The next stage of intelligent, services-led broadband will be supported by fixed and wireless industry standards thanks to the formation of the Broadband Forum Executive Advisory Board (EAB).
Consisting of major international broadband companies, the body will ensure the future investment needs of service providers are addressed, and greater value delivered to residential and business subscribers.
“Broadband continues to evolve, but so too does the broadband subscriber. Within the connected home there is a ’gamer’, a homeworker, a HD video streamer, an IoT and smart home device user, and each need the relevant service quality and experience,” said Craig Thomas, VP of Business Development and Strategic Marketing at Broadband Forum. “In addition, the current and future advancements in broadband technologies will make broadband infrastructure truly multi-service and it needs to meet the demands of enterprise, mobile backhaul, and Industrial IoT alike.”
The EAB will advise the Board of Directors to help the organization and the wider broadband industry gain new insights to pinpoint industry challenges and explore new market opportunities.
“We continue to undergo a paradigm shift from connectivity driven to services-led broadband, but we need investment from the whole industry to increase the value of broadband to end customers,” said Bernd Hesse, BASe Chair and CMO of the Board of Directors at Broadband Forum. “I was delighted to bring together global companies from across the industry and establish this new body. The EAB represents the executive and strategic voice of the industry to drive a future dynamic and proven broadband ecosystem.”
The companies involved in the inaugural meeting included: AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Calix, DZS, Ericsson, Fiber Broadband Association (FBA), FTTH Council Europe, F-Secure, Huawei, Lumen, NBN, Nokia, Orange, and Vodafone. The role of the EAB is to agree and provide wider insights and industry direction, critical thinking, and analysis.
“It is important to align industry-wide standards with the future investment needs of service providers in order to achieve reduced R&D investment cycles and multi-vendor interoperability, so ultimately we continue to deliver best broadband services to our customers,” said Ahmed Hafez, VP Technology Strategy, Deutsche Telekom. “I look forward to working with my industry peers on the EAB to ensure our future broadband network and service requirements guide the Broadband Forum’s strategic direction and work.”
Potential topics on the agenda moving forward could include making broadband truly ‘multi-service and multi-customer’, application-aware and differentiated broadband, network convergence, security, sustainability, and increased network and service agility with Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Software Defined Networking (SDN).
The EAB ensures that Broadband Forum continues to empower and provide relevancy and value to service providers while delivering new service opportunities, architectures, open standards, and interoperability. This will reduce the time to market products, proof of concept work, test cycles, and proven use cases.
The EAB Chair will be an experienced independent industry representative elected by the EAB members on a biannual basis. Currently, Craig Thomas (pictured) holds the interim EAB Chair role and Bernd Hesse, the EAB Co-Chair role. Executive Industry Advisors will represent industry thought leaders, including operators, vendors, industry associations, and analysts, and be invited to positions on the EAB on a 24-month term.
For more information about Broadband Forum, visit https://www.broadband-forum.org/.
