2019.05.03 – 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! Newly announced platinum sponsor Huawei will join Calix, Go!Foton (Platinum), Actelis, AVM, Devolo, Domos, Nokia (Silver), ASSIA, InCoax, and MoCA Access (Bronze) to provide visionary perspectives, 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.

Let’s shape the future of broadband – together – at UFBB BASe!

Wi-Fi gets its ‘can you hear me now?’ moment

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Can you hear me now?” “How about now?” We’ve all done it, either while driving through a ‘dead zone’ or walking on or off a lift, ‘stepping’ into the space where the wireless ‘signal’ wasn’t sufficient to hold a conversation. Those same ‘dead zones’ might even exist in your home or office, but they’re getting smaller.

In this article, Lincoln Lavoie, Technical Committee Chair at Broadband Forum, looks at how service providers have started to focus resources on improving their customers’ Wi-Fi, either as a push to create a new value-added service or to improve ‘their’ network’s end-to-end quality of experience. Note the intentional use of inverted commas here, he continues. While each provider has their own motives, that’s not really what we’re interested in here. Instead, let’s take a look at some of the metrics and measurements that can be made for Wi-Fi systems, and what those can tell us about a wireless system.

Now, in your head, I’m sure you’re saying ‘well that’s obvious, we all care about performance’, and really that’s a good place to start. After all, the Broadband Forum recently published ‘TR-398: Wi-Fi In-Premise Performance Test Plan’, so it’s right there in the title. Like all things, however, the devil hides in the details – and performance testing requires a lot of details…

Once upon a fixed-line in America

he Federal Communications Commission has announced it will expand broadband internet services to more than 106,000 rural homes and businesses across 43 states. Nine states – Arkansas, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming – will see the number of locations with high-speed internet available through the Connect America program double as part of the FCC’s latest expansion effort.

The most recent round of rural broadband development comes just months after the FCC announced it would allocate an additional $67 million per year to rural broadband initiatives. Much of that funding is delivered through the Connect America Fund, which offers cash to encourage internet providers to ditch outdated legacy systems in favor of high-speed offerings.

According to the commission, a total of 186 companies are participating in the program and have accepted funds. As part of the agreement, those companies will have to deploy broadband internet, defined as 25Mpbs download speeds and 3Mpbs upload speeds, to 40 percent of the locations they serve by 2022. They will then have to expand offering by 10 percent each year until buildout is complete by the end of 2028.

Fiber – just what the doctor ordered for UK hospitals

The UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has promised to work to get all NHS hospitals and GP surgeries connected to full fiber, in addition to plans that should see 70% of these premises connected with leased lines (business grade full fiber service) by August 2020.

The push was announced in a speech to the Royal College of General Practitioners on 30th April who have also launched their own tech manifesto to push to make the best use of technology within the NHS.

“Every day, our NHS staff do amazing work – but too often they are let down by outdated and unreliable technology. It’s simply unbelievable that a third of NHS organizations are using internet that can sometimes be little better than dial-up,” said Hancock. “To give people control over how they access NHS services, I want to unlock the full potential of technology – this is the future for our 21st century healthcare system and a central part of our NHS Long Term Plan.

“Faster broadband connections can help us deliver these dramatic improvements – we need clinicians and other healthcare professionals to feel confident they can access fast, reliable broadband so they can provide patients with the best possible care.”

The unsung hero of the 5G saga

While 5G may be the showstopper for Verizon and AT&T, their respective fiber build-outs are the roadies that move and carry the loads.

Wireless and 5G stole the headlines during the companies’ recent earnings calls, but their respective fiber build-outs were also mentioned as key elements for both telcos.

Verizon has been a big proponent of fiber ever since the launch of Fios in 2004. Fiber deployments are key to Verizon’s existing commercial and residential services as well as its burgeoning 5G applications and services.

“Our One Fiber deployment is rapidly expanding the multipurpose fiber network outside our landline footprint,” said Verizon CEO and Chairman Hans Vestberg. “This will enable new revenue opportunities in the large enterprise, small businesses, public sector and the wholesale businesses, while also delivering expense reductions opportunities.”

Irish government Dublin down on fiber commitment

Ireland’s Communications Minister Richard Bruton has all but ruled out mobile broadband as an alternative to fiber for the State-backed National Broadband Plan roll-out.

Mr Bruton says that a 4G or 5G mobile broadband network capable of covering every rural home and business would require an extra 6,000 masts around the country in rural areas, double the amount currently in place.

He also said that it would take up to three times as long to build and that the broadband quality would be significantly poorer than a fixed-fiber service.

“A mobile 5G service is not a suitable alternative to fiber-to-the-home broadband, for many reasons as outlined by ComReg and others,” Mr Bruton said in social media comments. “Mobile coverage of 30mbs to 99.5pc of the country would require an additional 6,000 new masts around the country, would take over 10 years, would have insufficient capacity and [the] signal would be significantly affected by home insulation and hills.”

Fone-tain of knowledge from telecom giant  

Vodafone has learned first-hand how quality attenuation techniques and tools reduce capex in fixed-access networks, and the operator is now sharing results of its tests with the broadband ecosystem, hoping operators worldwide will also adopt these mathematically precise solutions.

Data from these probes – three for upstream, three for down – give Vodafone invaluable knowledge about the existing network and how potential tweaks will impact performance, latency and so forth, said Gavin Young, Head of Fixed Access Centre of Excellence at Vodafone.

“We’ve trialed the technique on different broadband technologies in four different countries and it has given us great insights that a lot of other network measurement approaches and traditional metrics weren’t able to do,” Young noted. “It even went so far as finding bugs in vendor equipment that the vendor was completely unaware of — despite having deployed hundreds of thousands of units. It was not in our network, in Vodafone’s network, but it was in somebody else’s network.”

So far, Vodafone has been able to compare vendors’ product performance; leverage data from six metrics developed to measure round-trip delay, and analyze the performance of fiber, PON and other crucial technologies, he said. Benefits will increase exponentially as usage expands across the provider’s network and, hopefully, the industry, added Young.

2019 calendar for Broadband Forum promises to be as eventful as ever 

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 Broadband Forum Gfast Chipset & System Integrator Interoperability Plugfest takes place from Monday, May 13 to Friday, May 17. For more information about the event, please visit here.

Registration is now open for Broadband Forum’s Q2 2019 Meeting in Seoul, South Korea. Taking place from June 17-20, and following the 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.