2021.03.26 – Open Broadband News

MaxLinear, Axiros, and Vodafone members among those awarded for broadband work in 2020

The Broadband Forum recognized significant contributions made to the successful development of broadband open standards at its first quarterly meeting of the year. MaxLinear’s Dr. Aleksandra Kozarev was recognized as a Distinguished Fellow for helping drive forward copper technologies including G.fast, G.hn, MoCA, and VDSL2 across the industry. She has also been a driving force behind FANCE (Fiber Access Network Copper Extensions), opening the path for extending fiber fed services into the premises.

Circle of Excellence awards were presented to Daniel Egger (Axiros) and Jonathan Newton (Vodafone) for consistently exhibiting leadership and diligence in pursuit of advancing the Forum’s mission. Outstanding Contributor awards were given to; Al Morton (AT&T), Peter Thompson (PNSol), David Woolley (Telstra), Mateusz Lech (Orange), Marcos Martinez Vazquez (MaxLinear), Ruobin Zheng (Huawei Technologies), Nick Hancock (Adtran) and Rosaria Persico (TIM).

“2020 was a year full of challenges and saw the broadband community come together as one to continue to work together constructively and collaboratively to keep the industry progressing and thriving,” said Broadband Forum Chairman John Blackford. “It goes without saying that we are delighted to recognize the important contributions these individuals have made in helping the Forum break into new areas of technology, and their vision continues to inspire our industry’s growth.”

‘Broadband Forum’s TR-069 Self-Testing Tool Promises Faster Connected Device Certification

Certifying internet-connected devices for the home as compliant with the broadband industry’s most widely deployed management protocol will become quicker and easier thanks to today’s approval of the first TR-069 self-testing tool.

The enablement of self-testing for TR-069 provides operators and vendors with the ability to perform test procedures themselves that would normally be carried out by a qualifying test lab. It also ensures that vendors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can prove their devices work, which offers providers a benchmark they can use with vendors and their customer integrations. TR-069 enables the remote and safe configuration of network devices, or customer premises equipment (CPE).

“This is a landmark moment for global broadband players across the industry as our first self-certification tool as part of the BBF.069 CPE Certification Program will allow devices to pass certification quicker than ever before,” said Broadband Forum Managing Director Ken Ko. “As vendors and providers seek to introduce products to market cost-effectively, they now have the opportunity to get involved in the program and have the confidence to certify their products seamlessly”.

UK Government announces first areas to benefit from Gigabit Broadband

The government has announced the first stages of its plans to get ultra-fast broadband to the remotest of homes in the UK. Originally it had promised to roll out gigabit-speed broadband to every home in Britain by 2025 but that was reduced to 85% coverage in November.

The budget remains at £5bn – but only £1.2bn of that will be made available up to 2024. The infrastructure build should start in 2022, the government said. The first to benefit will be homes and businesses in Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Tees Valley. The next areas are expected to be Norfolk, Shropshire, Suffolk, Worcestershire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden said: “We’ve already made tremendous progress with Project Gigabit – our national mission to get everyone in the country the fastest broadband on the planet. We’ve gone from around 9% coverage in 2019 to 40% now – I’m confident we’ll get to 60% by the end of the year. The challenge is the last 20%, which can’t be delivered commercially – and that’s what our plans being outlined are all about.”

Bahrain fixed broadband prices decrease 47% in 2020

Prices of fixed broadband in Bahrain decreased significantly by up to 47% between 2019 and 2020, according to the 2020 Arab Telecommunications Retail Price Benchmarking Report published by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of Bahrain.

According to the findings of the report, fixed and mobile broadband prices in Bahrain are among the lowest in GCC and Arab countries. With regard to mobile services, telecom operators in Bahrain offer competitive prices at the GCC and Arab level, specifically in high-usage packages.

Shaikh Nasser added: “Following the completion of Batelco separation process and establishment of the National Broadband Network, TRA focused on the implementation of the Fifth National Telecommunications Plan (NTP5), which sheds light on several aspects, including access to fixed broadband using fiber-optics and 5G services for consumers in the Kingdom, in addition to improving the average data download speeds in order to meet accelerated consumer preferences. Through these initiatives, TRA seeks to achieve the strategic purpose of ensuring the Kingdom is regionally and internationally at the forefront, allowing Bahrain to be a regional platform for trade, and ICT.”

Consumer device market set for meteoric post-pandemic growth

Despite the mass disruption to production lines and supply chains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer technology devices such as 5G smartphones, video streaming devices, and voice control smart home devices remained remarkably resilient, and the home networking device market saw shipments accelerate in 2020.

Global tech market advisory firm ABI Research has just released a report from its new Consumer Technologies service, which forecasts that consumer devices supporting Ultra-wideband (UWB) connectivity, including cellular devices, smart home appliances, and automotive will reach approximately 286 million units in 2021. The report also finds that 1.15 billion 5G smartphones will ship in 2025 and the wearables and true wireless headsets market will see explosive growth, overcoming 1 billion shipments in 2025.

“Consumer technology device shipments will gradually recover in 2021 as the impact of the pandemic starts to wane, consumer confidence returns, and device supply chains bounce back to near- pre-COVID levels. Notably, ultralow-power Machine Learning (ML) chipsets and devices supporting ultra-wideband (UWB) are among the major consumer technologies that will take-off this year,” says Khin Sandi Lynn, Industry Analyst at ABI Research.

Researchers use subsea cables to detect earthquakes

A team of seismologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in partnership with optics experts at Google, have developed a method to use existing subsea cables to detect earthquakes.

Using the new technique, the entire length of a submarine cable acts as a single sensor in a hard-to-monitor location. Polarization can be measured as often as 20 times per second, so if an earthquake strikes close to a particular area, a warning could be delivered to the potentially affected areas within a matter of seconds.

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the research is detailed in the journal Science, in which Zhongwen Zhan, Assistant Professor of Geophysics at Caltech said: “We believe this is the first solution for monitoring seismicity on the ocean floor that could feasibly be implemented around the world. It could complement the existing network of ground-based seismometers and tsunami-monitoring buoys to make the detection of submarine earthquakes and tsunamis much faster in many cases.”