Tune in to hear how race car driving CEO Josh Snowhorn scored the best data center site on the East Coast and how Quantum Frederick, the company’s first gigawatt sized campus development is coming along. The audience of Fiber for Breakfast will get a deep-dive update on QLoop, the company’s massive fiber loop extending the Northern Virginia Internet ecosystem just 20-miles north to Frederick County, Maryland, while gleaning insights to some of the lessons Josh and his team have learned since embarking on this 2,100-acre project.

Panelist: Josh Snowhorn – CEO, Quantum Loophole

FBA is hard at work developing a plan to enable our members to scale the fiber workforce to meet the challenges of the current and future fiber buildouts. FBA OpTIC Path™ course and certification graduates are starting to enter the workforce, and we hope to significantly increase their numbers in the very near term. This episode of FFB will discuss FBA’s workforce development plans and how you can help us meet the workforce development challenges ahead of us.

Panelist: Mark Boxer – Technical Manager, Solutions and Applications Engineering, OFS, and FBA Board Member
Panelist: Deborah Kish – VP of Research and Workforce Development, Fiber Broadband Association

Customers need a connection they can count on and most internet providers fall short. LiveOak Fiber is building a world-class fiber network to deliver the fastest broadband internet to homes and businesses in Glynn County, Georgia and Okaloosa County, Florida. The company is committed to investing in the communities they serve by delivering modern digital infrastructure needed to improve the quality of life and drive economic growth. Tune in to learn from Jody Craft, President of LiveOak Fiber, to hear what steps they are taking as a broadband service provider building a purpose-built network to bring customers the best internet experience possible while also being an accessible and affordable fiber-based service provider.

Panelist: Jody Craft – President, LiveOak Fiber

As we work to close the digital divide, thousands of Americans live in non-traditional homes. 17.7 million people (5.6% of the population) live in manufactured homes across the country. Further, 1 million Americans live in recreational vehicles full-time and over 9 million families travel in RVs. That’s nearly 30 million people and families that need access to Gigabit broadband but may be challenged to get fiber. This session with Joe Costello, CEO of Kwikbit Internet, will explore strategies to close the digital divide in these non-traditional environments. We all know (and the Kwikbit team agrees) that fiber delivers the best possible broadband experience. We in the fiber industry need other great broadband companies who can complement our technology to help more Americans get fiber-class service today. Come hear how Kwikbit Internet is working with the fiber industry to make their broadband more available.

Panelist: Joe Costello – CEO, Kwikbit Internet

The Fibre Gold Rush in Great Britain is potentially a preview of what is in store for the US in the coming years. The UK market has four large incumbent networks and over 100 new networks, each with the ability to deliver faster, reliable fibre to customers. These networks have delivered 12 million full-fibre homes over the past 5 years and are now facing the next step in their evolution: buy or be bought. The customer impact of the potential mergers could be significant based on the integration complexity. Richard Sinclair MBE, Chief Operations Officer at Zzoomm PLC, will explain how the UK is a case study for the rest of the world – establishing key principles to remove customer complexity and improve business value.

Panelist: Richard Sinclair MBE – Chief Operations Officer, Zzoomm PLC

With the first round of FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) behind us and the resulting maps released, the January 13 challenge filing deadline – and ongoing reporting – looms ahead for broadband providers. Tammie Herrlein, Sr. Analyst and BDC Specialist at Vantage Point, will advise on immediate steps for challenges and amendments; provide an update on timelines to expect in the next few months; and offer clarity and guidance for the next round of BDC filing (and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that…).

Panelist: Tammie Herrlein – Senior Analyst, Vantage Point Solutions

Kicking off the 2023 season of Fiber for Breakfast, Steve Sellenriek, President of Sellenriek Construction Incorporated, will explain the steps leading up to constructing a fiber network and how damage prevention plays a critical part in the success of the entire broadband fiber to the home project.

Panelist: Steve Sellenriek – President, Sellenriek Construction Incorporated

Quantum Physics, what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”, is at the heart of the world’s next technological revolution, the Quantum Age. In this Fiber for Breakfast session, Dr. Duncan Earl, president, co-founder, and Chief Technology Officer at quantum networking company, Qubitekk, will speak about the progress being made in quantum technologies, their possible future implications, and what fiber broadband practitioners can do to get ready for the Quantum Age.

Webinar Guest

Dr. Duncan Earl, physicist and founder of quantum networking company Qubitekk, spent nearly 20 years conducting energy and defense-related research and development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the fields of quantum sources, quantum computing and quantum cryptography. Today Earl’s focus lies squarely in applying his findings toward building quantum networks, critical precursors to the coming quantum-enabled internet.

A nationally recognized pioneer in the field of practical quantum applications, Earl holds numerous patents, has served on steering committees for organizations including QED-C and NIST and frequently advises policymakers about quantum networking solutions to some of the country’s foremost challenges.

For broadband service providers, the propositions of ever-increasing speed and bottomless reliability have been on the selling landscape for far too long. Winners in the market realize that these propositions are now a race to the bottom as the need for speed is no longer in alignment with actual market demand. What people want now is not faster speeds at a lower price, but an enriching online experience carefully crafted by their service provider instead.

Join us for Fiber for Breakfast as we talk with Matt Collins, Executive Vice President of Commercial Operations and Chief Marketing Officer at Calix, to hear insights about new managed service models broadband service providers should consider that provide exceptional results.

Webinar Guest

Matt Collins is Executive Vice President of Commercial Operations and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Calix. The Calix commercial operations team is responsible for supply chain operations, demand management, commercial strategy and analytics, field operations, and global process transformation. Matt also leads the Calix go-to-market team which is responsible for corporate, field, and product marketing, as well as partner operations and business development. Over the course of his career, Matt has built and led marketing and strategy teams at Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), IBM, McKinsey, and Merck. At D&B Matt was SVP of global marketing and go-to-market strategy. Prior to joining D&B, he spent over a decade at IBM in senior marketing and strategy roles across IBM’s software, hardware and services businesses. While at IBM Matt also led several cross-company “Smarter Planet” growth initiatives and helped build the chief analytics officer function. While at McKinsey, he worked with many of the firm’s leading global clients to help them transform their go-to-market and operations strategies. Matt received his MBA from Harvard University and has a B.A. from Dartmouth College.

The telecom industry needs to prioritize building a workforce and now the clock is ticking on the state planning process post NOFO. Industry leaders are here to help with workforce planning, providing resources to broadband offices and guidance on ways to leverage other funding. Apprenticeships, training, and education programs provide a strong opportunity to keep the pipeline filled and keep those four-year projects on track and ongoing agility in maintenance.

Join us for Fiber for Breakfast with Mark Boxer, Technical Manager at OFS, and Tim House, EVP, COO at WIA as they provide insights into the importance of industry partnerships and participation from internet service providers and contactors on how they can benefit from apprenticeships and apply for grant funding to expedite building their much needed workforce.

After a quick HFC primer, Grant Joslin, VP of US Telecom Equity Research at Credit Suisse, will explain the upgrade path for HFC operators from the current state to DOCSIS4.0. Credit Suisse’s financial modeling and industry immersion work suggests the evolution to DOCSIS4.0 is a cheaper-than-feared upgrade that has benefits beyond just its 9Gbps/5Gbps speeds, including more reliability and more manageability. In contrast to the durable nature of investors’ debates on the cable broadband subscriber growth and pricing, in their view capex concerns are demonstrably overdone, and the ultimate benefits of DOCSIS4.0 upgrades are not yet broadly considered.

Webinar Presenter

Grant Joslin is a Vice President at Credit Suisse with equity research coverage in the US Communications sector and leads telecom technology and regulatory efforts. As an equity research analyst, Grant models and gathers evidence about telecom and media industry trends, producing reports and events to help inform HF/LO investment decisions as part of the II #4-ranked team. His work to understand the telecom industry encompasses new consumer applications, household budgets, the outlook for new entrants, regulatory and industry structure, and technical accounting. Grant joined Credit Suisse in 2018 from Deloitte in London. He is a past winner of the AICPA’s Elijah Watt Sells Award and holds a B.S. and Masters in Accounting from the Ohio State University.

Approximately 28.2 million of the 122.8 million households in the United States do not have high-speed broadband. The historical narrative has been that these households are unconnected because they do not have access to high-speed Internet infrastructure. However, the reality is that 18 million of these households, home to 47 million people, are simply offline because they cannot afford an available Internet connection.

Over the past year, closing the broadband affordability gap has become a national priority. Congress created the $14.2 billion Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) to close the gap, yet only a quarter of the 51.6 million eligible households have enrolled.

During this Fiber for Breakfast, Evan Marwell, the Founder and CEO of EducationSuperHighway, will discuss the ACP’s progress and the barriers that are keeping unconnected households offline. He will also outline the tools and resources the nonprofit has created to help state and local leaders increase awareness and support enrollment, including GetACP.org (https://www.getacp.org/) – a virtual mobile assistant that simplifies the ACP enrollment process and provides real-time support to help eligible households determine the easiest way to qualify, identify the documents needed when applying, and find “free-with-ACP” broadband plans available at their address.

Webinar Guest:

Evan Marwell is the Founder and CEO of EducationSuperHighway, the leading non-profit focused on closing the digital divide in America’s most unconnected communities. In eight years, EducationSuperHighway closed the digital divide in America’s K-12 schools – connecting nearly 47 million students in 99.7% of America’s classrooms to high-speed broadband. A recipient of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Visionary of the Year award and a serial entrepreneur, Evan launched companies over the last 25 years in the telecom, software, and hedge fund industries. Evan is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.