2022.10.28 – Open Broadband News

HomeGrid Forum and Broadband Forum collaborate for inaugural G.hn Access event

The Plugfest demonstrates the continued importance of G.hn Access technology’s role in delivering multi-gigabit services. The event saw participation from BBF and HGF members including; Albis Elcon, Comtrend Corporation, devolo AG, MaxLinear, Methode Electronics, Inc, Positron Access Solutions Corp, ReadyLinks and SendTek Corporation, and was supported by testing equipment providers Sparnex and Telebyte.

Vendors came together to gain early access to the forthcoming G.hn Access Certification testing that has been jointly developed by both parties. Participation in the event with such access to the testing program allowed those involved to be confident in accelerating service deployments with highly performant standard-compliant G.hn Access certified systems.

Ken Ko, Managing Director at Broadband Forum says: “We were delighted to collaborate with HomeGrid Forum and successfully hold the first ever G.hn Access Pre-Certification Plugfest at UNH-IOL’s labs, with participants both on-site and remotely connecting to the test beds from around the world. We continue to showcase the importance of G.hn Access technology in providing multi-gigabit services across the industry.”

The app-enabled services gateway: A game-changer for service providers

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 that were keen to figure out of how to offer new value-added and containerized services inside the remote Residential Gateway.

Read the full editorial article in Telecom Tech Outlook from John Blackford, Chairman of Broadband Forum and Engineering Fellow at CommScope here.

ZTE shares insights into challenges and strategies for multi-service access at Broadband Forum workshop

Chen Aimin, Chief Optical Access Architect at ZTE Corporation, shared insights into the technological challenges and coping strategies for multi-service access in the 10G Passive Optical Network (PON) era at the Broadband Forum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

“The 10-Gigabit-capable Symmetric Passive Optical Network (XGS-PON) has a mature industry chain now and is ready for large-scale deployments, which will vastly enhance the multi-service access capability of PON networks,” said Mr. Chen.

The Software-Defined Access Network (SDAN) technology is employed to expose the foundational capabilities of the OLT to the SDAN controller through the NETCONF/YANG protocol. The Information Technology (IT)-based architecture of the SDAN controller makes the network more open and agile so that operators can innovate services rapidly.

Broadband Forum is focused on accelerating broadband innovation, ecosystem development and the evolution of broadband networks. Its members continue to develop multi-service access networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market. Based on Broadband Forum standards and ZTE’s own understanding of multi-service access, the company has launched TITAN, its flagship optical access product designed for the 10G PON era.

The global internet divide is still wide and deep, according to report

Surfshark, a well-regarded VPN service company based in the Netherlands, has a penchant for in-depth research and has just released a study covering the variations and aberrations found between both narrowband and broadband internet access around the world. It throws a harsh spotlight on some extreme differences between developed and developing economies.

Now, even though 5.11 billion people (that’s 65.6% of the global population) use the internet, the rest of humanity, the “digitally dispossessed”, find that, even where it is actually possible, access to the internet is uneven, partial and often cripplingly expensive. As things stand, 8.2% of the global population lives in a country with an internet penetration of 50% or less. By way of comparison, almost 90% of the population of Europe has access to the internet. Globally, the lowest internet penetration is found in Africa.

One of the most stark and notable findings is that internet users in lower-income countries have to work for three times longer (in terms of hours of labor) than users in higher-income nations to be able to afford to access the internet and, when they can actually use the internet, it works three times more slowly than connections in higher-income countries.

Come on in, the open RAN water’s (nearly) fine

Open radio access network (open RAN) technology may not be ready for prime time, but remarks by panelists participating in Light Reading’s Open-RAN Digital Symposium point to growing confidence and support for this new way of building mobile networks – even though much work remains on aspects such as interoperability.

Momentum is certainly building, but there is still a lot left to be ironed out in terms of the technology and how open RAN will be deployed by operators. Gabriel Brown, Senior Principal Analyst, Mobile Networks at Light Reading sister company Heavy Reading, noted that the industry is now “between four and six years into the current open RAN cycle.” And while open RAN is currently sub-scale, “it’s growing fast,” he added.

Brown pointed to figures from sister company Omdia, which tracks the open vRAN market. “It was up 300% in 2021 and crossed the billion dollar threshold last year. It’s going to grow strongly in 2022 as well. The current estimate is that it will be about 16% of the overall market by 2026,” Brown added. “It could go a lot higher.”