber Broadband Association is proud to recognize those that go above and beyond to advance our mission to connect every community and person to reliable fiber broadband services,” said Gary Bolton, President and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association. “Congratulations to this year’s Photon and Star Award winners. They’ve shown unrelenting dedication to the fiber broadband industry and we are grateful for their contributions. With advocates like Brendan and the team at Northern Colorado Community Fiber, we’re proving that when fiber leads, the future follows.”

2023 Photon Award Winner: Brendan O’Boyle, National Sales Manager, Preformed Line Products; and Chair, Deployment Specialists Committee, Fiber Broadband Association

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.

2023 Star Award Winner: Northern Colorado Community Fiber (NOCO Community Fiber)

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 Star Award was presented Monday, August 21, during general sessions at Fiber Connect 2023, and the Photon Award was presented Tuesday, August 22. 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. To learn more about the event, visit fiberconnect.fiberbroadband.org.

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About the Fiber Broadband Association

The Fiber Broadband Association is the largest and only trade association that represents the complete fiber ecosystem of service providers, manufacturers, industry experts, and deployment specialists dedicated to the advancement of fiber broadband deployment and the pursuit of a world where communications are limitless, advancing quality of life and digital equity anywhere and everywhere. The Fiber Broadband Association helps providers, communities, and policy makers make informed decisions about how, where, and why to build better fiber broadband networks. Since 2001, these companies, organizations, and members have worked with communities and consumers in mind to build the critical infrastructure that provides the economic and societal benefits that only fiber can deliver. The Fiber Broadband Association is part of the Fibre Council Global Alliance, which is a platform of six global FTTH Councils in North America, LATAM, Europe, MEA, APAC, and South Africa. Learn more at fiberbroadband.org.

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