Taipei Hosts Broadband Forum as Taiwan Broadband Penetration On the Rise

Meeting for the first time in Taipei, the Broadband Forum’s last quarterly meeting of 2014 this week turned into one of the highlights of the year as both the country and the region embraced the work and the developments taking place within the Forum.

Prior to the meeting itself, 73 executives from more than 20 Taiwanese companies attended a special one-day Executive Invitational meeting organized by the Forum. On the opening day there was a near-record 40 first time attending delegates as companies from across Asia demonstrated their interest and commitment to the work of the Broadband Forum.

A welcome address at the quarterly meeting was given by Dr Ruey-Beei Wu, President of the Institute for Information Industry (III) and this was followed by a keynote address from Mr Mu-Piao Shih, President of Chunghwa Telecom.

Mr Shih, who has worked for Chunghwa Telecom for more than 30 years, told the audience: “Broadband is a key enabler for innovation, to bring digital life services that are convenient, secure and smart.”

“Broadband technology is evolving towards the Gigabit era but lower costs and time to market are crucial factors,” he added. He also pointed out that Chunghwa Telecom was a long term member of the Broadband Forum and said that his representatives had already made more than 70 important contributions to the work being done. He welcomed the development of G.fast and urged availability of certified product as soon as possible as Chunghwa had a significant copper presence in its network.

During the opening plenary one of the organization’s founder members, George Dobrowski from Huawei Technologies, was awarded the title of Distinguished Fellow, which was presented by the Broadband Forum’s chairman Kevin Foster. Dobrowski co-chairs the Broadband Forum Service Innovation and Marketing Requirements (SIMR) Working Group and also serves as a Subject Matter Expert on the Testing and Certification Oversight Committee (TCOC). During some 20 years of service to the Forum, Dobrowski has served in most senior roles and the achievement of the Forum’s highest honor was a rare and richly deserved occasion, said Foster.

Jaume Rius I Riu from Ericsson was also inducted into the Broadband Forum Circle of Excellence, as a long-standing member who has been a key contributor to the work – particularly in relation to TR-178 (Multi-service Broadband Network Architecture and Nodal Requirements). Foster went on to say that “Jaume had worked “tirelessly” to deliver this key requirements document.”

The recently published TR-178, which builds on the seminal TR-101, documents the architectures, nodal requirements and deployment scenarios required to deploy converged multi-service architectures, is part of BroadbandSuite™ 7.0 which brings together a substantial body of work on Multi-service Broadband Network Architecture including:

· TR-203 - Interworking between Next Generation Fixed and 3GPP Wireless Networks

· TR-207 - Layer 2 Control Mechanisms For Broadband Multi-service Architectures

· TR-224 - MPLS in Carrier Ethernet Networks

· TR-291 - Nodal Requirements for Interworking between Next Generation Fixed and 3GPP Wireless Networks

· TR-300 - Policy Convergence for Next Generation Fixed and 3GPP Wireless Networks

“Our new BroadbandSuite 7.0 provides a comprehensive foundation for service providers looking for guidance in transitioning to MSBN,” commented Imran Hajimusa, Chief Innovation Officer at the Broadband Forum. “It is a great example of the value Broadband Forum can bring to service providers, developers and vendors in addressing and enabling disruptive technologies in the broadband space.”