WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s been a great week for the broadband industry at the Fierce Telecom-hosted U.S. Broadband Summit where high-level folks from service providers, state and federal broadband offices, trade associations, vendors and analysts gathered to discuss everything from fiber to 5G.
And the energy culminated at last night’s U.S. Broadband Awards dinner where Fierce Telecom handed out 14 awards to companies and individuals doing great work in broadband.
These winners were chosen by 20 judges who determined they were the best in their categories. (And kudos to our award presenters Amy McWhirter and our own Head of Content Alejandro Pinero, who managed to read off some of these classic telecom acronyms with a sense of fun and great pronunciation!)
Best Broadband & Data Mapping Solution or Initiative
Winner – ChatGIS and WiROI db Geospatial SaaS Platform | Wireless 20/20
Best Use of 5G FWA for Remote/Rural Connectivity
Winner – Ohio Transparent Telecom | Ohio Transparent Telecom with Ericsson
Best Converged Solution – Cable & Connectivity
Winner – Harmonic cOS Broadband Platform | Harmonic
Enabling Connectivity – Middle Mile
Winner – Infinera’s Scalable and Efficient Middle Mile Traffic Aggregation Leveraging Point-to-Multipoint ICE-X Coherent Pluggables | Infinera
Best Municipal Connectivity Program
Winner – EPB: Bringing the World’s Fastest Community-Wide Internet to the Chattanooga Area | EPB
Excellence in FTTH Deployment
Winner – WOW! Fiber Internet Deployment in Central Florida | WOW! Internet, TV & Phone
Excellence in Wireless Neutral Host Networks
Winner – Kajeet Smart Private 5G Neutral Host Solution | Kajeet
Impact Award – Greatest Technical Achievement in Connecting the Unconnected (Individual)
Winner – Robert L. Hance | Midwest Energy & Communications
Open Infrastructure & Networking Award
Winner – Ciena’s Broadband Solution: Empowering Open Access Service Providers | Ciena
Impact in Broadband Affordability
Winner - American Connection Corps: A Program of Lead for America
Public Services Deployment
Winner – NoaNet Supports Next Generation 911 Network for Washington State | Northwest Open Access Network
Innovation in State Broadband Deployment
Winner - Arcadian Infracom and the California Department of Technology Innovative Middle-Mile Fiber Partnership | Arcadian Infracom
Regional Operator of the Year
Winner - SCTelcom
Editors' Award
To top off the evening, the Fierce Telecom editors presented a special Editors' Award to Kathryn de Wit, project director of the Broadband Access Initiative at Pew Charitable Trusts.
We felt Kathryn was the perfect person to take home this award because she’s been providing broadband research before it was all the rage. Kathryn got her start at Pew in 2018 and has been helping to close the digital divide well before the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act became law in November 2021.
Plus, Kathryn provides great context along with data, and she comes to our conversations with friendliness and insights.
Congratulations to all the winners of the 2023 U.S. Broadband Awards!
