The Broadband Forum has set out its new Broadband 20/20 vision, an initiative that it says will focus on how to develop new specifications around NFV, SDN, ultra-fast access, IoT (Internet of Things) and eventually 5G wireless for broadband providers.
Under the Broadband 20/20 vision, the Broadband Forum will address what it calls five areas of innovation: ultra-fast infrastructure, intelligent home/small business, seamless converged wireline and wireless networks, performance-assured on-demand IP broadband services, and a personalized network experience.
As it has done with pioneering protocols like the TR-69 standard, a method service providers use to monitor and resolve issues on a broadband customer's premises, the new program will look at ways to enhance the deployment times for broadband.
Perhaps not surprisingly, NFV and SDN are going to be key focus of this initiative.
It envisions that in the near-term, the service provider's broadband network infrastructure will consist of a hybrid ecosystem of hardware and software, handling a mix of static and new programmable, virtualized networking and computing over time.
"NFV and SDN has made the industry think about how fast we need to develop our networks in this era of enormous bandwidth demand and it has made it look across the entire eco-system to converge and develop technologies that will create revenue and services quickly and efficiently," said Robin Mersh, CEO of the Broadband Forum in a release.
With software playing a more important role in the broadband market, the forum named Software Architect William Lupton at the beginning of the year. The forum said that while Lupton has been working to deliver on many key work areas in the Broadband 20/20 vision, it has a lot of work to accomplish related to data models and APIs.
For more:
- see the release
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