2022.08.26 – Open Broadband News

FBA: Fiber a factor in move decisions as more head for rural areas

A new report from the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) found rural move activity is biased in favor of areas with Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) availability. That could prove to be bad news for cable incumbents given the study also noted more consumers now say they’d prefer rural to urban living.

FBA’s report was conducted by consulting firm RVA LLC and based on an online survey of 3,000 consumers in March 2022. It found approximately 92% of U.S. residents are connected to the internet at home, with 77% on wired services and 15% on wireless. In terms of market share among primary residences, cable leads with 49% followed by fiber with 21.3%, DSL with 13.1%, mobile at 11.7% and fixed wireless access at 3.1%. Others have estimated cable’s market share at around 69%, but RVA noted its calculation does not include business customers, second homes or cable customers served by FTTH.

The survey found consumers across rural, suburban and urban living preferences cited “very high speed/reliable internet access” as a top priority, ranking this the third most important community attribute behind “safe streets/low crime” and affordable housing. Interestingly, it also noted more consumers now say they would prefer to live in a remote small town if they were able to get the level of internet access they need.

Peruvian fixed broadband connections rise to 3.17 million

Peru continues to see healthy growth in fixed broadband, with connections rising 5.2% year-on-year to 3.17 million at the end of June 2022.

According to figures from regulator Osiptel, over the last 12 months to June 30, some 157,000 new connections were added, driven by household contracts.

Household internet lines totaled 2.9 million at the end of June, which was up 6.49% compared with the same date in 2021.

Fiber optic internet access continues to advance, with year-on-year growth of 178%. At the end of the second quarter, the “others” category of internet connections, which includes fiber optics, increased 38.1% year-on-year to 1.12 million connections. Fiber optics account for 78% of this group.

India climbs table in fixed broadband rankings

According to Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index, India was ranked 72nd in June globally for broadband internet speeds but climbed to 70th in the month of July.

Fixed broadband internet has seen some improvements, with the median download speeds decreasing from 48.11 Mbps in June to 48.03 Mbps in the month of July.

However, Ookla’s CEO recently told IndianExpress that the country is still “playing catch-up with already established 5G markets, it’s not starting from scratch.”

It is interesting to note that India’s overall broadband ranking is on the lower side. With 5G just around the corner, India’s ranking is expected to improve in the coming months. According to a statement by Union Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, 5G networks are slated to become operational in 20-25 cities and towns by the end of the year.

Spain gains 1.1m FTTH connections

The number of active FTTH connections in Spain reached 13.2 million at the end of the second quarter.

According to the regulator CNMC, this was 1.1 million more than a year earlier, with 66,894 added in June.

Alongside this growth in FTTH came a corresponding reduction in the number of DSL lines, which fell by 0.5 million in the year to June 30.

A Residential Gateway App Store & More

Containers – those packages of software that contain all of the necessary elements to run in any environment – are often associated with the rise of the cloud.

Broadband Forum’s Service Provider Action Council has sparked the initiative to standardize software containerization on the Residential Gateway within the home to create an “App-Enabled Services Gateway.”

The new effort, WT-492, is part of the Broadband Forum’s Broadband User Services (BUS) Work Area. It builds on the Broadband Forum’s earlier in-home network standardization efforts around TR-069 and TR-369 (User Services Platform – USP).

“We started with TR-069 which was managing device management of the basic home gateway, we then introduced TR-369, also known as USP, that managed not just the home gateway but many devices behind it. Now if you can containerize it into software, we’re eliminating the need for separate hardware, but it’s still fundamentally part of TR-181 and TR-369 itself,” said Craig Thomas, the Broadband Forum’s VP of Strategic Marketing and Business Development.

Listen to the full interview here: https://www.viodi.tv/2022/08/19/a-residential-gateway-app-store-more/