Passive optical networking (PON) equipment vendor Optical Solutions has named a new CEO to replace Darryl Ponder, who served as CEO for the past three and a half years.

The new CEO, Mike Dagenais, joined Optical Solutions last month as chief operating officer. Dagenais was previously COO of access equipment vendor Convergent Networks and has a history of engineering and operations roles at Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks.

One of the leaders of the fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) market, Optical Solutions teamed up with one of its investors, Cisco Systems, in an attempt to win a portion of the joint request for proposals (RFP) issued by three Baby Bells to FTTP equipment vendors last summer.

After analysts called Advanced Fibre Communications and Alcatel the most likely beneficiaries of Bell fiber supplier contracts, Ponder portrayed Optical Solutions as the tortoise in a tortoise-and-hare race, telling Telephony in September 2003, "I don’t think this is a done deal."

However, to date, Alcatel and AFC are the only PON equipment suppliers that have been named for the Bell fiber RFP (Alcatel for SBC and AFC for Verizon Communications), and AFC recently acquired the fiber-to-the-curb business of Marconi, which served BellSouth.

Historically, Optical Solutions has had much more experience with FTTP than AFC but much less interaction with Baby Bells. Optical Solutions equipment serves tens of thousands of homes, mostly through independent and rural carriers.

Ponder became CEO of Optical Solutions in August 2000, a few months after the company exited stealth mode with a $66-million round of funding. A company statement issued today said he was "leaving to pursue other opportunities."