Heather Burnett Gold, president and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association, plans to retire next September after a nearly four-decade career in the telecom industry.
Prior to taking the reins of the Fiber Broadband Association, formerly the Fiber to the Home Council Americas, in 2011, Burnett Gold spent over three decades in the telecom industry.
During her tenure at the Fiber Broadband Association, Burnett Gold spearheaded a number of key initiatives including a Community Toolkit Conference and online Community Toolkit, a GDP study linking economic growth to fiber, and research connecting the importance of fiber to housing issues, as well as a white paper highlighting fiber's importance to 5G.
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Burnett Gold said the organization expects to announce a new president and CEO in time for the 2018 Fiber Connect trade show.
Being an advocate of broadband competition, Burnett Gold was outspoken about pole attachment issues. She joined Google Fiber and other competitors’ calls for a one-touch-make-ready process to streamline the attachment process to existing utility poles to build out a fiber network, for example.
With one-touch-make-ready, a local utility could appoint one construction company to perform the make-ready work so a new attacher can proceed with its deployment. In addition to being more efficient, the process will facilitate greater fairness because all service provider attachers will get the same right to use a one-touch process.
Earlier in her career, Burnett Gold served in various executive positions at competitive carriers such as the former XO Communications and Intermedia Communications. During her tenure at XO, she served as the SVP of external affairs and access management.
She was also the recipient of several industry awards, including being named as one of FierceTelecom’s 2013 Women in Wireline honorees.