2021.06.25 – Open Broadband News

Plans for change as the US maps broadband access inequality

For the first time, a federal agency has released a comprehensive online map clearly depicting what experts have long warned: Many parts of America — largely in poor, rural and tribal areas — lack quality and affordable broadband internet access.

The map offers some granular views of internet access in communities across the United States. It shows that in one largely working-class and Latino census tract in east Oakland, California, more than 26 percent of people do not have household internet access despite having commercial providers. The cost of internet access can often be a barrier for low-income households.

“As we release this important data to the public, it paints a sobering view of the challenges facing far too many Americans as they try to connect to high-speed broadband and participate in our modern economy,” Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo said in a statement.

The Biden administration is now hoping to take this broadband data and push for more investment in broadband access, which some cities have already done on their own through private fundraising.

Openreach expands full fiber rollout to 551 UK Locations

Openreach (BT) will add 551 new UK cities and towns to the rollout plan for their gigabit-capable Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network. The latest batch of locations accounts for a total of 5 million extra premises, all of which will be upgraded as part of their £15bn project to cover 25 million premises by December 2026.

The plan to reach 25 million (c.80% of UK premises) means that deployment pace will continue to ramp-up until it hits a peak of c.75,000 premises per week, and that equates to about 4 million premises deployed a year. To achieve this, Openreach’s own engineers will need to be supported by those from contractors including Kier, MJ Quinn and Telent.

Clive Selley, Openreach CEO, said, “Nobody’s building Full Fiber faster, further or at a higher quality than Openreach in the UK. Our engineers and build partners are working flat-out to deliver this life-changing technology to rural, urban and suburban communities all over the country and we’re delighted to be fleshing out our plans with more details about where and when we’ll be building.”

Nigeria sees $1.5bn investment into broadband expansion plans

Telecommunications group MTN Nigeria plans to invest 640-billion naira, or $1.5-billion, over the next three years to expand the country’s broadband access. The move is in line with the Nigerian government’s 2020 to 2025 National Broadband Plan ambitions of 90% broadband population coverage by 2025 and MTN Group’s Ambition 2025 strategy.

The group also plans to build a new flagship headquarters in Lagos to mark the twentieth anniversary of MTN’s operations in the country.

“Nigeria is one of our most important markets. We have a proud history of partnering with Nigeria and Nigerians to drive faster and more inclusive growth through digital transformation,” said MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita following a three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos, in which he met a number of key stakeholders.

Wi-Fi 6E set to open new doors for service providers

Pairing Wi-Fi 6 with a fresh swath of 6GHz spectrum sets the stage for a batch of new use cases and revenue-driving opportunities for cable operators and other service providers. And this emerging technology will also put those operators in position to match the performance of their access networks with customers’ home networks, says a CommScope exec.

Wi-Fi 6E, a technology that combines the latest Wi-Fi standard with fresh unlicensed spectrum in the 6GHz band, effectively establishes a “new platform” that will live alongside Wi-Fi’s legacy use of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, Charles Cheevers, Chief technology officer of home networks at CommScope, explained on a panel focused on Wi-Fi 6 and private networks at this week’s all-digital AngaCom conference.

“It’s a new VIP lane that allows the gigabit speeds of the network to pass now … in the home over 6GHz,” Cheevers explained. “Gigabit speeds on the network have to be translated to the network in the home.” But Wi-Fi 6E is not just about speed. Supporting lower latencies will also enter the picture as new devices supporting the standard can be scheduled and be made “deterministic” in the way that a DOCSIS or PON network can, Cheevers said.

“To do that on Wi-Fi is phenomenal,” he said. “That’s the key: Matching 6GHz networks to the PON and DOCISS 3.1 to 4.0 evolution, to be able to get those low-latency and constant jitter services.”

Can your network handle a HD Zoom call?

Broadband Forum’s Broadband Quality Experience Delivered (Broadband QED) is an initiative that looks beyond conventional measurements to improve overall broadband experience and improve management of network latency, consistency, predictability and reliability. It’s helping to give users what they want; seamless broadband connectivity, so that their applications can work optimally. The initiative is gathering momentum and is providing operators with the tools they need to meet current user requirements.

The QED framework allows us to confidently make precision statements about application outcomes caused by a network. For example, we can make easily understandable declarations such as: “This network will not cause Google Stadia to fail” or, “This network will cause Google Stadia to have insufficient response time for First-Person Shooters and poor animation fluidity.” “This network is sufficient for Zoom at 720p”. Statements like these are no doubt clearer for the average end-user (or perhaps even an ISP executive) than the alternative, which might sound like something along the lines of: “This network has 832 Mbps, 90ms round-trip latency, 93ms jitter, 0.001% packet loss.”

To counter these time-related issues, the QED Framework looks at distributions of latency, which lets us determine the likelihood of any particular latency value at this moment of time. As an example usecase, we could say that “there is an 0.001% chance that the latency will be over 200ms”. The reason we can make the translation from complex networks to statements about complex application requirements is the QED’s concept of Quantitative Timeliness Agreements (QTA). This can, in turn, let us understand whether a network is, for example, good enough for an HD Zoom call.

There can also be multiple quality levels for the application, for example a VoD 720p, 1080p, or 4K, or Zoom with or without video. Again, we can use multiple (even hundreds or thousands of) QTAs. Although we don’t have perfect QTAs yet, it is achievable. The behavior of the application is deterministic and governed by the rules set by the application developers. QTAs have a viable path for perfection and lets us start simple and expand without starting from scratch.

Make sure you watch our QED webinar recordings ‘Quality of Experience: Real-life Examples, Implementations & Technical Deep Dive’ and ‘Quality of Experience: Why Broadband Speed is not Enough’ to learn more.

Thumbs up for Heights Telecom and Merocom Solutions as both achieve GPON ONU Certification

Heights Telecom and Merocom have both had their first products certified within the Broadband Forum’s GPON ONU Certification program with their G4P5G and HT-360AXI products, respectively.

The BBF.247 GPON Certification Program has greatly supported the success of GPON technologies and deployments, helping the industry expedite fiber network rollout and this global BBF.247 GPON ONU Certification program helps pave the way for swift expansion of superfast broadband and the development of new technologies. It is based on test plans developed by the Broadband Forum and work undertaken jointly with FSAN (Full Service Access Network).

For a full list of GPON ONU certified products see here