2022.09.16 – Open Broadband News

Broadband Forum and HomeGrid Forum come together to unlock G.hn Access certification benefits for operators’ deployments

Collaboration between Broadband Forum and HomeGrid Forum has helped unlock greater interoperability and gigabit plus performance for service providers, as the two leading standards development organizations have jointly developed a GHNA (G.hn Access) Certification Program.

The GHNA Certification Program is designed to combine Broadband Forum-based performance testing with HomeGrid Forum-based compliance and interoperability testing for access equipment implementing the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) G.hn standard (ITU-T G.996x series).

“The new collaboration will have widespread ramifications to benefit broadband players across the industry,” HomeGrid Forum President Livia Rosu said. “Thanks to the new GHNA Certification Program, service providers will have the confidence to undertake and accelerate effective service deployments with highly performant, interoperable and standard-compliant G.hn Access certified systems that have been awarded both the Broadband Forum and HomeGrid Forum stamp of approval.”

The next steps of the collaboration will see the first vendors pass the BBF.GHNA beta trials, to be held at University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) during the week of 26th September 2022, which coupled with GiGAWire testing will lead to GHNA certification.

Israel ranked top in Digital Quality of Life worldwide

The fourth annual edition of the Digital Quality of Life Index has reported that Israel is now ranked at the top of its list, coming in above 116 other countries and overtaking Denmark after its two-year lead.

The report was conducted after considering five ‘fundamental digital wellbeing pillars’: internet quality, e-government, e-infrastructure, internet affordability, and e-security.

Since last year, fixed broadband speed in Israel has grown by 15.8% (23.3 Mbps).

“While countries with a strong digital quality of life tend to be those of advanced economies, our global study found that money doesn’t always buy digital happiness,” explains Gabriele Racaityte-Krasauske, Head of PR at Surfshark. “That is why, for the fourth year in a row, we continue analyzing the Digital Quality of Life to see how different nations keep up with providing the basic digital necessities for their citizens. Most importantly, our research seeks to show the full picture of the global digital divide that millions of people are suffering from.”

NTIA won’t have the broadband map it needs for BEAD until 2023

Billions in federal broadband funding is stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to release new coverage maps which will be used to determine how much each state will receive. But while the FCC just announced plans to come out with the first version of its new map in mid-November, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Chief Alan Davidson indicated his agency won’t use the first rendering to divvy up broadband support.

Speaking during an Internet Innovation Alliance event, Davidson explained that while the NTIA is eager to get money from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program out the door quickly, “we need to do this accurately.” That means waiting until the FCC’s new map has gone through at least one full challenge process.

“We realized pretty early on the first draft of this new map which is going to come out this fall, it’s not going to be as good as we’d like it to be,” Davidson said. “We’ve heard from states and from communities they want the chance to challenge the map. They want at least one shot at coming in and saying ‘you missed these locations in our community that aren’t on your fabric, aren’t shown as locations’ or ‘a provider says they’ve got high-speed internet service on this street but we can tell you they actually don’t.’”

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss Commits to “Faster” UK Broadband Build

The new UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss, entered 10 Downing Street by acknowledging that “we need to build roads, homes and broadband faster” than they have been doing so far. But it remains to be seen whether that statement is more than just a sound bite.

Truss has not entered office with a clear target for improving broadband and mobile connectivity. Indeed, her opening speech didn’t even define what kind of “broadband” (gigabit or otherwise) she was talking about.

As it stands now, the targets under the UK Government’s £5 billion Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme are at least reasonably realistic. The UK is currently also one of the fastest in the world for new deployments of Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure.