A new Fifth Generation Fixed Network (F5G) industry initiative has been formed with backing from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), China Broadband Development Alliance, Altice Portugal, and Huawei. The idea is to foster a booming ecosystem for 5G fixed networking similar to the ecosystem for 5G wireless. The new organization is inviting global fixed network industry players, both upstream and downstream companies, to join the F5G industry organization.
Earlier this year, ETSI formed Industry Specification Group F5G to work on new ODN technologies, XG(S)-PON and Wi-Fi 6 enhancements, control plane and user plane separation, smart energy efficiency, end-to-end full stack slicing, autonomous operation and management, synergy of Transport and Access Networks, adaptation of Transport Network, etc.
Luca Pesando, chairman of ETSI’s Industry Specification Group F5G (ISG F5G), said, “On February 25, ETSI officially released the ISG F5G, which aims at studying the fixed-network evolution through defining improvements with respect to previous solutions and the new characteristics of the fifth-generation fixed network to turn the Fiber to the Home paradigm into Fiber to Everything Everywhere, and defined three major F5G use cases: full-fiber connection (FFC), enhanced fixed broadband (eFBB), and guaranteed reliable experience (GRE). We would like to invite all the peers to join this ETSI ISG F5G initiative and to contribute, fostering the improvement of individuals’ and society’s life that fiber technology can offer in F5G era.”
Wei Leping, deputy director of Communication Technology Steering Committee, MIIT & Chairman of Technology Steering Committee at China Telecom, commented, “To support the wide-scale deployment of a series of new technologies and applications such as 5G, and to promote fiber networks to all possible application scenarios, it is essential for the industry to focus on F5G to formulate unified specifications covering three basic application scenarios: transport, access, and customer premises networks. This can reduce unnecessary fragmented private specifications and achieve economies of scale in the optical industry.”
Ao Li, Director of the Technology and Standards Research Institute at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and Deputy Secretary-General of the China Broadband Development Alliance, said, “China is rapidly heading into the F5G era, and 100M fiber broadband has become increasingly popular. By the end of February 2020, the number of gigabit broadband users had reached 1.97 million. China is dramatically accelerating F5G application innovations to boost the digital economy, acting as a reference for other countries.”
https://www.huawei.com/us/press-events/news/2020/5/develop-a-thriving-fixed-network-industry
https://www.etsi.org/committee/f5g
The kick-off meeting for the ETSI ISG F5G took place on 20-21 February at an ETSI facility and members of the group elected Dr. Luca Pesando, TIM, as the Chairman of the ISG and defined 5 areas to work on:
- F5G use cases: the use cases include services to consumers and enterprises and will be selected based on their impact in terms of new technical requirements identified.
- Landscape of F5G technology and standards: this work will study technology requirements for F5G use cases, explore existing technologies, and perform the gap analysis.
- Definition of fixed network generations: to evaluate the driving forces and the path of fixed network evolution, including transport, access and on-premises networks. It will also identify the principal characteristics demarcating different generations and define them.
- Architecture of F5G: this will specify the end-to-end network architectures, features and related network devices/elements’ requirements for F5G, including on-premises, Access, IP and Transport Networks.
- F5G quality of experience: to specify the end-to-end quality of experience (QoE) factors for new broadband services. It will analyze the general factors that impact service performance and identify the relevant QoE dimensions for each service.
Members of the group include: Association eG4U, Altice Portugal, BOUYGUES Telecom, BTC, Cadzow Communications, CAICT, CATT, China Unicom, China Telecommunications, CICT, ECO, Fraunhofer HHI, Futurewei, Huawei Technologies, JSPRC Kryptonite, POST Luxembourg, Rostelecom, TIM, Turk Telekomunikasyon.
