Broadband Forum Honors Home Networks’ John Blackford and Richard Holme

During this month’s Broadband Forum’s annual Q1 meeting, two distinguished members of CommScope’s Home Networks business were recognized for their dedication and commitment to the industry.

The Forum presented John Blackford, Product Management Director, with the Distinguished Fellow Award. Richard Holme, Principal Software Engineer, was one of four industry leaders presented with the Circle of Excellence Award.

Their accolades are a testament to the commitment the Home Network business has to the industry we serve.

CLICK TO TWEET: CommScope’s John Blackford and Richard Holme were honored by the Broadband Forum for their dedication to the industry.

John Blackford: Distinguished Fellow Award

The Distinguished Fellow award is presented to individuals who have displayed dedicated service and leadership in the advancement of the broadband networking industry and their vision that continues to inspire industry growth. Blackford’s leadership, innovation, and contribution since his first participation in 2004 has provided an exemplary and lasting impact on the Forum and broadband community. 

“I am grateful to be receiving this esteemed recognition from the Broadband Forum. The work of the Forum is crucial for the development of open industry standards and an accelerated broadband ecosystem globally. I am proud to be an active participant and help the Forum further drive innovation and growth within the industry,” Blackford said.

Elected to the position of Chairman of the Broadband Forum Board of Directors in 2020, Blackford has made integral contributions for almost two decades. He has trailblazed flagship projects such as the TR-069 protocol, and driven the specification and development of the User Services Platform (USP) in the Broadband User Services (BUS) Work Area and the Open Broadband-USP-Agent (OB-USP-Agent) Project.

Richard Holme: Circle of Excellence Award

The Circle of Excellence Award recognizes those members for their sustained excellence in advancing the mission of the Broadband Forum. Richard has worked in the home networks industry for 25 years, starting with Pace (which became ARRIS and is now CommScope).

During that time, Richard has worked on set top box solutions, DVB-C and DOCSIS headends for apartment blocks, CA systems, and TR-069 and USP remote management protocols.

“I’m honored to receive this award. I started work writing a USP Agent in 2016,” Holme said. “We subsequently open sourced the core of this agent, as the OB-USP-Agent, to the Broadband Forum in 2019. Since then, I've overseen many code contributions to this project from other companies, as the project continues to grow.”

On behalf of everyone at CommScope, we want to congratulate John and Richard for these accolades.