Dawn of ultrafast broadband era

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS: Ultrafast broadband, that can enable the Internet of Everything, which includes 4K-video and cloud-based applications, is a growing presence as a proportion of total world fixed broadband subscriptions, which reached a record 700.19 million this week.

But now, the big challenge for the emerging ultrafast technologies such as G.fast is interoperability and today at the Broadband World Forum in Amsterdam, the Broadband Forum is hosting the most advanced showcase of interoperable equipment and solutions ever staged, on its Interoperability Pavilion.

The Broadband Forum’s work and mission is focused on ensuring that broadband enables innovative high-speed applications and cloud based services to deploy at pace. However, as the network evolves and even higher speeds can be achieved with more innovative technologies, interoperability remains the key enabler.

This week’s Pavilion features 17 of the world’s top vendors, test houses and industry bodies and visitors will be able to see live examples of the latest G.fast technology, VDSL2 Vectoring, GPON and the Forum’s much-acclaimed TR-069 remote management protocol. The Pavilion is at the heart of the event at stand number E50 and among the organizations supporting the Forum has been the ITU-T, which is a partner for the Pavilion.

“Both standards and their implementation are a collaborative effort, and ITU-T is working closely with the Broadband Forum and others to help deliver both the protocols and the fast deployment of innovative technological developments such as G.fast. We are pleased to support this Pavilion as one example of our close collaboration,” said Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. “Working together, ITU and the Broadband Forum can make sure the framework is in place to move to ultrafast rates.”

G.fast is one of the main areas of focus on the Pavilion. It answers many of the deployment questions around the demand for faster broadband – giving Gigabit speeds without the Outside Plant (OSP) costs. It is essentially a “fiber to the periphery” solution, bringing fiber closer to the customer; typically to within 20-200m depending on the deployment scenario. G.fast is set to be very important, particularly as service providers look to provide services such as IPTV at 500 to 1000 Mbps.

As G.fast moves forward, the Broadband Forum has also selected the world’s first testing laboratory to certify products designed for G.fast deployment. It has chosen the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), which has more than 25 years’ experience and major testing facilities.