Go backstage with Broadband Forum editorial specs and Atlassian tools

Go backstage with Broadband Forum editorial specs and Atlassian tools

By April Nowicki, Member Support Manager at Broadband Forum

The work of the Broadband Forum spans many areas, from detailed architectural and protocol specifications to consumer-facing and marketing documentation, specifications defining how to use different types of transmission media to provide high-speed connections, open source broadband access constructs, and more.

Behind the scenes, Broadband Forum participants navigate detailed tools and rules while empowering the Forum’s accelerating progress. To get the most of your company’s membership with the broadband industry’s leading organization focused on innovation, standards, and ecosystem development, there are three important principles to learn:

1. Why Broadband Forum?
2. How to navigate the Forum’s member-only tools
3. Understanding how Broadband Forum work progresses

How does Broadband Forum work?

Broadband Forum is comprised of more than 160 leading broadband service providers, vendors, and industry ecosystem enablers. Companies may participate via a range of access levels, contributing towards standards that drive a healthy industry ecosystem, reducing the total cost of ownership and speeding up time to deployment and to market.

The four farthest-reaching telco topics – 5G, Connected Home, Cloud, and Access Technologies – are split into focused Work Items, each delegated to a group of experts who collaborate to shape the projects into Technical Reports, Test Plans, and marketing collateral.

Our community is growing quickly, with more than 30 companies and organizations joining Broadband Forum throughout 2020. To learn more about where your company would best fit in, download information about BBF here, or contact us for an introduction.

Broadband Forum tools

The Broadband Forum Wiki is a collaboration tool for members to participate, contribute, and collaborate on projects, serving as our members-only home base for everything Broadband Forum. The Wiki works in tandem with other tools, including Jira project management, Bitbucket code repository, and Bamboo continuous integration. This allows our members to collaborate in real-time across the industry and across all corners of the globe.

The Wiki (also known as Confluence) is also used for administrative purposes, including the preparation of meetings, agendas, project descriptions, and more. Jira is a project management database used to progress Broadband Forum projects, and holds draft Working Texts (WTs), contributions, and ballot comments. Additional software tools include SonarQube, Artifactory, and others which are currently being used for the Forum’s Open Broadband (OB) work, with many software deliverables being released via GitHub.

The site is used regularly by vendors, service providers, regional operators, industry experts, and more. The Wiki can also be used for exploring work in progress, including the disaggregated Broadband Network Gateway (BNG), security for the Connected Home, and CloudCO migration and access abstraction, helping to shape the future of broadband. With hundreds of active users contributing to more than 50 ongoing projects, the pace and steps involved can be confusing for new members.

To get around this, join someone with a map. Broadband Forum staff offer regular training sessions to introduce our work and provide guidelines for navigating the tools and procedures. The next training for BBF tools and projects is on Thursday, 11 March, 2021 at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. More information is available here.

Editorial specifications

While the Broadband Forum encompasses a wide array of activity including Open Source software development, Testing and Product Certification programs, and Open Standards, Technical Reports (TRs) are still among the most valuable resources we produce, and are offered entirely free of charge to the public. These documents span a wide range of topics, including access and transport architecture, YANG, wireline-wireless convergence, and more. The Forum also goes beyond technical work: many technical specifications are released in tandem with marketing collateral documents.

The Broadband Forum Open Standards editorial process is similar to that of many other industry Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs). You may be here to keep a close eye on particular device requirements, or to help correct a bug, or have a new topic that you’re exploring opportunities for. If you know standards, you’ll know how to handle the BBF Working Text template – and if you don’t, our Editors and Staff are available to help you get started and to understand where your company fits in the big picture.

A new BBF Editor training session will launch on Tuesday, 2 March, 2021 at 1 p.m. Pacific Time. Register here.

Do you have any other questions about how Broadband Forum works? If so, contact us at info@broadband-forum.org.