Deploy G.fast right or miss opportunity to bring CES technologies to the masses, says Broadband Forum

CES, Las Vegas, January 6, 2016 – Operators need to get G.fast right if they want to take advantage of the huge opportunity to enable and deliver up-and-coming technologies to consumers.

This is the warning from the chairman of Broadband Forum (and general manager Access and CPE Innovation at BT), as Jeremy Cowan reports.

Speaking on the opening day of CES 2016, the global consumer electronics and technology tradeshow, Kevin Foster says the full potential of all the innovative technology on show will only be enabled quickly and effectively if operators make real headway on G.fast deployments.

“It’s all about delivering tomorrow’s consumer trends, like 4K video, location-based services, security, home automation, video sharing, gaming and home office collaboration, today” says Foster. “One of the issues is that you need more bandwidth and there’s only a few ways we can deliver 4K effectively with the bandwidth needed. G.fast, therefore, is a viable way of getting technologies out there quickly and effectively.”

The ITU-T’s G.9701 (G.fast) specification was approved in December 2014 and is designed to provide gigabit broadband connection speeds (up to 1Gbps) over a single twisted pair cable in an existing copper infrastructure. It allows faster deployment of services by enabling the introduction of plug-and-play remote DPUs and G.fast CPE devices self-installed by customers at home. According to Foster, the opportunity G.fast provides should be particularly attractive as it can be provided within the existing network infrastructure.

“It also means that fibre to the cabinet is more viable because of what G.fast can achieve over the final copper-based yardage,” Foster maintains. “We can deliver tomorrow’s applications and the extra bandwidth they require competitively.”

The Broadband Forum has recently launched its Broadband 20/20 vision which focuses on specific new broadband home and business opportunities that leverage SDN, NFV, Internet of Things (IoT) and ultra-fast technologies.

BBF Certification and Plugfest programs that underpin key enabling technologies such as ultra-fast access using G-PON, G.fast and VDSL2 and device management (TR-069) are critically important as they deliver standards-based interoperability, ensuring effective deployments of these technologies.

TR-069 is the subject of a new whitepaper titled ‘Managing Machine-to-Machine Systems Using CWMP’ which outlines how service providers can install, upgrade, manage, and monitor the next generation of network-enabled devices in the home.

Foster concludes: “TR-069 is already deployed in nearly 350 million devices worldwide and providers are already using it to manage devices beyond the gateway or set-top box. With the extensions for diagnostics, proxy management, and smart home interfaces that we’ve added over time, service providers are really getting an all-inclusive view of the connected home.”

For more information and to download the whitepaper, visit: https://www.broadband-forum.org/downloads.php