2021.05.14 – Open Broadband News

Hard work pays off! Broadband Forum Honors ADTRAN’s Nick Hancock

ADTRAN®, Inc., the leading provider of next-generation open networking and subscriber experience solutions, today announced that the Broadband Forum awarded Nick Hancock, Systems Engineer for ADTRAN, as an Outstanding Contributor for his dedication to advancing the Forum’s Common YANG Work Area. ADTRAN is dedicated to collaborating with industry groups, like the Broadband Forum, to advance network strategies as it continues to be recognized for its domain expertise in software-defined access (SD-Access) networks.

Hancock is part of ADTRAN’s engineering and research team based in Germany, where approximately one in three German homes and businesses leverage ADTRAN equipment to connect to the internet. His main responsibility is to serve as a Data Model Architect, designing and implementing YANG data models for ADTRAN equipment. ADTRAN’s SDX series of open and disaggregated network elements natively support modern interfaces and data models, including NETCONF/YANG, allowing them to be managed by any open access domain SDN controller and orchestrator or the ADTRAN Mosaic Cloud Platform.

“I am honored to receive the Outstanding Contributor Award for a second time. It has been thrilling to collaborate with such an esteemed working group at the Broadband Forum,” said Hancock. “My main goal in 2020 was to move the development of the Software Management YANG model forward, and we’re looking forward to its future publication soon.”

Global telecoms services sector forecast offers little joy for telcos

According to TelecomTV, anyone hoping the 5G era would help telcos ramp their service revenues and enter a new era of financial prosperity should take a look at the latest global telecom services forecast from IDC and temper their expectations, because the research house expects the overall worldwide market to grow during the next five years, but not by much.

For 2021, IDC expects the worldwide market to grow slightly, by 0.7%, to $1.54 trillion, with slight growth during each of the next four years to take the market over the $1.6 trillion mark by 2025. But while on the face of it this isn’t bad news – the market isn’t expected to shrink, at least – is this enough to give the network operators the confidence to invest suitably in their networks, systems, human resources and processes?

The world is now revolving around digital services, yet the traditional suppliers of communications services don’t appear to be the ones that will financially benefit, no matter how much time, effort and money they pump into 5G. Let’s hope the sector can prove IDC wrong by generating higher levels of services revenue growth and giving some credence to the idea that 5G might actually be a catalyst for new service revenue potential.

Ofcom calls on providers to carry the customer service mantle

In a report discussing fairness commitments made by providers in 2019, Ofcom said that major providers have taken steps to offer fair deals, provide clear information and offer better support for customers, but there is more work to be done.

The average call waiting time for broadband and landline customers in 2020 was four minutes and nine seconds – around twice the wait customers experienced in 2019. Every broadband provider included in Ofcom’s analysis had seen its call waiting time increase in 2020.

Waiting times for mobile customers were much shorter than for broadband customers – an average of two minutes and seven seconds. However, this was also significantly slower than the one minute, 18 second waits the average customer experienced in 2019. While one in ten mobile customers said they’d had reason to complain about their service in 2020, a quarter of customers said the same about their broadband service.

How much?! Biden allocates funding to future-proof broadband networks

In unveiling his massive infrastructure spending proposal, US President Biden suggested allocating $100 billion to “future proof” US broadband networks. Many saw that phrase as shorthand for 1Gbit/s fiber connections.

However, the Biden administration’s new guidelines for federal spending on broadband offers plenty of wiggle room around that number. Biden’s Treasury and Commerce Departments recently suggested that “broadband” networks in the US provide at least 100Mbit/s download speeds and 20Mbit/s upload speeds. But their rules also consider households to be “unserved” generally if they can’t get at least 25Mbit/s down and 3Mbit/s up. Meaning, the Biden administration is encouraging the construction of telecom networks that provide at least 100Mbit/s speeds, but it will still consider 25 Mbit/s as the baseline for broadband services. That’s undoubtedly music to the ears of incumbent cable and telecom executives, according to the financial analysts at New Street Research.

“The guidelines suggest that at least the Treasury and Commerce Departments are not supportive of providing federal funding to those areas served by advanced cable networks but not served by fiber,” wrote the New Street analysts. “We think such guidelines, by effectively discouraging funding of what investors think of as ‘overbuilding,’ support what we refer to as the bull case.”

Fiber’s the word! Total number of homes in the EU passed with fiber passes 182 million

The FTTH Council Europe revealed the 2021 Market Panorama and the latest figures outlining fiber deployment trends in Europe prepared by IDATE.

The total number of homes passed with Fiber to the Home (FTTH) and Fiber to the Building (FTTB) in the EU reached nearly 182.6 million homes in September 2020, compared to 172 million in September 2019. A key milestone has been reached, as FTTH/B Coverage in EU now amounts to more than half of total homes. The number of FTTH and FTTB subscribers in Europe increased by 16.6% in EU in the year since September 2019 with 81.9 million FTTH/B subscribers in September 2020.

This year, the country adding the most subscribers is located in Western Europe. France added 2.787.000 new FTTH/B subscriptions. Fiber technologies have been continuously evolving during the last few years with a predominance of FTTH architecture over FTTB (63% vs 37%). Alternative Internet Service Providers are still constituting the largest part of FTTH/B players, with a contribution of around 57% of the total fiber expansion.

“The telecoms sector can play a critical role in Europe’s ability to meet its sustainability commitments by reshaping how Europeans work, live and do business. As the most sustainable telecommunication infrastructure technology, full fiber is a prerequisite to achieve the European Green Deal and make the European Union’s economy more sustainable,” said Vincent Garnier, Director General of the FTTH Council Europe.