Editor’s Moment Looking Over the Horizon

By Doug Mohney, Editor-in-Chief

As we get older, we gain wisdom. Once upon a time, I wanted to own and control everything past the demarcation point in my home, just deliver the pipe and let me deal with the rest. Today, my fascination with technology has turned into pragmatic tolerance. I do not want to be bothered with router placement optimization, mesh networks, deciding quality of service for applications, or other variables. I just want to plug it in and know it’ll work. Most normal folks are at that point on day one, desiring an effortless turnkey experience without having to worry about things like assigning priority for TV streaming over everything else in the home to avoid jumpy playback, having the neighborhood piggyback in on your Wi-Fi, or having to wonder if it’s better to add pods for better inhome wireless coverage.

Service providers are at the same point, but for a different reason. Frustrated customers trying to integrate their off-the-shelf wireless gear and all the other devices in the home means busy call centers and lots of time on the phone, which costs money and impacts customer satisfaction. Network management at gigabit speeds essentially means network management from fiber through Wi-Fi in the home and office.

It’s nice to see Qualcomm come to the party— rescue — with its 10G Fiber Gateway Platform that integrates Wi-Fi with fiber connectivity and unlocks multigigabit wireless speeds throughout the home in a single, manageable package. Expected to show up in 2024 hardware, will this next generation of seamless CPE be paid for by the customer proper as a value-added package/upgrade or as a cost-savings measure to reduce call center minutes? There’s not a clean answer at this point other than “a bit of all of the above.”

Reading through the fine print on the spec sheet, the 10G Fiber Gateway has an open software architecture that enables the delivery of value-added applications and deployment of differentiated services. Calix has been all about value-added apps for differentiation for years, with

Nokia announcing its own Corteca home connectivity platform at Fiber Connect 2023. Hopefully, we’ll see some fresh applications emerge beyond the now-standard bandwidth monitoring/management, security, and parental controls.

BEAD is already creating jobs and driving investment through its Build America, Buy America (BABA) provisions. A quick run-through of summer BABA announcements by companies such as Adtran, Calix, CommScope, Corning, DZS, Nokia, and Prysmian Group adds up to at 850 or more new U.S. manufacturing jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in facilities to support fiber infrastructure from cable through ONTs.

Additional production will, at some point, translate to lower materials and equipment costs and more capable CPE. We’ve already seen this shift as GPON has become retro and XGS-PON is now the standard for many, with 25G PON starting to make headway. It’s easy to imagine that we’ll see a movement towards 50G PON and 100G PON speeds on the business side by 2030, if not earlier, if for no other reason than to support 5G and future wireless deployments.

In January, I should be at CES, making my annual pilgrimage to see the latest in consumer tech that will leverage all the fiber being turned up around the country over the next five years. We’re about due for something cool to break through. It might be AR/VR, health tech, smart home, or some totally new category that’s been percolating for several years and is finally ready to be served. If you are one of the 120,000 other people planning to be in Vegas from January 6 through January 10, drop me an email at doug@connect2comm.com and let’s see if we can meet up.

Sincerely,