2019.08.23 – Open Broadband News

Advisors assemble! $420 million investment in Illinois broadband

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has introduced the state’s new Broadband Advisory Panel, comprising of 25 private citizens and government agents who will work with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to guide the state’s $420 million investment in broadband infrastructure.

The development is one of many moves multiple states are making to bolster local infrastructure to compete with neighboring states, improve residents’ quality of life and education, attract new business, and encourage younger people to stay.

Funds are part of the state’s Rebuild Illinois capital plan, which set aside $400 million for partnering with ISPs and another $20 million toward the Illinois Century Network. The latter serves K-12 schools, as well as higher-ed, public libraries, museums, state and local governments and healthcare organizations.

“High-speed broadband Internet is an absolute necessity for economic progress and educational attainment, but too many of our towns and counties and communities have been left out of the digital revolution, especially downstate,” said Pritzker, in a statement. “Our Broadband Advisory Council will be guided by three areas of focus for Illinois’ success in the 21st century: education, telehealth and economic development.”

In a galaxy far, far away… 5G-enabled HD Hologram at Portuguese festival out of this world

Using Ericsson’s cutting-edge 5G technology, Vodafone Portugal has made a 5G hologram call to TVI Studios in Lisbon. This exciting demonstration allowed a reporter to appear at the Vodafone Paredes de Coura festival in hologram form on national news.

The HD hologram was able to interact with Vodafone CTO João Nascimento in 3D with minimal transmission latency. This means that there was minimal delay in the interaction, despite the huge amount of data being transmitted – a key benefit of 5G.

To make this happen at one of Portugal’s largest festivals, Musion provided a HD Audio/Video Image Capture of the reporter from TVI studios in Lisbon, which was then transmitted through the Vodafone Portugal 5G network to Paredes de Coura.

Go Dish! New fiber offering builds on TV services

Dish Network has launched its service, Dish Fiber which is focused on apartment buildings, but the offering is leading with a property-wide, managed Wi-Fi capability for both the building owner and the individual residents.

In addition to supplying apartments with raw Internet connectivity (usually with a fiber connection leased from an area provider), the service also layers on the aforementioned managed Wi-Fi piece as well as a “bulk” IPTV tier for all residents and the ability to upgrade to larger IP-delivered pay-TV packages.

The apartment-focused service is a new area for Dish and builds on the TV services it has tailored for hotels, campus student housing, hospitals and other businesses — even large facilities like the Denver International Airport.

Under the newer apartment offering, Dish Fiber is “leading with a Wi-Fi product that then offers video as a layered-on service,” said Alistair Chatwin, Vice President of Dish Business.

Fiber is a glas act! Bavaria to benefit from FTTH rollout

Deutsche Glasfaser said it plans to deploy another 20,000 fiber connections in Bavaria. The company is in talks with municipalities in particular in the Middle Franconia region to expand the network.

Deutsche Glasfaser is already building 60,000 Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) connections in Bavaria. It is active in the districts of Ebersberg, Landsberg am Lech, Erding, Dachau, Aschaffenburg, Ansbach, Erlangen- Hochstadt, Furstenfeldbruck, Munich, Freising, Neuburg-Schrobenhausen and Furth, and in circa 70 municipalities.

5G conundrum for signals inside buildings

Most of today’s 5G networks in the US, particularly those running in high-band spectrum, are specifically intended for customers who are walking around outside. When 5G subscribers go inside, they definitely won’t get 5G. In fact, they might not even get 4G.

And, according to a wide range of executives in the wireless industry, that situation is not going to change anytime soon.

“It’s super early” to talk about 5G indoors, said Slavko Djukic, CTO of Zinwave, a company which works with wireless network operators and building owners to install cellular networks inside buildings.

“A way to distribute the 5G signal inside of a building simply doesn’t exist yet,” added Jeremy Edalgo, Director of Wireless Sales and Engineering at McKinstry, which is a nationwide construction and engineering company that handles everything from mechanical to electrical to plumbing work.

A Series of Fortunate Events – by Broadband Forum

Taking place on August 30 in Mumbai, the 5G India Leadership Summit 2019 will soon be upon us. At the event, Broadband Forum APAC Ambassador Nikhil B. Shah will discuss Broadband Forum’s Open Broadband initiative which accelerates network transformation and migration to a cloud-based broadband infrastructure and speak on different initiatives to help make 5G a reality in India by 2020.

The Q3 Broadband Forum meeting, sponsored by F-Secure, is also fast approaching – taking place September 2-5, 2019 in Milan, Italy. This is a meeting you won’t want to miss with activities ramping up across all work areas, and two special “Birds of a Feather” (BOF) sessions focused on some of the hottest topics in broadband today – Security and 5G. In addition, solutions innovator Outsys will host a proof of concept demonstration of the Broadband QED solution. Visit the Information Page for more details and to register today! Additionally, Broadband Forum is offering a limited number of guest passes to prospective members. Please contact info@broadband-forum.org for details.

Broadband World Forum 2019 will be a key event for Broadband Forum, with the return of its Interop Pavilion at the event which will take place at the Amsterdam RAI from 15-17 October. As part of the Interop Pavilion, Broadband Forum will showcase demonstrations of the Connected Home and Open Broadband – Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA). There a number of Connected Home demonstrations plans, including a Broadband QED/USP demo from Vodafone, Domos, Kaon Media and Axiros, as well as a demo of OB-USP-agent demonstrating the testing of USP managed devices from CommScope and QA Cafe.

The SDN/NFV Work Area is driving a CloudCO Demo leveraging Application Note 446 (APPN-446) which has been enhanced for multi-vendor capabilities that will be provided by the OB-BAA reference implementation. More information can be found on the Wiki here.

You don’t have to wait for Broadband World Forum to get up to speed on the latest happenings in broadband! On August 29, 2019, Broadband Forum’s Chief Marketing Officer Geoff Burke will take part in a Broadband World Forum webinar, titled Here Today, PON Tomorrow. This webinar will ponder on the drivers for 10GPON and beyond, exploring what the use case is for consumer broadband, whether consumer data usage is increasing enough to justify operator investment in 10GPON and if operators need to invest to improve Wi-Fi rates and coverage or if GPON can still deliver.

Beyond BBWF 2019, Broadband Forum is also a forum partner of SDN NFV World Congress 2019, taking place at World Forum, The Hague, Netherlands from 14-17 October. Kicking off that conference on October 14, Broadband Forum will discuss key projects at the Multi-player Association Workshop, where there will also be extended informal Q&A sessions to allow the audience to engage with project leaders to better understand how initiatives and standards can help their specific business. Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh will also speak as part of the conference, exploring how operators can achieve seamless co-existence and cost-effective migration when implementing automated access networks.

The registration deadline is fast approaching for Broadband Forum USP Plugfest #4 at The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) during the week of September 16-20, 2019. The deadline for interested parties to register is September 9^th. Don’t miss out!

Finally, Broadband Forum has confirmed the dates of two more of its highly popular BASe events. Two concurrent workshops on the Connected Home and 5G will kick-off Broadband World Forum 2019 on the morning of October 15. If you are planning to attend BBWF 2019, mark your calendars now and go here to see more detail on the Day 1 agenda! Additionally, Broadband Forum will host its annual BASe North America event prior to the stat of ConneXions 2019 in Las Vegas on October 26. Don’t miss this opportunity to catch up on the latest technology updates and best practices across 5G, Connected Home, Security, and Next Generation Access. You can see an up-to-date agenda here. In addition, you can find more information about ConneXions 2019 and register for that conference here.