2022.11.04 – Open Broadband News

Network quality over bandwidth – speed is not enough

We will continue to see a shift to a service-orientated ecosystem over the next 12 months, according to Craig Thomas, Vice President, Strategic Marketing & Business Development at Broadband Forum, who advises on the important role that standards will play.

The demand for superfast next-generation technology experienced a sharp rise during 2022. Remote working and online leisure activities have risen exponentially in recent years largely due to the global pandemic, and required increased bandwidth inside homes.

The high demand for business, mobile and residential Passive Optical Network (PON) bandwidth ultimately requires deployments that exceed 10Gb/s. 10 Gigabit Symmetrical PON (XGS-PON) is projected to play a huge role in the coming years as network capacity requirements grow. But, speed isn’t everything. We are at a turning point as operators look to differentiate beyond speed and price, and standards are set to play an even more pivotal role in helping the industry become more service aware.

Read the article from Thomas in Fibre Systems here.

Revolutionary transformation doesn’t occur overnight

This year, we have seen a continued shift to agile network service delivery from Proof of Concept to real-world deployments and a multi-service broadband network. Therefore communication service providers (CSPs) are under pressure to upgrade and transform their networks, pushing to support services beyond simply delivering network connectivity.

With an increasing number of connected devices, CSPs are tasked with supporting these high-bandwidth applications and services with a network that offers both Quality of Experience, Quality of Service, and low latency. All while also maintaining the security of the network and systems attached to it.

They need to focus on this network transformation and bring about cost reduction, through the likes of automation and better usage of resources. Open source will be a key component in this transformation, but it is not the only component. The growing adoption of cloud technologies including Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are helping to lessen the demand placed on CSPs’ network architectures, as well as creating new opportunities for more advanced automation in the operational domain.

While virtualization of services and disaggregation are two key trends, we cannot ignore the legacy investment already made in CSPs’ networks, such as traditional access nodes serving large regions of subscribers. No one can afford to revolutionize their network overnight.

Lincoln Lavoie, Technical Chair at Broadband Forum spoke to ISE Magazine, and you can read the editorial piece in full here.

USDA awards $759M in ReConnect funds for projects in 24 States

The U.S. Agriculture Department is awarding $759 million in ReConnect program grants and loans for high-speed internet access projects across 24 states, Puerto Rico, Guam and Palau.

The investments include funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides $65 billion to expand reliable, affordable, high-speed internet to all communities across the U.S. The money comes from the third funding round of the ReConnect Program.

“People living in rural towns across the nation need high-speed internet to run their businesses, go to school and connect with their loved ones,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a prepared statement about these latest ReConnect projects. “USDA partners with small towns, local utilities and cooperatives, and private companies to increase access to high-speed internet so people in rural America have the opportunity to build brighter futures.”

Consumers want more detail, internet metrics in FCC broadband labels, survey says

As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeks to implement broadband “nutrition” labels in the market, there has been discussion on what information these consumer labels should specifically include.

New research from Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab Security and Privacy Institute suggests people prefer having more details about broadband performance – including when a provider’s service is considered “normal” or “worse than normal.”

In a study of over 2,500 U.S. consumers, CyLab asked participants how they felt about the FCC’s initial broadband consumer label formats from 2016. One major takeaway was consumers were interested in measures of performance other than download speed. They wanted to know about a provider’s service in “normal” or “much worse than normal” conditions, rather than the typically advertised top internet speeds.

IDC: Worldwide smartphone shipments down by 9.7% in Q3 2022 

Worldwide smartphone shipments declined 9.7% year over year to 301.9 million units in the third quarter of 2022 (3Q22), according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

The drop marks the largest-ever third-quarter decline and the fifth consecutive quarter of decline for the smartphone market as shipments continue to struggle amidst weakened global demand and economic uncertainties.

“A majority of the decline came from emerging markets where lack of demand, rising costs, and inflation impacted consumers with lesser disposable incomes,” says Nabila Popal, research director with IDC’s Worldwide Tracker team.