World Broadband Association (WBBA), annual event, 19 October 2022.
The mission of the World Broadband Association, of which Nokia is a founding member, is to maximize the social and economic benefits of ultra-broadband. We do this through collaboration across the industry, by driving technology development, and by showcasing the benefits of broadband to encourage adoption.
Of course, we are always unabashed cheerleaders of broadband connectivity, but right now is a truly exciting moment that we should all cheer.
Over the past 15 years, bitrates have increased an incredible 100-fold. Through the dramatic growth of GPON, we now see XGS-PON with its 10 Gb/s symmetrical capacity becoming the dominant technology. Today, we are truly in the Gigabit era: more than 450 operators around the world offer Gigabit broadband, while there are also close to 100 multi-Gigabit services out there. In 2022, operators including Hotwire (US), EPB (US), and OGI (UK) even started 25G PON deployments.
These speeds have enabled groundbreaking applications: telemedicine and remote surgery, Industry 4.0 and Smart City applications, to name a few. So while some argue that Gigabit speeds just aren’t necessary, one of the most important aspects of advanced broadband is as a catalyst for the groundbreaking applications of tomorrow. But Gigabit broadband does make a difference for the general public. Those who move to Gigabit broadband do not go back: the user experience more than justifies the price premium.
It doesn’t stop there. Both 50G and 100G PON have been successfully demonstrated. This is critically important as it shows that fiber is a future-proof technology: invest in a fiber network today and it can be continually upgraded for generations to come.
But to connect everyone, we need more than fiber. As 5G has come to maturity and with 6G development underway, fixed wireless access (FWA) has also evolved to become a valid, future-proof broadband technology and a perfect complement to fiber. A fixed or converged broadband provider can use FWA as a customer acquisition tool: it gives them a very fast time to market, enabling connections for customers who cannot yet be connected to fiber. Mobile operators can use their radio infrastructure to compete directly with fiber: an entry-point 100 Mb/s service is almost guaranteed to be successful; a Gigabit service is even achievable, although that requires a more costly, denser, mmWave 5G network.
The World Broadband Association made four critical decisions when defining the generational road map for broadband. The first was to make sure that the broadband experience was defined by more than just speed. Speed is important, of course, but we know it takes more: it's about adding more intelligence; it's about latency; it's about reliability; and it's about power consumption.
Second, this is not a technology roadmap: it’s a user experience roadmap, focused on what technology enables, rather than which technology is used. The third is that this isn’t even about fiber: it's fiber, it's FWA, it's satellite, it's cable, it's DSL, it's Wi-Fi, and everything else you need to deliver the user experience.
The fourth and final decision is that it’s not about residential broadband. With PON networks passing every home, every building, every street corner, the evolution is beyond residential to where broadband becomes a network supporting mission-critical services for everyone: homes, businesses, Internet of Things applications, smart cities, Industry 4.0, mobile transport, and those future applications not yet invented. That means more ways to monetize a network, which makes the business case for broadband investment significantly more attractive.
This used to be called “convergence” and we’ve been waiting a long time for it. But there are two key reasons that make me confident that technology has caught up with the vision. First, capacity is no longer a bottleneck: with 25G to 50G to 100G, we have almost limitless capacity. And second, we have ways to make that capacity easily consumable. Software-defined networks let you slice a network, set the performance parameters of each slice to perfectly match the service it supports, and use intelligent automation and programmability to simplify and accelerate operations.
Broadband has so much to offer. It gives communities – both urban and rural – access to remote learning, to remote healthcare, to remote working. In so doing, it bridges the digital divide and enables governments to protect citizens and economies. As EPB has shown in Chattanooga, when you bring Gigabit services, you attract investment and you attract new companies, who use that connectivity to innovate.
Broadband is also fundamental for the biggest threat humanity is facing: climate change. Remote working, eCommerce, eBanking, and other online services, take cars off roads, reduce business travel, reduce transportation emissions. Broadband has an enormous impact on the carbon footprint of almost every industry.
What other technology entertains and enables in equal measure? What other technology brings so much to society, to economies, to humanity? What other technology pays for itself as a future proof investment?
These reasons are why we should all be excited about the future of broadband.