Broadband Forum Renews Commitment to Services-Led Broadband With New Work Areas

Broadband Forum Renews Commitment to Services-Led Broadband With New Work Areas

Josh Wright
josh.wright@proactive-pr.com

Broadband Forum has realigned its work areas to ensure every new project and specification focuses on enabling services-led and intelligent broadband that provides the applications and services most demanded by users.

The Forum’s five work areas will cover topics including access networks, connected users and subscriber networks, network architecture, cloud and autonomous networks, and most importantly service requirements helping to direct that work. They will be supported by an advisory group providing the necessary expertise to produce high-quality YANG data models and management specifications. The work areas and advisory group will be led by directors from Adtran, Calix, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, Nokia, QA Cafe, Vantiva, and Vodafone.

“The broadband industry’s focus remains firmly on delivering a richer, more tailored broadband experience for the end-user rather than fast speeds alone,” said Broadband Forum CEO Craig Thomas. “Our new work areas reflect this, giving members from across the globe the opportunity to come together and develop the most relevant readily-adoptable broadband specifications. The intention is to simplify the organization and how our members can integrate in standards work to deliver a more effective and services driven broadband user experience. We invite companies, small and large, to join our efforts.”

These new work areas are named Access, Connected User, Network Architecture, Provider Cloud, and Service Requirements. The newly-formed Service Requirements Work Area will address real-world broadband challenges and align with evolving industry priorities to bridge the gap between the network adopter and subscriber needs and technical innovation. Service Requirements acts as the guide for Broadband Forum’s broader initiatives and work areas, creating a foundation for future advancements and innovations.

“The restructuring of the work areas to align with our services-led broadband focus will ensure our ongoing work remains as relevant as ever,” said Broadband Forum Technical Chair Lincoln Lavoie. “We recently celebrated thirty years of collaboration and innovation, and we believe this alignment will further pave the way for the Broadband Forum’s future success.”

Access Work Area - The Access Work Area focuses on delivering multi-vendor interoperability for last mile broadband deployments across fiber, copper, and wireless networks.
Connected User Work Area - Connected User develops specifications for the deployment, management, and consumption of services by the end-users.
Network Architecture Work Area - Network Architecture develops the architecture and nodal requirements for end-to-end broadband deployments across traditional and converged networks to ensure the best possible quality of experience for users.
Provider Cloud Work Area - Provider Cloud develops frameworks and specifications to enable broadband services and networks to utilize cloud-based deployment approaches, including automation and autonomous systems that will utilize machine learning and AI.
Service Requirements Work Area - The Service Requirements Work Area defines user-centric, actionable service requirements and specifications for subscriber, access, and Broadband Service Providers’ (BSPs’) core networks.

The first official meetings of the new work areas will take place at the Broadband Forum’s Spring Meeting in Hong Kong on March 11-14, 2025.

If you would like to join Broadband Forum, please contact info@broadband-forum.org or visit https://www.broadband-forum.org/membership-application.

About the Broadband Forum

The Broadband Forum is an industry-driven global standards development organization helping operators, application providers, and vendors deliver better, services-led broadband.

As the industry-recognized center of competence, the Broadband Forum provides an accessible, efficient, and effective community where all broadband stakeholders can collaborate on, develop, and promote open standards and open software. This provides the basis for deployable solutions for the global broadband industry.

The forum publishes interoperable standards and open software, has launched certification programs, and promotes industry education. These best practices and models can be adopted to help realize an effective broadband ecosystem that drives a thriving, services-led broadband industry based on global collaboration, open standards, and open source, maximizing value for all stakeholders.

For more information, visit https://www.broadband-forum.org/. For the latest updates, follow Broadband Forum on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.