2021.01.22 – Open Broadband News

We give the FRITZ!Box 5530 Fiber a thumbs up!

After the FRITZ!Box 5530 Fiber already received BBF.247 certification for XGS-PON fiber optic technology at the end of last year, the new fiber model has now also been certified by the Broadband Forum for GPON technology, which is commonly used in Germany.

The successful tests confirm conformity with the important standards and thus the smooth operation of the FRITZ!Box in fiber optic networks. The FRITZ!Box 5530 Fiber can be used directly at any fiber optic connection, which is a plus for users without a media converter and without an upstream provider modem. It enables transmission rates of several gigabits per second. Equipped with the new Wi-Fi 6 standard, the FRITZ!Box 5530 Fiber can distribute high gigabit speeds wirelessly throughout the home.

Additional information about fiber optics and Broadband Forum certification can be found at en.avm.de/fiber and www.broadband-forum.org/testing-and-certification-programs/bbf-247-gpon-onu-certification.

Taking over television! Netflix’s subscriber count soars

Netflix’s expanding global subscriber base seems to have no bounds. The subscription Video on Demand (VoD) streaming giant tacked on another 8.5 million subscribers in Q4 2020, raising its grand total to 203.66 million, up 21.9% year-over-year.

The 8.5 million subs worldwide added in Q4 clobbered the 6 million subs Netflix expected to add in the period. This shines a light on Netflix’s global reach and that its growth engine will continue to be driven from outside the US and Canada from this point forward.

Amid the ongoing pandemic, Netflix said it now has more than 500 titles currently in post-production preparing to launch on the streaming service. Netflix plans to launch at least one new original film every week in 2021.

“Our productions are back up and running in most regions – we have learned that flexibility and adaptability are paramount in this fast-changing environment,” the company explained in its Q4 2020 investor letter.

All for one and Access 4.0 for all!

 Deutsche Telekom (DT) says it has started providing broadband services in Stuttgart using its long-in-development Access 4.0 open, disaggregated, microservices-based fixed broadband architecture.

DT has been working on its Access 4.0 strategy for several years. At the heart of the strategy is the SDN-Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) reference architecture developed by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), as well as the ONF’s Virtual OLT Hardware Abstraction (VOLTHA) model, which offer network operators the opportunity to extend software-defined programming to the fixed access network and enable operators to adopt a best-of-breed approach to the elements they want to deploy.

As DT points out: “The A4 team holds key roles in international collaborative projects such as the Broadband Forum (BBF), the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), the Open Compute Project (OC), and the Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP). This active involvement helps prevent island solutions and leverage synergies not just within Deutsche Telekom, but in the sector as a whole.

Report suggests US digital divide is narrowing

 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its annual Broadband Deployment Report, which it says shows that significant progress has been made to bridge the digital divide.

For example, the gap between urban and rural Americans with access to 25/3 Mbps fixed broadband service has been nearly halved, falling from 30 percentage points at the end of 2016 to just 16 points at the end of 2019.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said: “In just three years, the number of American consumers living in areas without access to fixed broadband at 25/3 Mbps has been nearly cut in half. I’ve personally met some of these consumers, from Mandan, North Dakota to Ethete, Wyoming. And over the last two years, the percentage of rural Americans without access to mobile broadband with a median speed of 10/3 Mbps has been slashed from over 35 per cent to under 10 per cent. I look forward to seeing the Commission continue its efforts to ensure that all Americans have broadband access.”

Omdia predicts an eco-friendly future for Telco!

Green Energy has been front and centre of telcos’ Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts, according to a market study by research house Omdia.

The Omdia team has been tracking the ESG announcements (192 of them) of 15 key communications service providers for its ESG Service Provider Index and found that, between 2019 and November 2020, all 15 released official statements about green energy measures, with that topic accounting for a quarter of all ESG announcements.

As the chart above shows, Digital Inclusion and Social Welfare also featured strongly in telco ESG announcements, while topics such as Conservation and Diversity featured less often. It also noted that among those being tracked, Vodafone, BT, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Verizon, Comcast, and KDDI have all pledged a date by which they will reduce their carbon emissions to net zero.