PON 2020 reality check – Broadband Forum vBASe webinars provide exclusive insight and overview of market

PON 2020 reality check – Broadband Forum vBASe webinars provide exclusive insight and overview of market

By Bernd Hesse, President and Marketing and BASe Chair of Broadband Forum

According to OpenVault’s Broadband Insights Report, broadband usage increased by 47% during the first quarter of 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This statistic emphasizes our ever-growing dependence on broadband networks across the world and the increasing strain operators are under. Alongside this, new connected services are growing in popularity, including the Connected Home, UHD streaming and Virtual Reality. At the same time, customer experience has never been more critical.

To ensure our broadband networks can cope with these rising trends and future demand, the industry must come together. And yet, at a time when reporting new breakthroughs and sharing best practices is more critical than ever, countless meetings, conferences and exhibitions have been and continue to be cancelled.

This is exactly why Broadband Forum moved ahead with its BASe series, turning our face-to-face workshops into a series of extremely informative and well-attended webinars.

Once uPON a time

Our PON 2020 Reality Check series consisted of a total of six webinars. In the first – The Worldwide PON Market – experts from FTTH Council Europe, Fiber Broadband Association and Omdia revealed the progress countries around the world are making with fiber and the positive impact roll-outs can have, including reduced unemployment rates and an improved economy. Calix gave the vendor perspective in this session in its presentation titled Status of New Higher Speed PON Standards – ITU and IEEE.

The next three webinars covered The State of PON Components, The State of Vendor PON Solutions and The State of PON Applications in the Telco Market with speakers from Bifrost Communications, Calix, PICadvanced, Sumitomo Electric, and Tibit Communications taking part in the first and representatives from Calix, DZS, FutureWei, Nokia, and SK Broadband involved in the second. The third brought together operators AT&T, CityFibre, Orange, Verizon, and Vodafone.

In the next session, Domos, EXFO, F-Secure, Go!Foton, and Google, joined Broadband Forum to cover Best Practices – PON Challenges Today and in the Future, with separated wirelines and wireless fiber networks, disjointed optical network architecture and fragmented optical monitoring highlighted as potential challenges to overcome.

Last but not least, The State of PON in the MSO Market explored the visions and preferred PON technologies of leading cable operators and vendors from Europe, North and South America, as well as the challenges and opportunities when migrating and complimenting their existing HFC/DOCSIS investment. Experts from Calix, CommScope, Liberty Global, and Telecom Argentina provided key insight.

Increasingly relevant

With end-customers becoming increasingly reliant on digital technology in their day-to-day lives, the topic of PON has become even more relevant in recent months. Crucial to providing reliable, low latency connectivity, operators need to make the right technology choice as roll-outs across the world ramp up to meet growing demand.

Overall, our webinar series showed a bright future for PON and for operators. Analysis indicates that many operators and governments are working towards future-proofed Fiber-to-the-Home/Building (FTTH/B) deployments, subsidy programs for harder-to-reach areas are being launched and new initiatives are being defined by European governments to reach Digital Agenda goals by 2025.

In addition, the industry is rising to the challenge, with more and more solutions to enable high-speed connectivity and more cost-effective builds being launched. Standardization also has a key role to play, giving operators the confidence for a seamless evolution to the networks of tomorrow.

As we continue to see unprecedented demand for connectivity, fiber infrastructure will enable efficient business and enhance end-users’ connected experience, delivering ubiquitous connectivity to all corners of residential and commercial premises.

Moving forward, Broadband Forum plans to summarize the findings of the vBASe Series “PON 2020 Reality Check” in a white paper. Please reach out to info@broadbandforum.org if you wish to contribute.