June 17, 2008

DSL Forum changes name to Broadband Forum

Changing network environments and new sophisticated applications such as IPTV have brought the DSL Forum to transform its work across the broadband space and leads today to the unveiling of its new name and identity - The Broadband Forum.

To meet the need for greater speed, more responsive network provisioning and greater personalized Quality of Experience (QoE) for customers, the DSL Forum has expanded its scope of work over the years -- producing more than 150 technical reports to help drive industry progress. Moving from pure DSL solutions to include access agnostic management specifications in 2005, the Forum now adds PON solutions, more digital home optimization models and sets the standard for real time application support.

Broadband has already changed lives considerably since our organization first began in 1994 - but now the world stands on the brink of a giant leap forward in converged communications, said George Dobrowski, Chairman and President of The Broadband Forum.

For some time now, we have been dealing with much more than DSL, continues Dobrowski. Yet we discovered that because of the DSL in our name, many of our specifications that are access agnostic, management related or provide solutions to broader broadband issues, were being missed by the standards community because they mistakenly thought our work was just DSL specific.

With the upcoming release of BroadbandSuite Release 3.0, we provide our commitment to simplifying the management and architecture of the hybrid DSL and fiber networks that are emerging, and our continuous focus on expanding the TR-069 BroadbandHome family of work, which continues to be updated to stay aligned with the ever changing digital home landscape. With close to 30 million devices on the market that are TR-069 adherent today, it is clear that this body of work continues to grow in importance to the industry.

The Broadband Forum name captures our true mission, which is to develop the full potential of broadband. That means continuing our good work on DSL innovation and standards, adding more digital home support work and continuing to expand our efforts to include more policy control, QoS and network optimization work in order to better support tomorrows diversified multi-play services. We hope this name change will encourage the CE community to get more involved in our work, and that this will facilitate even closer relationships within our active liaisons in the emerging fixed mobile convergence arena.

This name change does reflect a change in the industry, as providers roll out many broadband technologies such as DSL, fiber and wireless to meet the needs of their customers. However, as DSL is a vital tool in expanding broadband access to more areas and increasing service speed via its flavors, such as ADSL2plus, VDSL2 and bonded DSL, our critical work in the DSL arena will absolutely continue, concluded Dobrowski.

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