2021.05.07 – Open Broadband News

Key partnerships create FCC Compliance Ecosystem using Broadband Forum standards

Broadband providers that have been building networks under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) funding programs such as Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM), Connect America Fund (CAF) and Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) must soon submit network performance on those new builds to the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), the administrative authority for the FCC, per FCC order DA-18-710.

This order specifically endorses the Broadband Forum TR-143 standard to meet their exacting network performance requirements for all service tiers up to and beyond one gigabit per second. The Broadband Forum defined diagnostic standards in TR-143 long before FCC compliance requirements were contemplated. These standards had to be updated once FCC compliance was introduced and are now a viable solution for any FCC program.

“We’re at an exciting time in the industry, with the need for whole-home coverage, blazing fast performance and easy compliance all converging,” says Craig Thomas, Broadband Forum Vice President of Strategic Marketing & Business Development. “Broadband Forum, with NISC and leading operator participation, is pleased to share that the latest TR-181 data model satisfies all of these requirements, including testing to the highest performance tiers of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.”

UNH-IOL expands Wi-Fi Performance testing offering to include TR-398 Issue 2

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance solutions for the networking industry, announced an expansion of its “Wi-Fi” performance testing services to now include the new Broadband Forum TR-398 Issue 2 test plan and Wi-Fi 6 requirements defined in the IEEE 802.11ax standard.

The testing is crucial for validating consumer and enterprise-grade IEEE 802.11 stations and access points used in broadband deployments. Verifying performance can help reduce support expenditures and customer complaints due to poor Wi-Fi caused by badly performing devices.

The Broadband Forum’s TR-398 test plans, both Issue 1 and the new Issue 2 represent a first in the industry to define absolute requirements on device and Wi-Fi performance in a way that is repeatable and allows direct comparisons between devices and testing results. Lincoln Lavoie, Senior Engineer of Broadband Technologies at the UNH-IOL also stated that its updated Wi-Fi performance testing services enable service providers and device manufacturers to validate the devices used in their broadband deployments before those devices ever reach field deployment.

You can view the Broadband Forum’s TR-398 test plans here.

Already? 6G deployments could start as early as 2028

The commercial launch of 5G started in 2019. Alongside deployment activities, academia and industry are starting to envision the sixth generation of wireless technology for the 2030s, and many related research projects have already started. According to the time frames of previous wireless network deployments, global tech market advisory firm ABI Research forecasts that 2028 and 2029 will be the early commercial deployment years for 6G, with the first standard technology expected around 2026.

“X Reality (XR), which is a combination of Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR), is a promising solution for 6G to create a mixed real and virtual environment with either real-time or non-real-time human-machine interaction,” says Jiancao Hou, 5G & Mobile Network Infrastructure Senior Analyst at ABI Research. “In the 2030s, 6G could be the key enabler to realizing ubiquitous connectivity with a wide range of devices/sensors using in diverse communication environments.”

5G is designed to provide a peak data rate of 20 Gigabit per second (Gbps), and an average user experience rate of 120 Megabit per second (Mbps). These numbers probably need to be revised to 1,000 Gbps and 1 Gbps, respectively, in 6G to support applications like XR and holographic communications, where THz communications can play a vital role due to its extremely wide bandwidth.

The drive for fiber skyrockets in Latin America

Latin America continues to be a prolific market with very real possibilities of expansion for Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) deployment. The pandemic has caused several challenges for the industry – financial, personal and service – but in Latin America it has also increased awareness of how vital it is to offer faster, more capable communication services to maintain the higher connectivity now demanded. Service providers and governments are finding new ways to support the growth of FTTH networks.

Recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicates that from June 2019 to June 2020, Costa Rica enjoyed the third largest rise (62.2 per cent) in fiber optic network deployment, only behind Israel (99.8 per cent) and the United Kingdom (69.3 per cent). Fiber deployments in Chile grew by 37.6 per cent, ranking sixth on the list. Furthermore, the growth of connections is higher than the average for OECD countries, which reached 13.5 per cent in the period.

Edna Preuss, Director, Industry Affairs and Member Services at the Fiber Broadband Association’s LatAm Chapter, explained: “The demand for bandwidth already seen in past years continues to increase, and, more than ever, operators and governments in the region are invested to improve services of fiber optic networks.”

Get to work! Full fiber to bring millions back to UK workforce

The Centre for Economics & Business Research (CEBR) and Ofcom have today released separate, albeit complementary, reports that take a post-COVID19 look at the UK’s digital divide. The CEBR in particular estimates that 1 million people could return to the workforce with FTTH broadband available across the UK (up from the previous estimate of 500,000).

The CEBR, which was commissioned by Openreach (BT) to examine the issue, has updated its conclusions based on evidence around expected future levels of home working. As part of that the study also predicted that a truly “nationwide ultrafast full fiber” broadband network could boost UK productivity by up to £59 billion by 2025.

Matt Warman, UK Digital Infrastructure Minister, said: “Boosting Britain’s broadband networks is pivotal to our plans to build back better from the pandemic. That’s why we’re working hard to bust the barriers firms such as Openreach face when building their networks and investing £5 billion in Project Gigabit to ensure even hard-to-reach areas benefit from lightning-fast connectivity.”