The telecommunications industry welcomes an Executive Advisory Board (EAB) via Broadband Forum, an open, non-profit industry organization. According to a release, the EAB consists of major broadband companies from around the world. The EAB will ensure that the future investment needs of service providers are addressed and greater value is delivered to residential and business subscribers.
The EAB’s role is to ensure Broadband Forum continues to empower and provide relevancy and value to service providers while delivering new service opportunities, architectures, open standards, and interoperability. Objectives include reducing the time to market of products, proof of concept work, test cycles, and proven use cases. The following companies participated in the inaugural EAB meeting: AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Calix, DZS, Ericsson, Fiber Broadband Association (FBA), FTTH Council Europe, F-Secure, Huawei, Lumen, NBN, Nokia, Orange, and Vodafone.
“Broadband continues to evolve, but so too does the broadband subscriber,” said Craig Thomas, VP of Business Development and Strategic Marketing at Broadband Forum. “Within the connected home, there is a ‘gamer,’ a homeworker, an HD video streamer, an IoT and smart home device user, and each need the relevant service quality and experience.” Thomas currently holds the interim EAB Chair role.
The EAB will advise the organization’s Board of Directors to help the industry “gain new insights, pinpoint industry challenges, and explore new market opportunities.” Bernd Hesse, CMO of the Board of Directors at Broadband Forum said, “The EAB represents the executive and strategic voice of the industry to drive a future dynamic and proven broadband ecosystem.” Hesse is currently the EAB Co-Chair.
Topics for discussion moving forward include making broadband truly ‘multi-service and multi-customer,’ application aware and differentiated broadband, network convergence, security, sustainability, and increased network and service agility with Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Software Defined Networking.
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