December 19, 2011 – The Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council, an organization dedicated to expanding the deployment of ultra high speed all-fiber networks, says its 2012 board of directors will include a Canadian telecom service provider representative for the very first time.

In elections held last week in Dallas, Texas, at the organization’s strategic planning meeting, Council members chose for a two-year term on the board Barry Walton of Bell Aliant, which is currently in its third year of a project to make FTTH available to 600,000 homes and businesses in Atlantic Canada. With that effort, Bell Aliant is now the second largest FTTH service provider on the North American continent, after Verizon, it said.

Mike Hill of On Trac Inc., who served as board chairman for the past year, was re-elected to a new two-year term, as were board members John George of OFS, Dave Kiel of Corning Cable Systems and George O’Neal of GVTC.

Serving as chairman in 2012 will be Kyle Hollifield of BVU Authority, a public electric utility in Bristol, Va., which was the first municipal utility in the United States to deploy an all-fiber network offering the triple play of video, voice and data services, and which now provides FTTH services to 11,000 customers, it said. Designated last year by the board to be chair-elect and head of the Council’s 2011 Conference & Expo, Hollifield’s term of board service was automatically extended to a third year under the Council’s by-laws.

The board also selected Kevin Bourg, director of sales engineering and business development for Aurora Networks, to serve as chair-elect for 2013 and chair of the 2012 FTTH Conference & Expo.

Stepping down from the board is Steve Holt of KGP Logistics, who had served two consecutive terms and will continue his association with the Council as chair of its Government Relations Committee.

Other committee chairs elected include Jack Carlile of Corning Cable Systems (Technology), Joseph Jones of On Trac Inc. (Planning and Marketing), and Rob Crowell of DSM Desotech (International).