Standards are continuously developed as broadband technologies evolve and spread in every aspect of people's lives. Standards are essential to create a competitive mass market and ensure customers' quality of experience by ensuring interoperability. This session will analyze the ecosystem of the standards bodies that contribute to the success of the broadband market by positioning their respective activities, latest achievements, and visions of the future. Getting return on investment in standardization work and finding the right balance with proprietary features will also be a topic for discussion.

Christophe Alter Standardization Manager, Fixed Broadband Networks France Telecom

Mr. Alter is member of a division dedicated to international standards and industry relationships. He is responsible for France Telecom Group's strategy regarding fixed broadband networks standards. Mr. Alter is a member of the DSL Forum Board of Directors. He worked at Orange Labs from 2000 to 2007, where he was responsible for network architecture designs in a number of projects. Mr. Alter also served as member of the board and chair of the architecture task force of the European collaborative research project MUSE. He is an engineer of Ecole Centrale de Lyon, graduating in 2000.

Emmanuel Darmois Vice President, Standards Alcatel-Lucent

Mr. Darmois overlooks the Alcatel-Lucent "standardization engine" and coordinates the standardization strategy. Prior to that, he has been taking different senior positions in operational business or in the field of research and R&D. Before joining Alcatel, Mr. Darmois has been a computer science professor in "Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées," a French school of engineering, both teaching and making research in the field of artificial intelligence and expert systems. During that period, Mr. Darmois also created a start-up in the domain of network gaming.

Ron Levin Associate Vice President of Product Marketing, Network Solutions ECI Telecom

Mr. Levin is responsible for marketing ECI's various product lines. Prior to ECI, Mr. Levin was product manager at Jungo Software Technologies, a developer of software for home and small business gateways, which was later acquired by NDS in 2007. Mr. Levin holds an M.Sc. in management from the University of Tel Aviv and a B.Sc. in computer engineering from the Technion, Haifa.

Robin Mersh Chief Operating Officer Broadband Forum

Mr. Mersh is the senior full-time executive. Most recently, he worked in business development and alliance management for various OSS software companies in the United States. Working in network and service provisioning and activation for companies like Astracon, TTI Telecom, and Evolving Systems, he negotiated and managed several large OEM agreements. With more than 14 years of telecommunications experience, Mr. Mersh started in sales and sales management for Cable & Wireless and then moved on to work at BT. He received a B.A. degree from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London in 1992.

Luca Pesando Coordinator, Fixed Access and Transport, and IPTV Telecom Italia

Since 2006 Mr. Pesando has joined TILab's Standardization Coordination team as coordinator for the Fixed Access and Transport and IPTV area. After 2000, he participated in the design of Telecom Italia's integrated service national backbone network and managed part of a project for hardware data protection in end-user fixed and mobile terminals, with submission of some patents. Mr. Pesando joined Telecom Italia in 1992 for a project on radiation hard VLSI circuit design. He received a Laurea and a Ph.D. in high-energy particle physics from the University of Torino.

Corrado Rocca Chairman of HGI Marketing Committee Home Gateway Initiative

Mr. Rocca is responsible for product marketing and development for all the broadband access product lines of Pirelli Broadband Solutions: access gateways, multimedia devices, home networking extenders, fixed-mobile convergence solutions, and element management systems. He represents Pirelli in the broadband access community, sponsoring Pirelli active participation in international bodies such as the Home Gateway Initiative (where since 2006 he has been a member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Marketing Committee), the DSL Forum and the Femtoforum, and actively contributing as chairman and speaker to several international conferences. A 14-year veteran of the Pirelli Group, Mr. Rocca has held several senior management R&D positions in Pirelli Submarine Telecom Systems, where he managed several international cooperations with world-renowned telecommunications companies, among which Siemens, Alcatel, Tyco, and NEC. He holds a degree in electronic engineering from the University of Genoa, Italy.