2019.04.26 – Open Broadband News

UFBB BASE – Finally! A Conference by technology innovators for technology leaders!

The Broadband Forum Ultra-fast Broadband Acceleration Seminar (UFBB Base) is NOT a conference for those who like to skim the surface of communications technology … UFBB BASe, taking place June 25-27 in Den Haag, The Netherlands, is THE conference for those who love being on the cutting edge of technology and best practice, and like to dive deeply – asking the tough questions and exploring the “why” and “how” of network innovation and market success. UFBB BASe attendees are tech-minded, and want to learn from the best, share their expertise, and deliver the latest innovations today while concurrently shaping the future of broadband.

With newly announced visionary speakers like “the father of DSL” John Cioffi of ASSIA, Christian Gacon of Orange, Michael Dargue of Cartesian, Christian Macherel and Andreas Thöny of Swisscom, and Patrick Rausch of POST Luxembourg joining already announced speakers like Dr. Andres Gladisch of DT, Paul Spruyt of Nokia, Robin Mersh and Kevin Foster of Broadband Forum, and a host of other leaders, it’s easy to see why UFBB BASe will be a conference like no other! Sponsors like Calix, Go!Foton (Platinum), Actelis, AVM, Devolo, Domos, Nokia (Silver), ASSIA, InCoax, and MoCA Access (Bronze) will also provide visionary executives, deep technology expertise, and exhibits and demonstrations to the event.

See our updated agenda here for the world-class line up of speakers … and plan on plenty of opportunities to network – including a special social event the evening of Day 2 of the conference.

Register today for this not-to-be-missed event that will examine many of the hottest topics and challenges in broadband today – from how to leverage the latest advancements in carrier grade Wi-Fi, the Connected Home, and cloud-based services to build a technologically advantaged network, to lessons in creating an operational model that can successfully leverage this advantage to deliver valued services with agility.

A tale of two (gigabit) cities

China Mobile (Shanghai) has adopted Huawei’s 10G PON E2E solution to promote the construction of demo gigabit broadband communities. This represents a major step towards the goal of building a “dual-gigabit city” that has both wired and wireless gigabit broadband.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of China has proposed the “Dual-gigabit acceleration, same speed for same network” plan to promote fixed broadband gigabit applications, and now China Mobile (Shanghai) has launched the “Dual-Gigabit First City” plan and released multiple gigabit broadband convergence packages to provide gigabit home broadband and 5G services together. It is estimated that by the third quarter of 2019, gigabit broadband will cover 5.6 million home users and 3,000 buildings, and gigabit broadband coverage will be available in all administrative districts of Shanghai. As the first step, China Mobile (Shanghai) will officially announce a 40 demo gigabit broadband communities in the near future.

A senior manager of China Mobile (Shanghai) said: “We are dedicated to providing the ultimate home broadband service experience for end users. Huawei’s end-to-end 10G PON solution can effectively support our goal of building gigabit broadband networks to ensure stable user experience in new services such as 4K/8K videos and VR. In the future, China Mobile (Shanghai) hopes to work with partners like Huawei to build the first “dual-gigabit city” to provide a premium subscriber experience while promoting the digital economy in the Yangtze River Delta.”

Fiber-saurus marks the dawn of new Jurassic era

Newly-established UK alternative network provider Jurassic Fibre has completed a long-term deal funding to develop a Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in South West England.

The new full-fiber network infrastructure will be deployed in towns and villages across Devon, Dorset and Somerset, delivering 1 Gbps+ broadband to homes and businesses. It plans to build a network passing more than 300,000 homes.

Fern Trading, advised by Octopus Investments, has acquired Jurassic Fibre and is providing funding for the roll-out of its GPON ultrafast broadband network that could exceed GBP 250 million over the next few years.

New-build broadband bonanza for BT Openreach

Openreach’s (BT) Director of Infrastructure Solutions, Matthew Kirkman, has revealed that the company is now rolling out 1Gbps capable FTTP broadband ISP networks at a rate of 20,000 UK homes passed per week (3x quicker than last year) and 88% of the new build developments they work with are opting for it.

The operator’s “full fiber” network has so far reached 1.2 million premises and that’s almost half-way to their current “Fiber First” target of 3 million premises by the end of 2020 (i.e. March 2021 financial), after which they also have an ambition to reach 10 million premises by around 2025 (provided an agreement can be reached with Ofcom/Government on the details of such a significant investment).

A big chunk of this effort stems from deployments to new build home sites. According to Matthew, around 1 million plots via 14,000 different developers have been contracted with Openreach for “fiber broadband” since February 2016 and 840,000 of those will be delivered using FTTP technology. Furthermore 400,000 of these FTTP deployments are classed as “self-install” (i.e. developer does most of the work rather than Openreach).

Viva la 5G révolution, say French industrial leaders

Some of France’s biggest organizations, including carmaker Renault and rail authority SNCF, have given 5G technology the ringing endorsement it has so desperately needed from the companies that are expected to use it.

Senior executives from companies in various sectors backed the next-generation mobile technology as a major spur to productivity and French industrial advantage at a conference in Paris today hosted by Orange, the French telecom incumbent that hopes 5G will become the next big growth opportunity for its own business.

Guillaume Pepy, the president of SNCF and chairman of Eurostar, said 5G technology would allow France’s national rail authority to increase the number of trains running on today’s tracks by 45% without putting safety at risk. SNCF is already planning to run 20% more trains between France and Lyons by using 5G-based monitoring systems so that trains can run more closely together than is currently possible.

Routing a path through the cloud to high capacity

Cloud-native router start-up DriveNets has followed up its February funding announcement by claiming its virtualized routing software, dubbed Network Cloud, can support 400G-per-port routing and be scaled up to a whopping 768 Tbit/s, making it (possibly) the highest capacity router on offer.

The “possibly” is a safety net for DriveNets. The company’s CEO, Ido Susan, says he’s 99.999% certain that others can’t match it. That, he says, is because incumbent router vendors are still pitching chassis-based hardware platforms with baked-in software that can only scale so far, whereas DriveNets is proposing a disaggregated architecture comprising its cloud-native, software-based system that runs on high-spec white box servers (running Broadcom’s Jericho2 software-on-chip switch-router merchant silicon).

“We have taken the approach of the webscales [in their data centers] and applied it to [carrier] routing and switching — the proof point will be enabling operators to benefit from disaggregation,” Susan told Light Reading.

Backed by billions: China Unicom puts its money on 5G

China Unicom plans to launch a 5G trial network in major cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou and urban Xiong’an New Area.

The state-owned telecom and the Shanghai government also inked an agreement to improve the city’s fiber optic broadband networks and high-speed mobile communication network level, National Business Daily reported.

According to the agreement, the company will invest 15 billion yuan (US$2.24 billion) in Shanghai by 2021 to turn the city into a “Dual Gigabit broadband city” on both mobile communication networks and fixed broadband networks.

The carrier’s chairman, Wang Xiaochu, confirmed at a company event that 5G hotspot coverage will be made available in 33 cities and the company will also deploy a 5G private network and create 5G application scenarios in every walk of life in several cities.

China hopes to have pre-commercialized 5G networks within 2019 and large-scale 5G coverage by 2020.

The 2019 calendar for Broadband Forum continues to grow!

Broadband Forum will host a Wi-Fi 6 seminar on May 10, where both interoperability and performance test methods will be discussed. The seminar will cover test methods for throughput vs. range, OFDMA, interference, mesh, roaming and band steering. Attendees are invited to bring their own devices if they would like to run some tests after the seminar.

The April 30 registration deadline for the Broadband Forum Gfast Chipset & System Integrator Interoperability Plugfest is also fast approaching. You can register to attend the event here. The Plugfest takes place from Monday, May 13 to Friday, May 17.

Additionally, registration is now open for Broadband Forum’s Q2 2019 Meeting in Seoul, South Korea. Taking place from June 17-20, and following the tremendously successful Q1 meeting in Warsaw, Poland earlier this year, the event promises to provide a platform to discuss the latest developments in connected home, 5G and Open Broadband, and more. Deadline for registration is June 10. To register, please visit here.

Last but not least, taking place at Amsterdam RAI, 15-17 October, Broadband World Forum, the global communications’ industry’s biggest event will return after two successful years in Berlin. The event annually welcomes over 4,000 attendees from around the world and is the perfect opportunity to connect with the entire fixed network ecosystem with a large floorspace and three days of curated content.