2021.05.28 – Open Broadband News

The evolution of fixed broadband access in an open, cellular-first world

 Broadband Forum’s Vice President Strategic Marketing and Business Development Craig Thomas was one of the guests in TelecomTV’s roundtable on ‘The Evolution of fixed broadband access in an open, cellular-first world’ at its Open Access Summit.

Craig discussed what Fixed Mobile Convergence means for operators across the industry, the main trends in technology, operations and economics that are driving change in broadband access networks, whether it is possible for the same physical networking and IT systems to enable wired and wireless access services to all types of end users, and how open source developments such as Broadband Forum’s OB-BAA (Open Broadband – Broadband Access Abstraction) are impacting access network architectures.

“Whilst we talk about virtualization of services and disaggregation as a main trend, we cannot ignore the fact that there is already a lot of investment in the network,” Thomas said. “No one is going to revolutionize their network overnight, so we have to make sure we have the ability to migrate across the existing hardware platforms to a totally virtualized and disaggregated network and understand the investment that the vendors are making in partnering with service providers all the way to the home. The user experience has to be the end-goal whether that’s deployed via a mobile or fixed network so that you are now managing multiple users inside the home or multiple customers. Broadband Forum’s USP is driving that experience that we are looking at multiple customers across the single broadband network.”

To access TelecomTV’s roundtable in full, click here.

Facilitating the ongoing transformation of 5G networks

As operators and technology providers continue to jointly develop 5G convergence standards, five esteemed presenters, including representatives from Nokia, Telstra, Telecom Italia and Ericsson, recently convened at the Broadband Forum’s BASe knowledge webinar entitled ‘5G Wireless – Wireline Convergence Work Overview Webinar’ to discuss the shared goal of realizing a converged wireless wireline network within the Broadband Forum.

Drawing on the expertise of the panel who are all instrumental in the Forum’s work in driving open standards, the webinar began by discussing the formation of 5G Wireless Wireline Convergence (WWC) within the Broadband Forum and 3GPP. The webinar explored the factors that are currently driving convergence, elaborated on deployment scenarios and answered questions that operators may be asking in the light of WWC.

To download the full recording and slide deck, please click here. Read the full blog.

Watch the TeleSemana webinar exploring the integration of complementary copper technologies

Broadband Forum recently published its technical report TR-419, which revealed how fiber-based access can be provided to customers by utilizing existing copper infrastructure as opposed to the installation of fiber to end-users’ premises, which may not be economically or physically viable.

Herman Verbueken (Nokia), Helge Tiainen (InCoax) and Livia Rosu (HomeGrid Forum) discussed how economic deployments can be realized by service providers and telecom operators by integrating complementary copper technologies such as Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) Access, ITU-T G.fast, or ITU-T G.hn-based Access and reusing existing phoneline and coaxial cables.

The TeleSemana webinar entitled ‘Leveraging existing copper infrastructure to offer access like fiber’ was aired to executives across Latin America.

To register for a free account with TeleSemana, and to access the exclusive webinar, click here. Download the full recording here.

This time for Africa! Latest report highlights the continent is set to flourish

While many sectors and facilities have seen their state affected by the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the same cannot be said of progress in digital transformation, especially in Africa.

The new report from International Telecommunication Union (ITU) titled “Digital trends in Africa 2021: Information and communication technology trends and developments in the Africa region, 2017-2020,” has extrapolated that although the pandemic has created chaos in many sections and infrastructure the world over, the trajectory for digital transformation has assumed an upwardly mobile trend.

“Ultimately, at the heart of this historical transformation, ICT infrastructure is the predominant enabler – along with fit-for-purpose policy – of the future competitiveness and prosperity of Africa. Robust infrastructure on which emerging technologies ride can help meet some of the continent’s most pressing challenges. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that improving ICT infrastructure is more than a goal for operators and consumers; far more than simply facilitating mobile and broadband connections,” the report added.

Order, order! Internet heralded as essential public service in Columbia

 The Colombian House of Representatives signed an initiative that makes the Internet an essential public service after a unanimous decision.

This new legislation seeks to reduce the digital and access gap of a population in which only 14 percent of households in Colombia (7.6 million households) have access to the Internet by fiber optics, according to the data collected by Rojas and which they substantiated The initiative; indicators that are deepened in rural areas. Therefore, it also plans to stimulate the deployment of infrastructure and connectivity, while controlling rates.

“The Internet is a tool that favors equal opportunities,” said Oscar Sánchez León, a member of the House of Representatives of Columbia since 2014 for the Liberal party, and admitted that as a result of the pandemic they could understand that the Internet is a “primary factor” to enhance basic tasks such as study, work and life in general and he considered it “the new need in a connected society.”

Open RAN hits fifth gear! Asia-Pacific drives surge in market

The Asia-Pacific region is driving the surging market for open radio access network (RAN) networks, according to a new survey.

The Dell’Oro group says that total open RAN revenues — including compatible macro-cell and small-cell radios plus baseband hardware and software — increased around five-fold in the first quarter of 2021 over the same period last year.

“The operators in the APAC region are largely behind the surge,” says the report, by Dell’Oro VP Stefan Pongratz. This is “underpinned by a fairly synchronized migration from proprietary RAN towards open RAN in Japan.”

“At the same time, open RAN small-cell activity is on the rise.” Faster growth with millimeter wave deployments in Japan, are helping to drive this, he writes, “with multiple operators now embracing the benefits of combining the higher spectrum with the sub 6GHz bands”.