2022.03.11 – Open Broadband News

Industry leaders celebrated by Broadband Forum at its annual Q1 Meeting

Broadband Forum has recognized and honored a number of key industry players with a host of awards at its annual Q1 Meeting this week.

Broadband Forum awarded its Distinguished Fellow accolade to CommScope’s John Blackford. Appointed as the Broadband Forum Chairman in 2020, Blackford has made integral contributions for almost two decades. He has trailblazed flagship projects such as the TR-069 protocol and driven the specification and development of the User Services Platform (USP) in the Broadband User Services (BUS) Work Area and the Open Broadband-USP-Agent (OB-USP-Agent) Project.

“I am grateful to be receiving this esteemed recognition from the Broadband Forum for all my contributions,” said Blackford, who is a Product Management Director with CommScope’s Home Networks business segment. “I am proud to be an active participant, because the Broadband Forum continues to drive innovation and growth within the industry.”

The Q1 Meeting follows another successful year for the Broadband Forum, as it celebrated a ten-year high in membership numbers, with 178 members involved in driving industry standards to strengthen broadband deployments worldwide.

DZS CMO opens Broadband Forum Q1 2022 Meeting with a bang!

DZS CMO Gunter Reiss presented at the opening plenary talk for the Broadband Forum’s Q1 2022 Virtual Meeting, held this week. Mr. Reiss addressed the momentum driving broadband infrastructure to open standards, the mega-trends fueling bandwidth demand and a shared industry vision for enabling the transformation of service providers to experience providers.

“The emergence of high-bandwidth applications such as 5G/6G, telemedicine, interactive video gaming, augmented and virtual reality, Internet of Things, the 3D metaverse, Smart Homes, Buildings & Cities and autonomous cars are fueling broadband demand like we’ve never before seen,” said Reiss.

DZS has been in alignment with many facets of Broadband Forum’s mission and efforts, as reflected in its contributions to the Forum’s activities, including initiatives of multiple Forum Work Areas, including Fiber Access Networks, Wireless/Wireline Convergence, SDN & NFV and Broadband User Services.

UK and Japan join forces to forge closer links on telecoms

The UK and Japan have agreed to a closer cooperation in solving global telecoms supply chain issues. The UK minister for Digital Infrastructure Julia Lopez and Japan’s Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Yuji Sasaki agreed to several joint initiatives to support efforts to reduce the global overreliance on a small number of suppliers to build and maintain telecoms networks.

Both nations committed to greater information sharing on their respective policy approaches seeking to build a more competitive and diverse global market for telecoms equipment, including for 5G and future wireless networks. Further commitments include deeper cooperation on research and development, particularly on open and interoperable network technologies such as Open RAN, which allow telecom providers to mix and match technical equipment from different suppliers within a network.

UK Digital Infrastructure Minister Julia Lopez said: “The UK and Japan share a track record of strong leadership and expertise on telecoms and we both recognise the need for a more diverse global telecoms market. This partnership opens up important new avenues for our countries to work together to pursue our shared goal of a more secure, competitive and innovative telecoms supply chain.”

Private Networks market projected to reach $109 billion by 2030

According to new research published by global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, the overall market for private networks within enterprise verticals will reach US $109 billion by 2030. This includes radio access network, edge and core deployments, as well as professional services revenues, which alone will contribute US $47 billion (44 percent) to the market size in 2030.

It is important to realize that the telco industry must act sooner rather than later. Enterprises have been waiting for vitally important 5G capabilities like ultra-reliable low latency and massive machine-type communication for years. This year will therefore be a crucial one for enterprise 5G.

Leo Gergs, Senior Analyst for Enterprise Connectivity and 5G Markets at ABI Research said: “We will either see the first steps away from trials, testbeds, PoC deployments by the end of the year, or the road for enterprise 5G will become increasingly difficult. A crucial step will be the emergence of enterprise-grade devices that address the key requirements to serve particularly mission- or even life-critical use cases.”

US broadband customers took a tumble last year – report

According to Leichtman Research, US telcos were unable to maintain the huge surge in customers they saw in 2020.

Of course, the notable thing about that year was the emergence of COVID-19. Lockdowns meant that more people had to subscribe to more telecoms services to work, study, and socialize. New customer growth slowed considerably in 2020; with the large US telcos adding around 2,950,000 subscribers. The number of subscribers added in 2020 is a return to more “normal” growth and is actually higher than in each year from 2016 to 2019. In 2019, for example, the telcos added around 2,550,000 subscribers.

“Broadband additions proved to be resilient in 2021 following 2020’s pandemic-related surge in subscribers,” said Bruce Leichtman, President and Principal Analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc.