Summit Broadband, a portfolio company of Grain Management, LLC, has named Kurt Van Wagenen its new CEO. Van Wagenen comes to the Florida-based broadband services provider from FirstLight Fiber, where he was president, CEO, and board chair.
Van Wagenen has 30 years of telecommunications industry experience. His background includes corporate strategy and integration, engineering and operations, and consumer sales and service.
"Kurt is a proven leader. We are excited to partner with him as the talented Summit team continues to implement strategic growth initiatives," said Raghav Nayar, a managing director at Grain, which purchased Summit Broadband in 2020 (see "Grain Management finishes Summit Broadband buy"). "Kurt's experience executing on growth plans for major telecommunications companies will help Summit to further expand its footprint of state-of-the-art fiber-optic network to more customers."
"The opportunity for broadband expansion in Florida is robust. I look forward to working with the Summit team and partnering with Grain to serve our customers and deliver the next phase of growth for the company," Van Wagenen added.
Summit provides voice, video, data, and high-speed internet services to residential and business customers, as well as Ethernet and dark-fiber transport to enterprise and wholesale customers. The company owns and operates more than 3,500 fiber-route miles of infrastructure.
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Stephen Hardy | Editorial Director and Associate Publisher, Lightwave
Stephen Hardy is editorial director and associate publisher of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report, part of the Lighting & Technology Group at Endeavor Business Media. Stephen is responsible for establishing and executing editorial strategy across the both brands’ websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products. He has covered the fiber-optics space for more than 20 years, and communications and technology for more than 35 years. During his tenure, Lightwave has received awards from Folio: and the American Society of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) for editorial excellence. Prior to joining Lightwave in 1997, Stephen worked for Telecommunications magazine and the Journal of Electronic Defense.
Stephen has moderated panels at numerous events, including the Optica Executive Forum, ECOC, and SCTE Cable-Tec Expo. He also is program director for the Lightwave Innovation Reviews and the Diamond Technology Reviews.
He has written numerous articles in all aspects of optical communications and fiber-optic networks, including fiber to the home (FTTH), PON, optical components, DWDM, fiber cables, packet optical transport, optical transceivers, lasers, fiber optic testing, and more.
You can connect with Stephen on LinkedIn as well as Twitter.