As we’re meeting and interviewing these folks, we’ll create links on this site.

From the ADSL Forum
Hans-Erhard Reiter, LM Ericsson, is President of the ADSL Forum, which leads the industry.
William V. Rodey, HyperEdge, is Vice-Chair of the Forum, and was one of the founding members.
Gavin Young, British Telecom, is Chairman of the Technical Committee, and wrote several of the early papers that defined the field.
Jim Southworth, Concentric, is a board member of one of the most forthright advocates of DSL. His strong technical presentations have built the reputation of his company, as well.
Kevin C. Kahn  exemplifies Intel’s committment to enhancing the capability of the PC. While the benefits would be indirect, this is some of the smartest marketing Intel can do. They have dedicated a dozen staff to promoting broadband.
Mark Peden, now at Northpoint, is one of the most active and articulate Ambassadors for the Forum.

Independent Providers
Mike Malaga & Liz Fetter, Northpoint Catherine Hapka, Rhythms and  Robert Knowling, Covad are all telco industry veterans who gambled on the new technology and now lead billion dollar corporations. They are all active, articulate leaders who now have made strong marks (and not insignificant fortunes),
Roberta Myers, MCI/Worldcom, controls probably the largest deployment of DSLAMs in the world. Their network design, with a oversubscription ratio of 2:1, is one of the most robust in the industry.
Terry Peck, Prism/Red created an Internet age company, investing an estimated $20M advertising on Times Square billboards, Bell Atlantic phone booths, and television, creating enormous public brand recognition and then selling to Comdisco, a networking company with the skills to utilize the market position.
Richard Rasmussen, Flashcom, leads a DSL ISP who greatest challenge is keeping up with demand. He came from the cable industry, and wants to bring to DSL what he learned about service.
Don Moffat , New Edge, and David Struwas, DSL.net, are building national networks focused on smaller cities.
Alex Good of @Link left a senior position at Bell Atlantic to build a “regional”   competitor, with national aspirations.
Bill Kirkner, Prodigy, understands that a million customers are a challenge to serve, but he’s ready for it.
 

Incumbent Telcos
Jeff Waldhuter & Pete Castleton, Bell Atlantic, lead the DSL effort for a company that has publicly committed $1.8 billion  just for the equipment for DSL. In effect, Bell Atlantic is building a massive data network alongside the traditional voice service. Waldhuter is the Director of Research who inspired the revolutionary change. Castleton, with one sentence to The New York Times, made himself the poster boy of the telco marketing effort. He defined the goal very simply, “We’re going to beat cable.”
Fred Chang, SBC/Pacbell, has seen his  progressive policies lead SBC to America’s largest DSL deployment, with a goal of 1,000,000 the end of 2000. Previous experience includes supervising the San Francisco NAP, managing 11% of the world’s internet traffic. 
Sol Trujillo (US West) and Joe Zell, (now at Convergent), reorganized the entire company around complete service, with the most advanced DSL services and America’s largest trial of Video over DSL in Phoenix.
Ray Smets, BellSouth, built BellSouth.net into a major ISP, and now has the additional responsibility of growing the DSL business.

Researchers, Analysts, Journalists
Joseph Lechleider, now retired from Bellcore, through mathematical analysis, demonstrated the feasibility of sending broadband signals through telephone lines, and is considered by many the originator of all these technologies. He went on to suggest the power of asymmetry, (the A in ADSL), recognizing many users would benefit from the higher data rates possible in one direction. His colleagues speak of him with great fondness, and he inspired many of the other pioneers in the field. The editor of DSL Prime would appreciate photocopies of any of his seminal papers from the late ‘80s or early ‘90s.
John Cioffi, now a Stanford Professor, developed DMT, the standard for most DSL circuits. By separating the signal into 256 subchannels, many problems relating to line noise and disturbance can be minimized. He founded Amati, where they designed equipment that in 1993 had dramatically better results than all competitors in Bellcore testing and became the standard. He is universally admired for his brilliance.
Kim Maxwell, was a founder of the ADSL Forum, with John Cioffi built Amati, one of the pioneer firms DSL (now part of TI), and wrote an extraordinary book that both explains the technology and defines its future.
Loring Wirbel, EE Times, is the most respected journalist in the field, whose articles define for many just where the technology is going. He was has a wonderful sense of humor, as well as a sense of justice that leads him to write about the implications of the technology.
Peter Meade, directs the program of DSLCON, brings together  the people who tell us where the field is going. Danny Briere & Claudia Bacco, Telechoice, are the leading analysts for DSL. Their website, xdsl.com, is a primary reference, while the xDSL mailing list is one of the best sources of information and help in the field.
Bill Weber & Sheri Turner-Weber, DSLCON, tell me they live and breathe DSL, and the conference they created is the great get-together of everyone involved in DSL.
Molly Miller, Gallagher PR, claims her clients get attention because they’re great companies. They are, but Copper Mountain, Redback, and others always seem to stand out just a little bit more because of effective promotion.
Justin Beech produces the invaluable consumer site, DSLReports.com

Manufacturers
Henry T. Nicholas III, and Henry Samueli, Broadcom, make headlines for their sports teams, but also produce the majority of cable modem and ethernet switching chips in the world, and are the early leader in VDSL.
Judy Estrin, CTO, Cisco
Rick Gilbert, Copper Mountain saw the opportunity and built a successful company around. They’ve grown 
Cynthia Ringo, Coppercom, Sundi Sundaresh, Jetstream, and Asher Waldfogel, CTO, Tollbridge spearhead innovative small companies creating the tools for Voice over DSL
George Hawley, Nokia/Diamond Lane, has led four separate eras in telecommunications - and continues to inspire the people who work with him.
Armando Geday, Globespan, leads a company with roots back to AT&T Paradyne. Globespan, a spinoff of the chip design team, has shipped over 1M DSL chips. The engineering-driven company, loaded with Ph.D's, is based in the original telecom hotbed, New Jersey.
Mike Tzannes, Aware, has gone beyond beyond internal chip design to build industry direction.
Ron Cates, Conexant, leads the company that created, and dominates, the SDSL market.
Faraj Allei, Centillium, and Martin Jackson, Virata, lead rapidly growing companies.
Jay Fausch, Alcatel is the public face for the largest DSL manufacturer in the world - as much as half the market.
Dennis Barsema, Redback, saw the opportunity early in system management, and rode it to become what Wall Street calls “the next Cisco”
Anthony Alles, Nortel/Shasta, provides Redback the competition that keeps them on their toes..
Brian Hinman, 2Wire, understands the future is the totally connected home.
Dan Arazi, Orckit

Government
Bill Kennard, FCC, has a dedication to competition as the way to build an industry that doesn’t require government regulation.
Reed Hundt, former Chair of the F.C.C and current board member of Northpoint