Faster time to market for Ultra-Fast Broadband as Broadband Forum completes industry's first plugfest for G.fast DPU and CPE equipment

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, June 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Support for the implementation of the G.fast standard continues to accelerate, as the Broadband Forum has completed the industry's first G.fast equipment plugfest, part of its ongoing program preparing for widespread G.fast certification.

The event, held in early June at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory's (UNH-IOL) facilities in Durham, New Hampshire, was designed to give equipment manufacturers developing remote Distribution Point Units (DPUs) and Customer Premises Equipment (CPEs) an early opportunity to test and benchmark the interoperability of their products prior to full certification testing.

A total of 14 companies participated in the event, providing a strong indication of the level of interest in G.fast technologies at this early stage following the approval of the ITU-T's G.fast standard in April and December 2014. The Broadband Forum and UNH-IOL have lost no time in developing test plans and setting up a program of plugfests leading ultimately to G.fast certification. The June plugfest follows earlier events for chipset manufacturers that began in January 2015; where seven manufacturers were able to test the interoperability of their implementations. The next events in the series will resume in July, with the manufacturers again coming together to test.

"The plugfests clearly demonstrate the pace with which the industry is embracing the ITU-T's new G.fast technology," commented Broadband Forum's Chairman Kevin Foster "G.fast is a significant answer to a pressing need for faster turnaround, time to market and ROI for vendors. It also answers the needs of service providers seeking to quickly meet the demands of their customers for new services such as 4K-TV and the increased use of data and cloud services. The Broadband Forum has been preparing for this for some time with specifications and test plans, and this latest plugfest allows us to support vendors in bringing forward their chipsets and system devices and to support service providers in making informed decisions on the introduction of services."

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.

The plugfest provided companies with their first opportunity to test the interoperability of their DPU and CPE devices, which is a critical first step towards the Broadband Forum G.fast certification program. Participants – a total of 14 chipset and equipment manufacturers – included ADTRAN GmbH, Alcatel-Lucent, ARRIS group Inc., AVM GmbH, Broadcom, Calix Inc., Huawei, Ikanos, JDSU, Lantiq GmbH & Co. KG, Metanoia, Realtek Semiconductor Corporation, Sckipio Technologies, and Technicolor. Additionally, test and measurement equipment was provided to the event by Sparnex Instruments and Telebyte, Inc.

"The UNH-IOL was excited to see such a great turn-out for the plugfest," said Lincoln Lavoie, UNH-IOL Senior Engineer. "This event was the first chance we've had to work directly with both the chipset and equipment companies in the lab, and is a large step forward in the preparations for the G.fast Certification Program, where we've begun to build the initial test setups."

The Broadband Forum is co-hosting with TNO the Ultrafast Broadband Seminar held in The Hague from 16-19 June 2015. Speakers include Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh and Chairman Kevin Foster, plus several Broadband Forum member companies.

To view further details of the Broadband Forum/UNH-IOL Plugfest please go to: https://www.broadband-forum.org/technical/test_cert_programs.php

For more information about the Broadband Forum, please go to http://www.broadband-forum.org or follow @Broadband_Forum on Twitter. For further information please contact Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 7899 914168 or Dana Hare on +44 (0) 1636 812152 or send an email to [email protected]  or [email protected].  

Broadband Forum G.fast Plugfest - vendor support comments:

Alcatel-Lucent: "Continuous innovation is key in fixed broadband – and the Broadband Forum plays a crucial role in maturing new technologies quickly," said Stefaan Vanhastel, Director, Fixed Networks Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent.

ARRIS group Inc.: "Interoperability is the cornerstone of effective telecommunications networks," said Ken Haase, VP, Product Line Management, Telco CPE, ARRIS. "Thanks to the Broadband Forum and UNH-IOL certification process, ARRIS and our customers worldwide can count on interoperability within these complex systems, enabling them to further enhance their networks to offer next generation, ultra-high speed, data services to their customers." 

Broadcom: "Past xDSL experiences demonstrate that interoperability is a vital industry-enabler to wide scale adoption of new technologies," said Greg Fischer, Broadcom Senior Vice President and General Manager, Broadband Carrier Access. "Broadcom's commitment to support UNH-IOL interoperability events and deliver the industry with solid standard-compliant implementations has been one important factor to our success."

Calix Inc.: "The plugfest events held by the Broadband Forum are essential for service providers around the world as they look to introduce new technologies like G.fast into their networks and evaluate technology readiness, interoperability needs, and vendor-specific offerings in a neutral and unbiased environment," said Michel Langlois, Calix senior vice president, systems products. "By testing and validating G.fast interoperability across vendors and chip sets, service providers gain the peace of mind that they will have a more mature ecosystem right out of the gate, leading to faster time-to-market and a better subscriber experience. G.fast will introduce another powerful tool for service provider network and business transformation, and Calix is excited to be playing a key role in the process of readying this technology for mass and rapid deployment."

Ikanos: "Ikanos believes that interoperability is the key to faster widespread deployment of any new technology," said Kourosh Amiri, VP of Worldwide Marketing, Ikanos. "We fully support Broadband Forum's progress in championing G.fast, and look forward to its coming interoperability initiatives to speed adoption of gigabit technology through G.fast."

Intel: Dan Artusi, VP and General Manager, Connected Home Division (CHD) at Intel emphasizes that "Intel has been a major contributor to the G.fast standardization efforts. With the introduction of the industry 1st G.fast reference design last October, Intel enabled our worldwide customers to enter the next stage of designing leading-edge and future proof broadband gateways. Attending the UNH plug fest marks another major milestone on Intel's G.fast roadmap to offer best-in-class interoperability, enabling telcos to cost-efficiently leverage and upgrade their copper based networks to Gigabit speeds."

Realtek: "The plugfests are instrumental catalysts to technology adoption and we look forward to Broadband Forum's and UNH-IOL's greater role in helping network providers worldwide assess and validate choice of technology," said Chang Lien Wu, Vice President, Realtek. 

Sckipio Technologies: "In the past, many networking standards have been hampered by incompatibilities which have resulted in high prices for telcos and uncompetitive markets," said David Baum, co-founder and CEO of Sckipio Technologies. "With G.fast, the Broadband Forum is doing an excellent job ensuring the highest degree of interoperability and the most open, fair and competitive market possible so that telcos get the best G.fast products at the best prices."

About the Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum, a non-profit industry organization, is focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband networks. Our work defines best practices for global networks, enables service and content delivery, establishes technology migration strategies, engineers critical device & service management tools, and is key to redefining broadband. Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at www.broadband-forum.org. Twitter @Broadband_Forum.

About the UNH-IOL
Founded in 1988, the UNH-IOL provides independent, broad-based interoperability and standards conformance testing for data, telecommunications and storage networking products and technologies. Combining extensive staff experience, standards bodies participation, and a 32,000+ square foot facility, the UNH-IOL helps companies efficiently and cost effectively deliver products to the market. For more information, visit http://www.iol.unh.edu/, or connect with the UNH-IOL on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/UNHIOL, on Twitter at @UNH_IOL and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/unh-interoperability-lab.

SOURCE Broadband Forum