< back to overview

ONF Launches Broadband Governing Board Supporting Momentum of VOLTHA and SEBA Open Broadband Projects

PALO ALTO, Calif. Oct. 12, 2022 –  The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) today announced it has formed a new Broadband Area governance structure and launched a new Governing Board for Broadband, created to lead ONFs open source broadband community and to promote deployment of open access network solutions globally. 

ONF will be present at a global leading telecom and mobile industry networking event, NetworkX, taking place in Amsterdam, from October 18-20th (schedule an on-site meeting with ONF). At NetworkX, ONF will showcase the open broadband projects and Broadband Area Board members will be available for discussions, stop by the ONF stand #G19 at the event.   

Broadband is experiencing tremendous global growth and investment, largely driven by the shift to working from home ignited by the COVID pandemic, which has led to worldwide recognition that broadband connectivity is essential for economic productivity and workforce enablement. ONF’s VOLTHA and SEBA projects are the leading open source platforms for broadband, and ONF’s new Broadband Area Board is being formed to help guide these projects as they continue to grow in response to this global demand.

According to 650 Group, broadband is expected to be the fastest growing market amongst major Service Provider equipment areas.  650 Group projects broadband equipment sales in five years (by 2026) to exceed $18B. Additionally, 650 Group estimates that over the next five years, the market for open broadband will reach as high as $12B annually for broadband equipment based on systems using open networking and open source principles. “The momentum is already strong for open solutions in broadband edge deployments globally,” said Chris DePuy, founding analyst for the 650 Group. “By adopting open broadband architectures, operators will be able to mix and match supplies of ONU and OLTs, thus diversifying their supply chains. Doing so will provide autonomy over the selection of equipment and port speeds because operators will have standardized on an independent open control system.”  

 Given the tremendous importance of open broadband, the ONF’s Broadband Area Governing Board is being formed to marshal the collective resources of the ecosystem to help drive the open broadband agenda. The Broadband Area Board, composed of leading operators and vendors, will guide the ONF broadband-related projects, including:VOLTHA, SEBA and SD-BNG. The Governing Board will set the goals, direction and roadmap for key broadband technologies to serve the community’s strategic interests, and facilitate recruiting, execution and community building, while broadening the adoption of the ONF projects/platforms.

Leading the Area Board are co-chairs Manuel Paul with Deutsche Telekom and Emel Subas with Türk Telekom. 

Manuel Paul, Senior Expert, Group Technology and Innovation for Deutsche Telekom
“The impact of ONF-led open source technology has been a great boost for Deutsche Telekom’s Access 4.0 program, and playing a role helping to launch the ONF’s Broadband Area governing board is an honor as we further shape the technology for the global community and drive it into the future.”

Emel Subas, Network Architecture & Quality Assurance Director for Türk Telekom
“Türk Telekom has played a pivotal role in both developing and delivering open broadband access and is very pleased to be playing a pioneering role for open source by helping with the launch of ONF’s Broadband Area governing board. By building the first commercial SEBA network in the world with this vision, Türk Telekom will not only steer and shape new technologies but will also proudly continue to support growing the open source ecosystem with its role on the board.” 

Bora Eliacik, CEO for Netsia
“Following Netsia’s experience in all aspects of designing, developing, and deploying open, software-defined, and cloud-based broadband technologies, including VOLTHA and SEBA for the expansion of fiber access networks to hundreds of thousands of consumer communities with triple play services and beyond, Netsia is excited to help CSPs and proud for the opportunity to play a role on the ONF’s Broadband Area governing board.” 

Francisco De Carvalho, Head of Disaggregated Network Solutions Strategy, Net Reply
“As a leading integrator of cloud and broadband central office solutions, we at Net Reply and across the Reply group are delighted to help drive a technology agenda that will enable service providers to deploy carrier grade, open source-based, solutions that seamlessly integrate with 3rd-party standards-based solutions. As fibre deployment accelerates and matures, scaling the network, management and support systems is vital to deliver a great customer experience and to acquire and retain subscribers. We are eager and ready to help make this happen.”

Rajesh Chundury, CTO and Vice President, Radisys
“Radisys is excited to continue our efforts in promoting and ensuring the reliability and effectiveness of open source broadband for the edge cloud and fiber-based networks supporting video, voice and data.  As new members of the ONF’s Broadband Area governing board, it is an excellent opportunity to further our work directly with both the vendor ecosystem and carriers in evolving the technology and boosting the community efforts.” 

Petr Doutnáč, Business Development EMEA, Zyxel Communications
“Zyxel is very pleased to be a member of the new ONF Broadband Area Board. With our white box OLTs currently seeing adoption with multiple operators, we are very excited about the market potential for open broadband. We have been a direct beneficiary of the power of an open-source driven open ecosystem, and we are excited to continue to grow our investments in this area in support of operators worldwide.” 

Timon Sloane, General Manager for the ONF
“The ONF is pleased to be launching the new Broadband Area governance board with leaders bringing a blend of business, technical and market expertise from both the operator and vendor community. This Broadband Area Board will help steer the ONF’s open broadband efforts into the future, while supporting our strong momentum of real world deployments based on ONF’s open broadband projects.”

 

About the Open Networking Foundation
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is an operator-driven, community-led non-profit consortium fostering and democratizing innovation in software-defined programmable networks. Led by its board members AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Google, Intel, Microsoft and Türk Telekom, ONF is accelerating the state-of-the-art in open networking, catalyzing creation and adoption of open disaggregated solutions leveraging SDN and open source software. For further information visit http://www.opennetworking.org