2022.10.14 – Open Broadband News

Improved network quality and user experience to be showcased in CloudCO Demo

As the broadband industry migrates to software defined open networks, 14 vendors, service providers, and consultancy companies are coming together to demonstrate greater automation, reduced network congestion and greater interoperability.

Improved quality and user experience in case of Wi-Fi or network congestion, better utilization of network resources, and zero-touch service provisioning from multiple vendors will be delivered at this year’s CloudCO Demo from Broadband Forum at Network X (previously Broadband World Forum). This has been enabled by this year’s sponsors: Altice Labs, Deutsche Telekom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Radisys, Reply and Zyxel.

“CloudCO provides a network operator with a “step by step” approach to migrate from existing infrastructure while still amortizing their existing hardware investments. Our work is enabling operators to disaggregate their networks, virtualize functionality, and move to the SDN driven solutions of the future,” said Broadband Forum Technical Chair Lincoln Lavoie. “The open standards work is available to any vendor so it can truly enable the flexibility and commercial ability for the operators to select any vendor who complies with the open interfaces and specifications inside their CloudCO enabled network.”

The CloudCO framework brings tangible benefits to the industry and helps operators migrate from legacy networks traditionally based on many individual network elements to a truly open software defined access network. This virtualization and disaggregation of the network can help operators build their network based on their specific requirements, and they can have confidence that these components can interoperate with each other.

Read the full press release here.

The app-enabled service gateway project revolutionizing business

Broadband Forum’s new WT-492 ‘Software-Based Architecture for the App-Enabled Services Gateway – Design Principles’ standard promises service providers app-store-like functionality for their subscriber edge platforms. The main goal behind launching this system is to standardize software containerization on the Residential Gateway within the home.

In peoples’ homes today there are multiple devices being used throughout every room. If you think about all of the Over-The-Top (OTT) services that are being providing into homes, this would be through smart home hubs, firewall gateways, and separate SD-WAN gateways themselves. If there was a way to containerize that software into the service providers’ Residential Gateways, there would be huge ecological benefits, including a reduction in power needed. It also brings value back to the service provider, as it is their Residential Gateway, and they can offer those services to third parties directly instead of simply utilizing OTT services for consumers via the Internet. How great would that be?

The idea behind this revolutionary platform originated from Broadband Forum’s Service Provider Action Council, a group of members who were keen to figure out of how to offer new value-added and containerized services inside the remote Residential Gateway.

Read the full blog from Craig Thomas, Vice President Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Broadband Forum here.

Broadband Forum points out new transport specifications

The Broadband Forum released two new 5G transport specifications that help support applications that demand a lot from the network. The newly released architectures provide service providers with the infrastructure needed to sustain high-performance transport networks, which can power “demanding” 5G applications.

TR-521 provides architectural recommendations and equipment capable of serving as suitable transport networks to support the 5G Mobile Radio Access Network (RAN). This is because a transport network of this technology, when interconnecting with a 5G RAN, provides connectivity to the 5G mobile network.

“These transport networks must be prepared to support the large number of use cases and services that can be realized with 5G, with features that include greater capacity, improved performance and high reliability”, says David Sinicrope, Director of Access. and Broadband Forum Architecture Transport.

Broadband access extension technologies will help solve MDU connectivity challenge

Next-generation fiber technology has already been widely deployed, and many locations are seamlessly, swiftly and relatively inexpensively served by fiber. However, offering reliable, unfailing broadband access to multiple dwelling units (MDUs) remains challenging.

For buildings such as apartment complexes and hotels, operators face considerable headaches as they look to address the additional complexity and costs involved. With the global pandemic placing operators’ fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) strategies under further scrutiny, the difficulties of installing costly fiber to multiple tenants or workers within a building comprising different offices, rooms and apartments can prove insurmountable.

The collaboration in the Broadband Forum’s PHYtx Work Area among industry associations, such as HomeGrid Forum and MoCA, ensures that service operators can remain ahead of their customers’ demands with these cost-effective deployment options and managed services. Broadband Forum’s TR-419 work is technology agnostic, allowing service providers to choose the most appropriate technology for each deployment. TR-419 defines alternative and complementary architectures for extending fiber networks, simplifying the rollout of symmetric and asymmetric multi-gigabit services, and facilitating seamless fiber deployments.

Take a look at Herman Verbueken’s editorial article in Broadband Communities Magazine here.

Does the CHIPS Act end the chip shortage any time soon?

The pandemic helped ignite a global chip shortage hurting many vital sectors which has recently led to historic investments both abroad and in the US by government and private chipmakers.

In the US alone, the CHIPS Act provides $52 billion in grants and subsidies for new fabs and has elicited a flurry of investor responses. At least seven major semiconductor companies plan to build more than $200 billion in fabs in coming years, according to an updated tally by Fierce Electronics.

Chip shortages have led to increased chip production for some chip nodes in the past year. Customers have bought more chips than normal to stock up reserves while also meeting the terms of non-cancellable orders.

Even with the CHIPS Act in the US in place and the promise of future fabs, the supply of basic materials like copper, cobalt and lithium and the potential for shortages of neon gas used in chip production could face shortages due to geopolitics.