2021.06.11 – Open Broadband News

Broadband Forum welcomes surge of new members

The increasingly crucial role global open standards are playing in driving forward the broadband industry is behind the recent growth in new members of the Broadband Forum. This follows a successful 2020 that saw a rise in worldwide participation and industry interest in the group and highlights the leading open standards organization’s continued influence and support.

Broadband Forum continues to see a surge of new companies from around the globe. This year Airties, Alethea Communications Technologies, APS Networks, Ciena, General Mobile, Genew Technologies, Google Fiber, H3C, Harmonic Inc, Heights Telecom, Hitron Technologies Inc, KPN, Liberty Global, Merocom Solutions, Microsoft, RDK, Technetix, Tellabs, TP-Link, Travelping GmbH, and Vecima Networks Inc have been welcomed in the first few months of 2021.

Broadband Forum Director of Membership Development Rhonda Heier said: “The last twelve months has seen the Broadband Forum continue to make substantial strides in the most challenging times. We appreciate the service providers, vendors and influencers across the globe that are collaborating together in the Broadband Forum to drive forward our critical work in 5G, Connected Home, Cloud and the Next Generation of Access technologies.”

See the full new members press release here.

Portuguese broadband soars: Thanks to Fiber-to-the-Home!

Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) accounted for more than half (56.4%) of the 4.2 million fixed broadband connections in Portugal in the first quarter.

This, according to the regulator ANACOM, was 4.7 per person higher than in the same period last year. Meanwhile, cable Internet access accounted for 28.6% of the total, down 1.3 per person on a year earlier, and ADSL 8.1%, down 25.5% as they were replaced by next-generation accesses.

Fixed accesses supported on mobile networks increased by 3.6% and accounted for 6.8% of total accesses. The total number of fixed broadband accesses in Q1 was 4.8% higher than a year earlier.

Gigabit-speed subscribers rise as data usage tumbles

After what it called pandemic-fueled rapid growth last year, OpenVault has released network consumption data showing that network users continued to adapt to the new broadband environment by embracing faster speeds, with data usage moderating in the first quarter of 2021.

Almost one-tenth (9.8%) of all subscribers were found to have provisioned for gigabit speeds at the end of Q1, a year-on-year increase of 261% from the Q1 2020 figure of 3.8%, and a 15% increase from the 8.5% adoption rate in the final three months of 2020.

Power usage and extreme power usage – defined as consumption of more than 1 TB and 2 TB per month, respectively – declined in Q1 2021, with the percentage of the former dropping by 12% to 12.4% on an annual basis and from the 14.1% recorded at the end of the fourth quarter of last year. Even though it stressed that it did not track device usage, OpenVault observed that the declines are related to subscribers returning to office and school environments.

Report reveals that US cable operators face rising fiber threat

Most US cable operators can expect to see competitive overlaps with FTTH rivals ramp up by 2025 as several telcos push ahead with fiber expansions or upgrades of existing DSL or VDSL networks.

But, according to a new forecast from MoffettNathanson, Cable One should see the biggest surge in competitive fiber overlaps in the coming years – going from about 10% overlap today to about 36% by 2025. Comcast, Charter Communications and Altice USA are also expected to face an increase in FTTH competition, albeit not quite as sharp a rise as what Cable One is expected to face.

“A reasonable argument could be made that the telcos are more likely to upgrade higher density markets, resulting in disproportionately more fiber being built in, say, Comcast’s footprint than Cable One’s,” Moffett wrote. “On the other hand, one could argue that the telcos have largely already built to the most attractive markets, and what’s left in Comcast’s footprint isn’t significantly more or less attractive than what’s available in Cable One’s. We also don’t know how much fiber will be built by companies not included in our analysis.”

Moffett currently expects US telcos to deploy FTTH to 66.95 million homes passed by 2025, or 49% of total passings. That compares to 37.80 million, or 29% of all passings, in 2020.

Internet speeds soar in North Africa over the past year

A report by Speedtest Intelligence of Ookla reveals that every North African nation improved their mobile and fixed broadband speeds from Q2 2020 to Q1 2021, despite huge setbacks in the global economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This report explores the state of Internet performance in the North African countries of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia from Q2 2020 through Q1 2021. It also examines which mobile and fixed broadband providers in these countries had the best speeds, consistency and 4G Availability during Q1 2021.

Morocco has the fastest mobile download speeds in North Africa, whereas Egypt is fastest for fixed broadband.

During Q1 2021, the report highlighted that the North African mobile operators showed a wide range of performance across the region. Morocco’s Maroc Telecom had the fastest median mobile download and upload speeds in North Africa during Q1 2021 at 40.32 Mbps and 12.60 Mbps, respectively. Egypt’s WE Internet had the fastest median download speed over fixed broadband at 30.60 Mbps while Libya’s LTC had the fastest median upload speed at 7.46 Mbps.