BBWF: G.fast, Video, NG-PON2 & a New Way of Thinking

LONDON -- Broadband World Forum -- G.fast, the emerging technology that's set to turbocharge copper access lines across Europe, North America and pockets of Asia, was predictably one of the dominant topics during the annual access network love-in that is the Broadband World Forum.

Why so predictable? Well, with the event once again held in London and with BT as the host operator, the subject of G.fast was always going to be high on the agenda, as the UK incumbent has been by far the most fervent supporter of the technology, and with dramatic results.

• Swisscom Claims Europe's First Commercial G.fast
• Australia's NBN Hits 8 Gbit/s on XG.FAST
• Interop Demo Pushes G.fast Forward
• G.fast to Gain Nearly 30M Subs by 2021 – Ovum

But the show has been about a lot more than just that one technology: Next-generation fiber access technology developments, including the business drivers for deployment, have also been high on the hit list at the show, with NG-PON2 emerging as a near-term solution for a number of operators.

• Service Provider Split Emerges Over NG-PON2 Upgrade
• Ooredoo reveals the secret to disrupting the fibre norm
• BT Looks Beyond G.fast With PON Trials

And, of course, the key driver for that bandwidth is video content, in multiple formats (as the popularity of BBWF's sister event, VR & AR World, showed.

• Broadband Future Looks Like Video
• The ultimate question – how do you make money out of VR?

And there's no part of the networking technology sector that isn't being affected by virtualization -- the ultra-broadband market is no exception.

• Use Open Platforms or Die, Adtran Tells Telcos
• Virtualization key to connected world
• Get a move on with NFV – Broadband Forum

What's clear from this year's BBWF is that there's a lot of new energy in the ultra-broadband sector, fueled by the need for very high-capacity, low-latency connectivity that goes very close to end users in order to support the future demands of a 5G world and the increasing traffic crunch that video traffic is delivering.

But it's also clear that new business and network architecture models are needed to deliver those capabilities in an economic way, and introducing some new access technologies is only a small part of the equation. Evolving access networks to become part of the broader distributed cloud architecture is key for network operators and everyone that depends on them, and trends such as CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) and central office re-farming are starting points that need to be built upon -- and quickly.

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