AT&T (News - Alert) has now joined the Board of Directors at the HomeGrid Forum. The newest entrant to the organization will be in the role of Promoter Member. One of the leading members of AT&T’s technical staff and an expert in the telecom industry, Tom Starr, has been chosen as AT&T’s representative on HomeGrid’s Board of Directors.

In a release, President of the HomeGrid Forum, Matt Theall, said,“AT&T U-verse is a strong product offering, and with an always-evolving market, G.hn offers the potential to support and help continue expanding their services. We are happy to have AT&T as a voice within our organization and look forward to their valuable contributions." Theall also described AT&T as being an ideal member to be on the company’s board.

G.hn is a wholly approved and completed home networking wired standard that was created by the ITU-T. AT&T has now become one of the latest entrants into the top-notch, industry leading companies to collaborate in the G.hn standard. The world’s leading chipset vendors, consumer electronics manufacturers, OEMs, ODMs, service providers, and other organizations have been brought together by the HomeGrid Forum to provide customers with the best in wired home networking solutions. Some of the other members of the Board of Directors at HomeGrid, apart from AT&T, include Intel, Telefonica, Sigma Designs, Lantiq, Marvell (News - Alert), BT and Best Buy.

Tom Starr, the AT&T representative on HomeGrid’s board, has been responsible for developing and standardizing the new local access technology systems for AT&T’s networks. As a leading member of AT&T’s technical staff, Starr was also named as one among the 100 most powerful people by the Global Telecoms Business Power 2010. He also has dozens of industry patents to his credit and is popularly known in the telecom circles. In addition, Starr is also the chairman of the Broadband Forum (News - Alert) and the ITU-T working groups.

An alternative or backup to Starr on the board will be another leading member of AT&T’s technical staff, Vernon Reed. He works out of AT&T’s Texas office, and has been a technical lead with the company since the year 2004. He has led projects on development and testing of all AT&T’s IP U-verse TV services.