2022.03.18 – Open Broadband News

Check out our Q1 quarterly newsletter!

Broadband Forum had a strong finish in 2021, with its highest number of members in more than a decade. 2022 has continued in this vein, with our virtual Q1 meeting being a massive success. At the meeting, many Technical Reports moved through the ballot stages and an unprecedented amount of work took place to deliver new marketing reports.

Last year we published a new Technical Report nearly every three weeks, in addition to holding 15 training workshops and recording more than 30 hours of industry education videos. Our Work Areas and project teams are maintaining this momentum in 2022, which is especially impressive considering we have been operating virtually for a full two years now. We have high hopes that this will change and that we’ll move back to face-to-face meetings in Q3.

Congratulations to our new and re-elected board members and officers and thank you to those board members that are standing down. Our industry-renowned educational BASe series is also growing at record levels. The 2022 BASe program is already experiencing more sponsors than ever before, and we are planning more virtual events and thankfully ‘in-person events’ this year. 2022 will see BASe drive over 18 events through the year. Read the full Q1 newsletter here.

Broadband Forum achieves 5G convergence milestone

The convergence of wireless and wireline networks to provide a seamless 5G experience no matter how consumers are connected has been made possible for the first time as Broadband Forum completes Phase 2 of its 5G work.

Three new specifications have been released – TR-456 Issue 2 ‘Access Gateway Function Functional Requirements’, TR-470 Issue 2 ‘5G Wireless Wireline Convergence Architecture’, and TR-124 Issue 7 ‘Functional Requirements for Broadband Residential Gateway Devices’ – which together provide operators with new 5G deployment options, including 5G hybrid access using wireline and LTE or NR.

“The Phase 2 work has delivered multi-session and enhanced authentication support for legacy Residential Gateways that do not have any 5G capability. Multi-session will enable the same user to connect to multiple service networks, while previously the user was limited to a single data network. This additional improvement can be considered a foretaste of what will be possible with 5G-Residential Gateways,” said Rosaria Persico, Principal Broadband Forum Delegate, TIM. “Operators are able to leverage innovation and common procedures specified by Broadband Forum that result in enhanced customer experience across available access network assets, and this specification development will ensure a smooth evolution path to a standardized 5G hybrid model.”

For the full press release, click here.

Congratulations! Industry leaders celebrated by Broadband Forum  

Broadband Forum has recognized and honored a number of key industry players with a host of awards at its annual Q1 Meeting last 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. “The work of the Broadband Forum is crucial for the development of open industry standards and an accelerated broadband ecosystem globally. I am proud to be an active participant, because the Broadband Forum continues to drive innovation and growth within the industry.”

Read more here.

Private networks sector set for stellar growth, according to IDC

The global market for private LTE and 5G wireless infrastructure is tipped to grow almost fourfold during the next five years and be worth a whopping $8.3 billion in 2026, according to a new forecast from IDC.

The research house says worldwide revenues from private LTE and 5G wireless infrastructure hit more than $1.7 billion in 2021 and is set to grow by a cumulative 388 percent in the next five years as more enterprise users decide there is value in having their own private cellular wireless network.

“While private LTE/5G infrastructure continues to see more interest, the reality is 5G itself continues to evolve for the next several years. As such, many organizations are expected to invest in private 5G over the coming years as advances are made in 5G standards, general spectrum availability and device readiness,” explained Patrick Filkins, Research Manager for IoT and Telecom Network Infrastructure at IDC.

FWA nabbed 38% of broadband share in Q4 as possible ‘fiber bubble’ forms

Amid a frenzy of Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) network building activity that might foreshadow the formation of “fiber bubble,” recent fixed wireless access (FWA) deployments have begun to make a dent in the market and steal some of the broadband spotlight.

Based primarily on the results of Verizon and T-Mobile, the US FWA market captured about 38 percent share of broadband industry net adds in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to a new market analysis from MoffettNathanson. It’s early days for FWA, but recent subscriber results indicate that the category “has gone from low-level background noise to suddenly a major force, with Verizon and T-Mobile alone capturing more than 300K FWA subscribers in the fourth quarter,” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett noted.

But he still wonders if wireless operators can and will allocate enough capacity for FWA to fully scale. But FWA’s strong Q4 showing left cable’s flow share at just 66 percent, about the same as cable’s share of installed US broadband households. “In other words, Cable likely neither gained or lost share during the quarter, and instead merely treaded water,” Moffett noted.

NCC report reveals that millions of Nigerians still do not have access to telecom services 

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has revealed more than 35 million Nigerians have not taken up telecommunications services, pointing the blame to lackluster infrastructure in the country. 

NCC Executive Vice-Chairman Professor Umar Danbatta said the problem means there is a large number of people who do not have access to digital financial services which brings a host of benefits to those unable to open a bank account.

“It is a challenge that is attributable to the inadequacy of both wireless and fiber connectivity infrastructure. The fact remains that more citizens will embrace the digital financial culture when they have access to telecom services in the distant, isolated, unserved, and underserved communities where they dwell”, said Danbatta as reported by The National.

“We are, therefore, conscious of the urgency of increasing investment in both fixed and wireless infrastructure. This will make the target of at least 80 percent level of financial inclusion in about four years possible.”

Study reveals that streaming video on demand clouds brand choices 

For the past four years, Hub Entertainment Research’s ‘Evolution of Video Branding’ study has been tracking awareness, familiarity, and understanding of top brands in the TV marketplace. Here are the key findings from this year’s study:

1. Although consumers don’t have a strong understanding of many TV streaming brands, as described below, they tend to be more confident describing brands that they feel focus
2. When consumers are asked which genres they associate with each service, two of the Big 5 SVoDs (Subscription Video on Demand) stand out as having a unique content image.
3. Consumers essentially see FASTs (free ad-supported TV streaming services) as one large, indistinguishable category.

“TV services have been ramping up their ad spending in recent years; in fact, the number of streaming service ad impressions more than doubled between 2019 and 2020,” said Peter Fondulas, principal at Hub and co-author of the study. “As a result, virtually everyone has heard of most of the TV streamers in the market today. But those ad initiatives have not been nearly as successful in helping potential users understand why they should sign up for any given service.”