Broadband deployment has evolved a lot over recent years. High-performance transmission platforms are available from different suppliers. Customer penetration is increasing rapidly. However, customer connection to the broadband network still requires a manual intervention in the central office and/or active cabinet to connect the customer pair to a broadband port.

With the increasing customer penetration and the tendency to more remote active nodes, these manual interventions represent an increasing expense for the operators. They are also not meeting customer expectations for immediate service provisioning and are contradictory to the tendency to evolve to the hands-off access network.

ADFs are the answer to the issue of increasing OPEX spending for provisioning. Tyco Electronics is one of the leading players in the ADF market and has a revolutionary approach for automated provisioning of broadband services. To further open the discussion on how to implement ADFs in tomorrow's networks, Tyco invites executives from major European operators (including France Telecom, British Telecom, and Telecom Italia) that are leading ADF projects.

Werner De Wolf Business Director Intelligent Connectivity Products Tyco Electronics

Mr. De Wolf joined the Telecom OSP division of Raychem in 1993, which was acquired by Tyco Electronics in 1999. He is responsible for the intelligent broadband connectivity (IBC) and fiber systems business. The Tyco Electronics IBC portfolio includes solutions for automated distribution frames, test access, and transfer engineering to new platforms. Mr. De Wolf was involved in various projects of this type with many operators around the world. Prior to this position, he held various operations, product management, marketing, and business development positions in the telecom and IT industry over the past 20 years.

Geoff Lowndes Program Manager, Network Test Factory BT

Mr. Lowndes has worked for BT for 33 years, predominately in the access network. From October 2003 to March 2006, he was program manager investigating the feasibility of automating the functionality currently provided by BT's legacy main distribution frame (MDF).

Stefano Panattoni Head, Infrastructure Engineering Telecom Italia

In 2006, Mr. Panattoni was appointed responsible for infrastructure engineering in the technology division. He has been involved in different projects about the cable access network, in particular in the definition of deployment criteria for copper and optical fiber network, also in terms of DSL and FTTx solutions. He joined Telecom Italia in 1996. He has a degree in electronic engineering from the University of Rome.