Embracing the Broadband Community

LONDON -- Broadband World Forum 2016 -- In these days of increasing digital interaction, it's still important to meet face-to-face -- to 'press the flesh' as jargon-lovers used to say in the 1990s. And that's why I'm at the Broadband World Forum (BBWF) this week, for the 13th time.

Not only is this a chance to find out about the latest strategic developments from leading network operators and their key suppliers, but a chance to chat in-depth about the direction of the communications networking industry with the people at the coalface – people that you may already know and, importantly, those you haven't met before, who can bring new perspectives.

It's that interaction that provides unique value to such events: For instance, I can check out plenty of online information about developments around NG-PON2, but where else can you get strategic deployment insights from multiple Tier 1 operators in the same room? That's what's happening here at a special session organized by the NG-PON2 Forum, where executives from AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone, along with Armenian operator Ucom, are talking about why this next-generation broadband technology is important and relevant right now.

That's just one example of many, as decision-makers from the broadband fraternity figure out what happens next in a sector that, ultimately, will underpin anything and everything will happen in the 5G, IoT and cloud world.

The good news, too, is that this community interaction doesn't end when Broadband World Forum closes its doors in a few days' time – it continues, here, on the UBB2020 site. So join the debate this week, next week and all the way up to BBWF 2017 in Berlin.

— Ray Le Maistre, , Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading