Broadband Forum News - May 2024

The Headlines

CEO’s note

Get ready for a busy schedule of Broadband Forum events and workshops! We look forward to seeing you in Incheon, South Korea, for the Summer 2024 Meeting and learning more about the Smart Home and IoT within the context of Multi-Service Broadband Networks. This will be the focus of the meeting’s day one Town Hall Innovation Series (THIS). The meeting is fast approaching, so make sure to register your attendance and submit your speaking submissions to participate in the THIS sessions.

The Broadband Forum will also be attending Network X Americas and ANGA COM this month as we continue to further bolster our presence at key industry events. If you will be attending, please do come and listen to our keynote and live BASe sessions. If you missed us at some of the industry’s flagship events earlier this year, you can learn more about our topic discussions below

- Craig Thomas CEO at Broadband Forum

Network X, Town Hall Innovation Series and Leadership election Opportunities!

Following the success of the Spring Member Meeting that opened with the theme of AI and ML, Broadband Forum has announced that the focus of the Summer Member Meeting’s Town Hall Innovation Series will be the Smart Home and IoT. You can learn more and submit a proposal to speak at the meeting here.
The Broadband Forum Pavilion will be returning to this year’s Network X on 8th - 10th October at Porte De Versailles, Paris. A limited number of pods are available exclusively for Broadband Forum members to showcase their innovative products and services, connect with new prospects, and amplify their company's presence in the market. To reserve a pod, please reach out to the Network X team at [email protected] and find out more here.
The call for nominations is now open for the 2024 Board of Directors, Marketing Committee Chair, and Technical Committee Chair elections. Please submit nomination statements by 5:00 pm Pacific Time on May 13th, 2024. Elections will be held on June 17th, 2024, at the Summer Annual Meeting.
Hear from Bruno Cornaglia Broadband Forum SDN/NFV Work Area Co-Director and Distinguished Fellow speaking on the impact of contributing to and the importance of participating in Broadband Forum events here.

News and Updates

Craig Thomas joined Pete Pizzutillo for The Broadband Bunch’s podcast at FTTH Council Europe 2024 to discuss a range of topics including recognizing the value of standards, their impact in future-proofing networks, and tackling industry workforce issues. The conversation also focused on the European altnet scene and how they can adopt a services-led broadband approach and educate their subscriber bases to monetize their networks and unlock incremental revenue opportunities. You can listen to the full interview on Spotify here.
Last month at OFC, the Broadband Forum hosted a panel on ‘Meeting Rural Broadband Needs with High Capacity PON’. The panel, moderated by Bernd Hesse at DZS, touched on the importance of standards in advancing rural PON and providing operators with the flexibility to choose from a range of best-in class hardware and software from multiple vendors. You can read the full Broadband Forum blog post outlining the key discussions here.
Dr Xuming Wu, Chief Engineer at Huawei Technologies, Helge Tiainen, Director Business Development at InCoax, and Paul Spruyt, Technology Strategist at Nokia joined a vBASe webinar to discuss the ‘future of the connected building’. The panelists explored advancements in managed Wi-Fi, fiber to the room, MoCA and G.hn, and the opportunities that these technologies provide service providers to offer a fully connected, gigabit experience within all types of building. You can receive the slide deck and recording of the webinar here.
In a Fast Mode article, Jason Walls, Co-Director of the Broadband User Services Work Area at the Broadband Forum, discussed the challenges and opportunities the rise of IoT within the Smart Home presents to the industry and the vital role that open broadband standards play in creating a path towards new revenue streams. Read the full article here.
Broadband Forum’s Wireless Wireline Convergence (WWC) Work Area announced major enhancements to its 5G work. Broadband Forum’s Phase 18.1 specifications build on the 3GPP Release 18 standards and are intended to advance next-generation applications, network resilience and support of converged services. The news was covered by Computer Weekly here.
The Broadband Forum’s OB-USP-Agent project team announced its new open source software, dubbed the Heron release, that simplifies the integration between application vendors and Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) firmware vendors. The release enables operators to drastically reduce the time taken to deploy new value-added services – such as cybersecurity, remote working, and gaming experience controls – for broadband customers. Read the full press release here.

Technology Spotlight

OB-USP-Agent

OB-USP-Agent (OBUSPA) is an open source project that creates a reference implementation of the USP specification from an “Agent” perspective. The project acts as a starting point for software developers to base their implementations on and provides device vendors with a code base to integrate into their devices. It is a baseline platform for adding more services and applications, with updates to the code available as the implementation matures.

OBUSPA continues to be a key component in open-source middleware solutions as it enables the decentralization of a device’s data model into USP-enabled containerized applications. It offers more flexibility, interoperability, and customization than proprietary middleware alternatives, with open-source middleware avoiding technology or vendor lock-in.

The group has completed its work on Release 8 (codenamed the Heron release), implementing new features from USP 1.3 and TR-181 Device:2.16 to enable software modularization and a host of other improvements. You can learn more about OBUSPA in Broadband Forum Chairman John Blackford’s latest blog here and video from USP Summit here

Upcoming Events

New Projects

FAN: WT-385 PON YANG Issue 3 – The project aims to address the market need for PON vendors and service providers to support interoperable solutions. It will provide a framework for cross-vendor interoperable OLT PON deployment based on ITU-T PON specifications and the 25GS-PON Multi-Source Agreement (MSA).

Welcome New BBF Members

made4it and Condor Technologies

Join the Broadband Forum today!

Are you interested in becoming a Broadband Forum member? As the communications industry’s leading organization focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards, and ecosystem development, we are constantly looking for like-minded people who share our passion.

Find out more: https://www.broadband-forum.org/join-broadband-forum.