INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
5 4
|
B R O A D B A N D C O M M U N I T I E S
|
w w w. b r o a d b a n d c o m m u n i t i e s . c o m
|
M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 9
Broadband at the Crossroads
An industry veteran takes a holistic look at drivers of broadband subscriber growth and
the impacts of new broadband technologies.
I
n September 2018, Broadband Forum
named telecom industry veteran Geoff Burke
as its chief marketing officer. Before coming
to Broadband Forum, Burke served in senior
leadership roles at equipment vendor Calix for
14 years, including most recently senior director
for corporate marketing. Earlier, Burke was a
marketing pioneer in the nascent IPTV market, led
strategy consulting engagements at e McKenna
Group and KPMG, and held management roles
at Oracle Corporation. Broadband Communities
recently caught up with Burke to talk about
Broadband Forum's strategy regarding standards
for fiber, 5G and open-source software. Following
are highlights of that conversation.
BROADBAND COMMUNITIES: ere are
now more than 1 billion fixed broadband
subscribers worldwide, according to Point
Topic. What do you attribute that growth to?
And how did it happen so quickly?
GEOFF BURKE: e primary reason was the
creation of a global market [for services and
network equipment]. is was driven by
foundational standards from Broadband
Forum. First and foremost is the TR-
069 standard [for remote management
of customer-premises equipment over
IP networks], which defined how any
subscriber and device connects to the
broadband infrastructure. Complementary
to TR-069 is the TR-101 standard, which
defined the architecture model [an Ethernet-
based architecture to support multiservice
deployments] for the fundamental
broadband infrastructure that most
service providers around the world have
implemented.
A lot of our activities focus on two
things: Helping the next billion end users
get connected and elevating the broadband
experience of the 1 billion who are already
connected. We have initiatives around
application layer testing and what we call
Broadband Quality of Experience Delivered
(QED), which is being driven by Vodafone
Q&A; with Geoff Burke, Chief Marketing Officer, Broadband Forum
Geoff Burke, Broadband Forum