Broadband Forum welcomes surge of new members as connectivity rises up the agenda

Since the pandemic underlined the increasingly crucial role of connectivity, new members have been flocking to the Broadband Forum, which strives to produce global standards for broadband.

The Broadband Forum has welcomed the following in 2021: 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.

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.”

Testing IoT for interoperability, security and reliability

Internet of Things (IoT) market news has been dominated by stories about poorly performing solutions, security flaws and difficult user experiences. These issues have led to a slow adoption rate of smart home products, with consumers wrestling with setup, connectivity, security concerns and a fractured market of available products and technologies. The consequences affect all those who would gain from an explosion in the smart home market, limiting new revenue opportunities for consumer electronics companies, cloud application providers and operators.

Developers and integrators are in a tough position when it comes to these network technology issues. Because they are under pressure to deliver quality solutions quickly, they often expect network interoperability to come for free with their embedded Linux implementation. But even when using open-source code, integration issues arise.

Ultimately, a focus on the connectivity and interoperability of IoT devices through repeatable, automated testing gives developers and integrators greater confidence in their products and the services they support. That means happier consumers and a more successful industry as a whole.

Take a look at the full article from Jason Walls of QA Cafe and Chair of the Broadband Forum Connected Home Council here.

Broadband Forum’s CloudCO is ready to usher in the SDAN era

Over time, broadband networks have become complex affairs. Siloed, monolithic and proprietary network solutions — while essential investments for meeting demand — have created inefficiencies and increased operating costs. The arrival of software-defined networking in the access network allows network operators to master this complexity.

By transforming networks with automated, cloud-native microservices-based network solutions, operators are expanding their ability to innovate, to scale, to be agile, and to reduce costs. This new architecture is based on open programmable APIs and data models for distributed network functions and services. The finer and automated level of control allows operators to quickly activate and easily monitor customer services, but also operate networks in an autonomous manner. The place to go to find specifications that define these capabilities is the Broadband Forum’s CloudCO.

CloudCO also significantly improves the automation capabilities. The integration of CloudCO with existing automation and OSS platforms is standardized (TR-411, TR-454), including the architectural framework to autonomously assure services and monitor resources (TR-436). For a real flavor of what it can achieve, check out the Cloud CO Virtual Demonstration from the Broadband World Forum 2020. CloudCO is important in that it allows interoperability for all solutions, traditional and disaggregated. Whatever the source, origin, vendor or pedigree. The future is clearly open: through standardized interfaces where possible and via software adapters where necessary.

Read the full article from Tim Carey of Nokia and the Work Area Director of Broadband Forum’s OB-BAA project here.

Hot off the press! Broadband Access equipment market up $3.3bn in Q1

According to a report by Dell’Oro Group, total global revenue for the Broadband Access equipment market increased to $3.3 billion in Q1 2021, up 18 per cent year-over-year (Y/Y). Growth came from spending on PON OLT ports, particularly 10 Gbps PON technologies.

“The shift to 10 Gbps PON technologies is happening quickly and on a global basis,” noted Jeff Heynen, Vice President, Broadband Access and Home Networking at Dell’Oro Group. “The only thing preventing further expansions are supply chain constraints and increased costs.”

Money, money, money! US Senators float 40 billion to close broadband gap

A bipartisan trio of US senators on Tuesday introduced legislation that would offer up to $40 billion to states, territories and tribal nations to improve the affordability and availability of broadband internet service. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Angus King, I-Maine, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, comes as the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding across the country, but amid a growing realization that the need for high-speed internet accessibility continues to grow.

The Broadband Reform and Investment to Drive Growth in the Economy Act, or BRIDGE Act, would create a new federal fund for the Commerce Department to make grants to build new networks, particularly in rural, tribal and or “high-cost” areas, which the bill defines as any region where the cost of building broadband service is higher than the average cost nationwide because of remote location, population density, high poverty rates or topography.

“The coronavirus pandemic has made it clear that broadband is essential infrastructure,” King said. “Over the last year-plus, Americans of all backgrounds have relied on the internet to work, learn, shop, and stay connected to their loved ones — but at the same time, far too many of our citizens could not access these opportunities.”

APS Networks opens door number three! Its three BNG switches will boost the disaggregated telco broadband market

APS Networks® launched three BNG switches which aim to comply with the Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP) OpenBNG requirements, enabling customers to choose between the TIP standard configurations (SC) SC-1, SC-2 and SC-3 leaf designs that best address end user demands. This provides operators flexible deployment options covering full-functionality deployments and service-only BNG deployments and leaf-spine configuration alternatives.

APS Networks® is a member of Broadband Forum, the leading open standards organization, that is increasing the scalability of operators’ networks by creating a simplified and more agile architecture to address the increased bandwidth demands being placed on BNGs due to the growth of broadband demand and video consumption across devices. Broadband Forum’s ‘Control and User Plane Separation for a Disaggregated BNG’ (TR-459) outlines the challenges in control plane and user plane scaling. This architecture reduces time to market for new services and simplifies network operation by reducing the number of management points.

“The industry continues to recognize the need for flexible scalability. This is achieved through an agile architecture constructed to meet service provider needs and a Disaggregated BNG ensures that operators no longer have to resort to simply adding more BNGs into the network,” said Broadband Forum Managing Director Ken Ko. “Disaggregated BNG user plane deployments can be easily scaled to match subscribers’ broadband demand and be managed by a single control plane function in a centralized location and can result in a reduced operational expenditure (OPEX) for operators. TR-459 specifically is a reference architecture with standardized interfaces and protocols that ensures our members such as APS Networks can seamlessly offer flexible deployment options for operators.”

Broadband Forum Q2 Newsletter

It is now two years in a row that the second of our quarterly meetings has had to be held virtually. While it does seem like a long time since we all met in Budapest in early 2020, attendance levels for this event remained high. Special thanks must be given to our hardcore North American leaders and members where sessions didn’t finish until 3 am or even later!

We would like to thank all members who contributed to our recent survey. We had a great response, which provided both a validation of our work and some great insights on how we can work even better. It was especially pleasing to see that over 93% of respondents say that they feel the value of their Broadband Forum membership to be at the right level or of great value to them.

The Newsletter also includes updates from all Work Area Directors at Broadband Forum, a recap of the news from the last quarter and what events to look forward to for the remainder of the year. Take a look at the Q2 Newsletter in full here.