TORONTO -- The Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF) announced at its quarterly Technical Committee meeting today that telecom industry giants Advanced Fibre Communications (AFC), Cable & Wireless, Ericsson and Nortel Networks have joined the Forum. With the inclusion of Ohio-based Applied Innovation, a network management solutions company and Holland’s Teledata Networks, a wireline access platform maker, six new members have joined the MSF in 2004.

“The MSF is proud to welcome these new members,” said Roger Ward, MSF president. “It’s especially gratifying when so many industry luminaries join at the same time. I’m confident that each of these new members will make significant contributions to the MSF’s ongoing technical and interoperability programs.”

“The new membership of six industry powerhouses is a clear sign that the MSF has assumed a leadership role in the VoIP and packet communications arena,” said Graham Beniston, analyst at Heavy Reading.

In other news from the Toronto quarterly meeting, the MSF’s board of directors for 2004 – 2005 held its first meeting. New directors include Byung-Sun Lee, Core Technology Group director at ETRI, James McEachern, Succession Standards Strategy director at Nortel Networks and Tatsuro Murakami, executive research engineer at NTT. Avri Doria, visiting researcher at ETRI was elected chairperson of the Technical Committee. Juliet Bates, systems architect in the Fixed Solutions Division at Alcatel was elected as vice chair of the Technical Committee. Neil Anderson, senior director of services at Spirent Communications, was reelected chairperson of the Marketing Awareness and Education Committee. Jason Grooms, vice president of sales at Leapstone Systems was reelected vice chairperson of the Marketing Awareness and Education Committee. Paul Drew, product manager at MetaSwitch was elected chairperson of the Architecture Working Group. Brian Down, director of network transformation at Marconi was elected chairperson of the MSF Management Advisory Group.

Multiservice Switching Forum