The prpl Foundation Elects CommScope’s Ian Wheelock to Board of Directors

Ian Wheelock, Engineering Fellow, Home Networks, has been named to the board of directors for the prpl Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes open-source collaboration between the world’s leading telecommunications companies, including CommScope, Amazon Web Services, DT, Orange, Verizon and other industry innovators. Ian was elected by his prpl Foundation peers, who represent more than 50 companies, to help advance its mission: to deliver services faster by encouraging the greatest minds in technology to build together, rather than separately.

Service providers and their subscribers benefit from the prpl Foundation model because it accelerates service delivery.  As opposed to every service provider working exclusively with a third party to create their own stack of software, with the prpl Foundation model, they have the capability to leverage a single, unified stack that anyone can implement.  Ian’s knowledge of the residential broadband environment and technologies, coupled with his software architecture abilities, will help to drive innovation and direction within the prpl Foundation.

Ian will work alongside the prpl Foundation’s industry leaders, who are deeply involved in the creation of the prplWare products suite – prplOS, prplMesh, and prplLCM.  The prplOS working group is creating an open-source, enterprise-grade software framework designed to power the next generation of Wi-Fi routers and gateways. The prplSecurity group is enabling multi-tenant, secure, software environments in datacenter, networking and storage, home, mobile and embedded – providing guidance, APIs and framework for end-to-end trust.  As a prpl Foundation member since 2016, Ian helped contribute to prplMesh, the world’s first open-source Wi-Fi mesh solution. Ian’s current work on Wi-Fi 7 – the next standard in wireless internet – will help increase speeds and bring the technology to life.

Ian brings more than 22 years of broadband industry experience to the prpl Foundation and was instrumental in introducing CommScope to its network of visionaries.  Members of the prpl Foundation have the opportunity to influence the direction of the industry, and in turn, utilize the insights of the group to innovate within their line of business.

Ian joins his CommScope colleague John Blackford, engineering fellow, on the prpl board to help drive service provider broadband open-source solutions for the access networks and Wi-Fi networks that connect people’s homes. In addition to the prpl Foundation, Ian is involved in other telecom standards groups, including CableLabs, Wireless Broadband Alliance, Wi-Fi Alliance, BroadBand Forum, and the SCTE.