2022.09.23 – Open Broadband News

A smooth evolution path to a standardized 5G hybrid model

5G’s ascent to the upper ranks of the connectivity food chain is allowing mobile technology to finally catch up with the demands and price points of fixed line services. But despite the buzz touting 5G’s impact on our handheld devices, it is not an exclusively mobile technology.

The convergence of wireless and wireline networks will provide a seamless 5G experience no matter how consumers are connected, delivering on the technology’s many promises – from better and differentiated QoE and network quality, to advances in the IoT and AI fields.

5G is also an opportunity for operators to converge the fixed and mobile side of their networks. This opens the door to seamless wireline or wireless access connectivity from residential and single or multi-tenant business locations, radically altering users’ network experience. It will enable operators to provide a uniform experience to their customers irrespective of the access or appliance they are using.

Broadband Forum’s Wireless-Wireline Convergence (WWC) Work Area, in cooperation with 3GPP, has been busy laying the groundwork for that to happen. Devised in 2017 to address the needs of operators so they could leverage their assets with combined subscriber offerings with a converged core, new Broadband Forum specifications this year have advanced this mission significantly.

Read the full blog article from Christele Bouchat and Manuel Paul, Work Area Directors of the Wireless-Wireline Convergence Work Area at Broadband Forum here.

The EU unboxes its plan for smart device security

European Union lawmakers have proposed a new set of product rules to apply to smart devices that’s intended to compel makers of Internet-connected hardware — such as ‘smart’ washing machines or connected toys — to pay extensive attention to device security.

The proposed EU Cyber Resilience Act will introduce mandatory cybersecurity requirements for products that have “digital elements” sold across the bloc, with requirements applying throughout their lifecycle — meaning gadget makers will need to provide ongoing security support and updates to patch emerging vulnerabilities — the Commission has said.

Penalties proposed by the Commission for non-compliance for “essential” cybersecurity requirements scale up to €15M or 2.5% of worldwide annual turnover, with other regulation obligation breaches having a maximum sanction of €10M or 2% of turnover.

US dominates global hyperscale datacenter capacity and will continue to do so

The US is home to more than half of the world’s hyperscale datacenter capacity and with growing numbers of such facilities that dominance is not set to diminish in the coming years, according to new insights published by the Synergy Research Group.

According to the research house, there are now more than 800 large datacenters around the world operated by the hyperscale giants. Some 53% of the operational datacenter infrastructure is located in the US, while Europe is home to 16%, China 15%, and the remaining 16% are located in other parts of the world.

“Hyperscale operators take a lot of factors into account when deciding where to locate their datacentre infrastructure,” according to John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group. “This includes availability of suitable real estate, cost and availability of power supply options, proximity to customers, the risk of natural disasters, local incentives and approvals processes, the ease of doing business and internal business dynamics. This has inevitably led to some hyperscale hot spots.”

Driven by PON, broadband equipment spending sets record in 2Q22

Network operators spent a record $1.3 billion on PON optical line terminals (OLTs) during the second quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, quarterly XGS-PON ONT unit shipments exceeded 1 million for the first time, reaching 1.2 million worldwide.

Thanks in large measure to a 19% year-on-year jump in PON gear spending, worldwide revenues within the broadband equipment market reached $4.5 billion in the second quarter of 2022, says Dell’Oro. The total, a 12% uptick from the second quarter of 2021, set a revenue record, the market research firm states in its 2Q 2022 Broadband Access and Home Networking Quarterly Report.

“Operators in Europe, China, and Southeast Asia increased their spending on PON equipment, offsetting some seasonal slowness in North America,” noted Jeff Heynen, Vice President, Broadband Access and Home Networking at Dell’Oro. “The transition to fiber is clearly a worldwide phenomenon, no longer isolated to just a handful of countries.”

The benefits of network disaggregation

Network disaggregation will deliver multiple benefits to telcos as they migrate towards telco cloud architectures according to Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO at Canadian operator Telus in an interview with TelecomTV.

“When you disaggregate networks it creates resiliency as you’re able to provide a level of independence to self-contained pieces, you don’t need to build a network end to end, you’re able to emulate a network everywhere so this aggregated network is critical for that point,” said Gedeon.

“Also, from a control management point of view when you disaggregate the network you’re building on common blocks, so it’s easier to build support mechanisms and tooling around it. And that but not least, in a disaggregated network you actually have the freedom to own your own destiny and build the pieces that you think are very critical, so these points are not just attractive from a technical point of view.”