Ronan Kelly, president of the FTTH Council Europe presented Open Fiber and Matthew Hare, chief executive of Gigaclear with FTTH Awards for their outstanding contributions to the acceleration of FTTH in Europe at the FTTH 2018 conference in Valencia.
Hare started Gigaclear in 2010 to address the problems faced by rural homes and businesses in accessing fast, reliable internet connections. Since then, he has worked to connect many isolated communities in the UK to full fibre broadband, contributing massively to reducing the digital divide.
'At the FTTH Council Europe, our mission is to push for fibre connectivity to connect everyone and everything, everywhere. I think this couldn’t describe better your actions' stressed Ronan Kelly during the award ceremony.
Accepting the award, Matthew Hare said: 'It is an honour to be recognised by such an influential industry body. Since 2010, we have been delivering on our quest to connect some of the UK’s hardest to reach communities to reliable, ultrafast broadband. Every day, we see the difference having a reliable internet connection can make to people’s lives and we remain committed to closing the digital divide, ensuring we put an end to rural isolation. This is just the beginning. There is a lot more we aim to achieve with our fibre networks.'
Open Fiber, represented by CEO Elisabetta Ripa, received the FTTH Council Europe Operator Award for the company’s overall contribution to FTTH igniting rapid fibre deployment in the Italian market. 'As a young and dynamic company, acting as a disruptor on the Italian market and investing massively in FTTH, Open Fiber was an obvious choice for this award,' explained Ronan Kelly.
Elisabetta Ripa stated: 'The digital evolution is changing the way we communicate and work and many other aspects of our life. The roll out of FTTH very-high capacity networks and 5G networks are key steps towards the Gigabit society. Open Fiber is a wholesale-only operator: this model substantially reduces the critical issues of the sector by rolling-out a greenfield FTTH network, which enables telcos to offer innovative connectivity services.'
