The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) this week launched a fixed broadband project group, dubbed FiBr, to help operators build and operate their fixed line networks.
Representatives from Vodafone and Telefónica are chairing the new group.
The initial focus for FiBr will be the development of Broadband Network Gateways (BNGs) and technologies for fiber to the home (FTTH) access networks.
The FiBr group wants to evolve existing fiber assets to accommodate faster speeds, and to enable new use cases such as small cell densification and long-tail deployments into rural and MDU environments.
According to TIP, this new group complements the existing IP/MPLS transport solutions developed by its Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) group, pushing beyond the core and backhaul domains to cover the access network, and extending into higher-order service gateway functions.
Rafael Canto, senior manager for transport at Telefónica, said in a statement. “TIP’s work so far to disaggregate the transport network has already led to the creation of a new vibrant and diverse ecosystem, and we’re proud to be a part of this new group helping to unlock the same opportunities in the fixed broadband domain, extending the work already done on IP technologies and SDN management and control.”
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The FiBr group said it plans to use existing standards.
“In recent times we have seen a huge level of effort and investment in the development of new standards in this area,” said Bruno Cornaglia, senior manager of fixed access from Vodafone. “We believe that this new group from TIP will play an important role in consolidating operator demand behind open standards to ensure supplier products are built in a truly open way and helping to identify the use cases that are most needed for the industry.”
Similar to other TIP projects, the innovations from this group will go through TIP’s Test and Validation framework, providing the opportunity for operators and suppliers to collaborate on evaluating products and solutions, and for those products to be awarded Badges and Ribbons on the TIP Exchange.