Broadband Forum News - December 2024

The Headlines

CEO’s note

We are wrapping up another remarkable year at the Broadband Forum by celebrating the 20-year anniversary and sunsetting of our flagship TR-069, and an overall three decades of broadband innovation during our Fall Member Meeting in San Diego.

Looking ahead to 2025, we will soon be introducing a new work area structure to further streamline our standards work, which will take effect in Spring 2025. We’re excited to welcome you all to our next member meeting in Hong Kong, kindly sponsored by Huawei.

We have 12 in-person and virtual BASe events lined up in the new year as we continue driving industry education and collaboration to solve real-world challenges through open broadband standards and software. If you’d like to sponsor Broadband Forum’s BASe series, please contact Rhonda Heier ([email protected]).

We wish you all happy holidays and a Happy New Year!

Craig Thomas, CEO at Broadband Forum

Contribute to the future of broadband and work with the Broadband Forum!

A big thank you to Motive for sponsoring the Fall Member Meeting. Colin Grealish set the stage with his opening talk at the Town Hall Innovation sessions. Jeevithan Muttu followed up in the opening plenary by reinforcing the idea that seamless connectivity and reliability are table stakes, and that future differentiation will be based on data, analytics, and applying the resulting insights. Watch Grealish’s presentation here.
Want to get your brand or latest initiatives in front of the world’s most influential service providers and key players in the global broadband industry? Learn more about how you can sponsor Broadband Forum’s upcoming Member Meetings here.
In conjunction with CableLabs, Broadband Forum hosted a PON interoperability plugfest at CableLabs’ Interop Labs in Louisville, Colorado facility on October 28th – November 1st. This type of testing is essential to help the industry chart the next phase of specification development and drive interoperability between OLTs and ONUs. CablesLabs provides the technology, experts, and tools to advance ideas from research to real-world deployment. CableLabs also offers lab testing of HFC, FTTP and mobile network equipment. Plugfests, such as this one, provide the foundation for collaborators to gain valuable insights into the technology and operations needed to address real-world PON interoperability challenges. Members can get involved in the next PON interoperability plugfest at AT&T Labs’ Plano, Texas facility on 24th-28th February 2025 here.

News and updates

You can also read Broadband Forum Technical Chair and Principal Engineer at UNH Interoperability Labs Lincoln Lavoie’s blog touching on UNH-IOL’s 25-year partnership with BBF and UNH-IOL and the labs support during technological advances from ADSL (G.992.1) to the 50-gigabit PON technologies. You can read the full blog here.

The milestones along Broadband Forum’s journey have mirrored the incredible progress that has taken broadband from a dial-up alternative to multi-gigabit connectivity. We’re now at an exciting period for the broadband industry, where ultra-fast connectivity remains a need, but how operators pivot from the “speed sale” to meet the services-led demands of the subscriber, becomes an equally if not more important challenge. You can read CEO Craig Thomas’ blog reflecting on our 30 years of broadband innovation and looking forward to future developments involving collaboration, AI and sustainability here.

A new fiber extension certification program is streamlining the deployment of high-performance networks by broadband service providers (BSPs) thanks to a collaboration between two leading Standards Development Organizations. Positron Access Solutions and ReadyLinks have become the first certified system vendors to officially pass the Broadband Forum and HomeGrid Forum’s GHNA (G.hn Access) Certification Program. The program combines Broadband Forum-based performance testing with HomeGrid Forum-based compliance and interoperability testing for access equipment. You can read the news in SDX Central here.

The Broadband Forum announced that the Connectivity Standard Alliance’s Matter protocol will be integrated with USP allowing broadband service providers to deploy and manage compatible devices in the smart home seamlessly. You can read the news published by Broadband Communities Magazine here.

Bruno Cornaglia, Vodafone and SDN/NFV Work Area Co-Director and Mauro Tilocca, FiberCop and member of Board of Directors, discussed the latest developments within the Broadband Forum’s Automated Intelligence Management (AIM) framework and the benefits of AI and ML for broadband networks. You can read the full blog here.

The latest Town Hall Innovation Series, hosted alongside the Fall Member Meeting in San Diego, provided the membership with key insights on the smart home and IoT, including the increasing role and opportunity for generative AI and high-level security. You can find summaries of the six expert speakers’ presentations here.

Technology Spotlight

TR-069 and TR-369 (USP)

TR-069 – also known as the CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP) - has become an integral part of ISP deployments. By providing an interface for the remote configuration and management of billions of user devices, the standard has streamlined service provisioning and reduced operational expenditures for ISPs. Despite the sunsetting of the standard, TR-069 still serves as a key for those ISPs who wish to remain connectivity-only providers.

With the emergence of application management and enhanced network management capabilities, TR-369, the User Services Platform (USP), is providing the foundation for a shift towards more agile, distributed and robust services-led broadband offerings. USP helps broadband service providers deploy, implement, and manage all aspects of the smart home. The USP data model, architecture, and communications protocol enable devices from multiple vendors to connect to the Wi-Fi home gateway for the broadband service provider to manage.

As the broadband industry evolves, ISPs must adapt to new technologies and standards to both reduce costs and increase ARPU. One such evolution is transitioning from the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 protocol to the more advanced TR-369 which reflects the transition from a connectivity-driven to a services-led ecosystem. You can read a whitepaper from Jason Walls and Daniel Egger which guides ISPs through the transition from TR-069 to USP here.

Upcoming events

Empowering Service Providers to add New Value and Services – January 21st

PON Plugfest at AT&T Labs – February 24th-28th, 2025

Get involved in our most recent projects!

BUS: Conformance Test Plan for USP Agents Amendment 4 (DTP-469) – The project aims to update TP-469 with new test cases and corrections to align with the latest version of USP (1.4).

BUS: WT-434 Performance Testing of In-Premises Video Support over Wi-Fi – The project aims to create a performance testing plan for video service over Wi-Fi, specifically for IEEE 802.11 ac/ax/be compliant devices. Issue 1 of technical report will include a set of performance test cases for video over Wi-Fi in-home scenarios that can be applied to different deployments. The test cases will verify key performance aspects like baseline video performance, long-term video viewing, and video service under interference.

SDN-NFV: NETCONF and YANG Data Model Interoperability/Conformance Test Plans - This project will create Test Plans to ensure NETCONF/YANG interfaces work together, even when physical and virtual network functions and SDN Management and Control systems come from different vendors.

Our latest certifications

BFF 247 GPON ONU Products (testing services provided by approved laboratory, Lanpark)

Zyxel – PM7500-00

BBF 398 Carrier-Grade Wi-Fi Products (testing services provided by approved laboratories, University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory and Allion Labs). You can find out more about the latest issue of TR-398 here.

Calix – Calix 7u10txg

G.hn Access (GHNA) certified products

Positron G1001-C
ReadyLinks IPC-2TCP-RPF

Welcome new BBF members

As we wrap up yet another busy year, we want to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the new members who joined the Broadband Forum this year. Your collaboration and innovations have been instrumental for the sector’s development.

Our new members for 2024 included Alethea Communications, Anlix, Axyomcore, Comcast, Condor Technologies, Cortina Access, Easy Solutions, Embedd, Evolution Digital, Fiberhome, Freecast, Go Fiber, Hotwire, Lifemote, Made4it, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Motive Software Solutions, Positron Access Solutions, Precision Optical Technologies, Prpl, Sichuan Changhong NeoNet Technologies Co., Ltd., START USA Inc, Streambow, Tadtelmax, Tbaytel, Tozed Kangwei, TraceSpan Communications, Ubee Interactive, and Veego.

Join the Broadband Forum and be part of the driving force shaping the future of broadband! Together, we can continue to push innovation, collaboration, and the development of solutions that connect the world. Submit your application today, here.

Here's to an even fuller 2025!

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