Broadband ‘Quality Experience Delivered’ gains extra momentum at Broadband World Forum 2019
Geoff Burke of Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum’s Broadband Quality Experience Delivered (Broadband QED), an initiative which looks beyond conventional measurements to improve overall broadband experience, showed significant industry momentum at last week’s Broadband World Forum (BBWF) 2019.
Broadband QED represents a shift in focus in the broadband services market from ever-increasing peak speed to the reliable and consistent delivery of a high quality of experience. With the roll-out of gigabit services, capacity is no longer the limiting factor for the vast majority of applications.
End-user satisfaction now depends more on the characteristics of the broadband connection than on its speed. Broadband QED defines a way to measure these characteristics using the mathematical concept of ‘quality attenuation’ (written ‘∆Q’), which captures the potential impact of the network on any kind of application.
Introduced to Broadband Forum members by Vodafone and Predictable Network Solutions (PNSol) at the Forum’s Q4 2018 meeting, the initiative has been rapidly embraced by the membership. Over the course of nine months, the initiative has moved from concept to reality, culminating in it being highlighted in multiple conference presentations, explained in a just-published Broadband Forum marketing report, and showcased via three demonstrations from a variety of companies at BBWF, which took place in Amsterdam last month.
“Since its launch, Broadband QED has resonated with a vast number of our members, but to see it progress so quickly from conception to proofs of concept is remarkable and an excellent example of what can be achieved through industry collaboration,” said Geoff Burke, chief marketing officer at Broadband Forum.
“While we have increased the speed of broadband to one gigabit and beyond, we now need to improve other aspects such as latency, consistency, predictability and reliability, ultimately moving from a fast network to an invisible network.”
Broadband QED was one of a number of hot topics discussed during Broadband Forum’s standing-room-only Broadband Acceleration Seminar (BASe) Connected Home Workshop. Vodafone’s Andrea Crepaldi, senior strategy manager Fixed Access Centre of Excellence, shared the applications of and opportunities for Broadband QED in its network.
The QED initiative was also explored in depth during a presentation from Domos’ CTO Magnus Olden and a panel led by Broadband Forum’s co-director of the Broadband User Services Work Area John Blackford, as well as in a presentation on “The Future of the Connected Home” in the conference’s Connected Home Track, also led by Vodafone’s Crepaldi.
BBWF 2019 was also chosen to debut Broadband Forum’s Marketing Report MR-452.1, entitled “Motivation for Quality Verified Broadband Services.”
Within the BBWF 2019 Exhibition, the Broadband Forum/Open Broadband Interop Pavilion hosted a variety of high-profile demonstrations, including three that showcased Broadband QED.
PNSol, a UK-based company that developed the ideas behind Broadband QED and made them accessible through Broadband Forum, demonstrated a real-time display of quality attenuation using a WebSockets API to facilitate integration with other business processes and systems.
OutSys, an Italian company delivering carrier-grade solutions, enhanced its first-of-its-kind Practical Implementation Demonstration showing how to measure network quality in a mixed environment including customer networks, different access network technologies, MPLS-like scenarios, different BSPs segments and cloud services. Based on standard protocols available in network devices, this minimises the need for probes deployment.
Domos, a Norwegian company specialising in machine learning for the Connected Home, and Axiros, a global provider of Open Device & Service Management solutions for service providers, led a demonstration sponsored by Vodafone and which included partner KAONMEDIA.
The demonstration showed quality attenuation measurements across a Wi-Fi connection, and real-time predictions of those measurements generated by a deep neural network using passive data measurements from the Customer Premises Equipment (CPE). Their goal was to demonstrate how applications could be detected in real-time and how, by using the QED predictions, the available networking resources could be allocated to the different applications depending on what they require to provide a good quality of experience.
Burke added: “PNSol, OutSys Domos, Axiros, and their partners and sponsors are all members of Broadband Forum, which is developing a set of standards for Broadband QED. It is notable that both OutSys and Domos developed quality attenuation measurements independently, based only on the first draft – a clear leading indicator that, once the full standards are published, it will be straightforward and easy for the rest of the industry to follow.”
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