Broadband Forum Spring Meeting Newsletter
Welcome from our Director of Membership, Rhonda Heier
Melbourne’s “Magic” coffee provided the energy for the 380 people attending the Broadband Forum’s first-ever BASe Summit and Spring 2026 Member Meeting in Australia.
We were delighted to be hosted by nbn, the country’s national wholesale open-access broadband network. Thank you to nbn for your support in the planning and promoting of the event and for your participation throughout the week! It was also a highlight for our membership and attendees to witness the “Supercharging Fibre” trial, which was demonstrated publicly for the first time during our BASe Summit.
Wholesale access and AI and automation were key topics being discussed across a week full of insightful presentations, networking opportunities and service provider panels. One of those panels, led by Broadband Forum CEO Craig Thomas, discussed the challenges that device and home management - including Wi-Fi – continue to provide for wholesale service providers who are seeking to exceed subscriber’s expectations of reliable ultrafast broadband. We also hosted a breakfast for our service provider attendees, which brought together 30 individuals from over a dozen global companies. These sessions provided crucial guidance on how we can improve our standards and specifications to support wholesale broadband access and deliver the Quality of Experience that customers expect.
We celebrated the outstanding individuals who continue to drive our services-led broadband mission. Congratulations to Distinguished Fellow Award recipient Manuel Paul of Deutsche Telekom, and to all our Circle of Excellence, Outstanding Contributor, and Leadership award winners.
Thank you to our active members for making the Broadband Forum a vibrant community, and for helping to create the collaborative and meaningful sessions we experienced throughout the week. We look forward to seeing you again in Milan, Italy, for the Summer Member Meeting and BASe Summit 2026.
Broadband Forum Director of Membership, Rhonda Heier
Thank you to our sponsor and host, nbn Australia
“Industry standards are the glue that holds the internet together”
nbn Australia CTO Guy Scott outlined nbn’s story as a wholesale network operator as it rolls out a national fiber upgrade program designed to meet evolving customer needs for high-speed broadband and increased data consumption.
Scott highlighted a recent nbn and Nokia lab trial held during the Broadband Forum’s BASe Summit. The demonstration showcased multiple optical access technologies (GPON, XGS PON, and 50G PON) achieved speeds exceeding 230 Gbits per second over the wholesale operator’s fibre network.
He also detailed nbn’s work on its AI Production Knowledge Graph, which is helping to unify disjointed data, automate fault responses, and can create a digital twin of the network all in the pursuit of improved services for customers.
Scott noted nbn’s collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney on “true end to end telemetry,” designed to detect and resolve delay and jitter across all network segments. Now moving into a proof of concept stage, the project enables industry and standards bodies, such as the BBF, to ensure scalability and interoperability.
He wrapped up the keynote by emphasising the importance of global standards and proposing a centralized router database to help retailers diagnose in home broadband issues.
Touring nbn’s National Test Facility
nbn generously opened the doors of its National Test Facility in Melbourne for a special tour for Broadband Forum attendees. nbn Solutions Architect Nathan Stathis kicked things off with an overview of the Broadband Forum standards that the wholesale operator uses within its network and operations. From there, the group moved into the lab itself, which featured components of the outside plant, a range of inside and outside plant cabinets, and the many termination devices used across its network.
Visitors were given a behind the scenes look at the endless racks of equipment spanning various generations of nbn technology, used for testing and validation. The tour concluded with a walk downs its Hybrid Fiber Coax Lane before finishing at the lightning simulation device, which is an essential tool for assessing equipment that interfaces with the copper network.
Scott noted nbn’s collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney on “true end to end telemetry,” designed to detect and resolve delay and jitter across all network segments. Now moving into a proof of concept stage, the project enables industry and standards bodies, such as the BBF, to ensure scalability and interoperability.
He wrapped up the keynote by emphasising the importance of global standards and proposing a centralized router database to help retailers diagnose in home broadband issues.
Providing an innovative BASe for Australia
The Broadband Forum was delighted to bring a global lineup of experts to the first ever Australian BASe Summit. The event provided a platform to explore future technology innovation, the industry’s hottest topics, and the challenges and opportunities shaping the broadband ecosystem.
Across a series of presentations, panels, and roundtable discussions, we shared technical advancements, real‑world implementations, testing insights, and strategic planning across arrange of topics including wholesale broadband access, AI and automation, QoE, standards development, and service provider requirements.
Attendees also witnessed another ‘first-ever’ in the form of nbn’s ‘The Supercharging Fibre’ demonstration, with its partner, Nokia. The lab trial showcased multiple optical technologies combined with a Lambda Networks-supplied coexistence module to achieve more than 230 Gbps of capacity over a single fibre. It successfully demonstrated the use of coherent optics running alongside GPON, XGS PON, and 50G PON on the same physical fibre infrastructure that NBN deploys to Australian homes and businesses today.
We look forward to hosting more in‑person BASe events throughout the year at key global industry events including ABRINT, ANGA COM, Fiber Connect, Network X, and more. For those unable to join us onsite, our vBASe series will continue throughout the year.
The next stop for the BASe Summit is Milan, Italy, where the Broadband Forum will host a two‑day event on June 4th and June 5th alongside our Summer 2026 Member Meeting. If you’re interested in getting involved, you can learn more here.
- Broadband Forum Chief Marketing Officer Bernd Hesse
Work Area Updates
For a full list of all Technical Reports published by Broadband Forum, click here. Please feel free to share this information with your colleagues, so they are engaged and aware of the developments of this work.
For additional insight and to get involved, sign up for access to Broadband Forum tools and access your account using your company email address
Access nears completion of PON requirements and steams ahead with PON Plugfests
The Access Work Area focuses on developing technical specifications and test plans that deliver multi-vendor interoperability for last mile broadband deployments across access network technologies such as fiber, copper, and wireless networks (HS-PON, XGS-PON, 25GS, NG-PON, Gfast, MoCA, etc.).
The Access Architecture Project Stream continued to finalize revision 3 of WT-280 ‘PON Requirements’, with inclusion of MAC (Media Access Control) bridged learning requirements. The project stream is targeting Straw Ballot readiness after the Summer Meeting.
Two PON Plugfests have been confirmed for 2026. The Spring 2026 Plugfest will take place at the LANPARK testing facilities in Tours, France (April 20-24). Details can be found here. The Fall 2026 Plugfest will take place at the UNH-IOL testing facilities in USA and is currently being prepared for the Fall period.
Read the full update here: https://www.broadband-forum.org/events/spring-2026-member-meeting-roundup/#access
Connected User publishes USP 1.5, plans for Device: 2.21 and starts new wholesale work
The Connected User Work Area develops specifications, implementation guides, reference guides, and test plans for the deployment, management, and consumption of services by the end-users.
The work area published USP 1.5, which features the next phase of application-enabled services gateways, including authentication and origination of USP services. The group has also been preparing for the release of USP Data Model (TR-181) Device: 2.21 in June 2026.
New work was started on “Service Tiers for Residential Gateway Classification,” which will aim to meet the use cases expressed by wholesale operations during the Spring Meeting activities.
Read the full update here: https://www.broadband-forum.org/events/spring-2026-member-meeting-roundup/#connecteduser
Network Architecture closes in on Subscriber Session Steering completion and ramps up a wave of new projects
The Network Architecture Work Area develops the architecture and nodal requirements for end-to-end broadband deployments across traditional and converged networks to ensure the best possible quality of experience for users.
The Broadband Service Architecture (BSA) Project Stream’s Subscriber Session Steering (WT-474) approved a significant number of contributions to finalize the work and is expected to go to Straw Ballot before the Summer Meeting.WT-474 will provide the architecture to pragmatically select, balance and manage subscriber session mapping to the service gateway.
Five NPIFs were proposed and discussed throughout the week on topics including Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and broadband network experience analysis.
Read the full update here: https://www.broadband-forum.org/events/spring-2026-member-meeting-roundup/#NetworkArchitecture
Provider Cloud makes significant YANG progress and publishes whitepapers for CloudCO 2.0 and autonomous networking
The Provider Cloud Work Area develops frameworks and specifications to enable broadband services and networks to utilize cloud-based deployment approaches, including automation and autonomous systems that will harness machine learning and AI.
Since the Fall 2025 Meeting, Provider Cloud published TR-403a1, which defines the PON Abstraction Interface for Time-Critical Applications.
The work area has also published two whitepapers on “Cloud Native Broadband Networking” (MR-530) and “Autonomous networking in CloudCO” (MR-531).
Significant YANG progress was made by the Cloud Interfaces Project Stream, with WT‑454i2 and WT‑383a10 entering Straw Ballot for review.
Read the full update here: https://www.broadband-forum.org/events/spring-2026-member-meeting-roundup/#ProviderCloud
Service Requirements nears first major releases for AI and wholesale access
The Service Requirements Work Area defines user-centric, actionable service requirements and specifications for subscriber, access, and Broadband Service Providers’ (BSPs’) core networks. The work area is focused on providing guidance on the relevant requirements for the industry to drive the technical, services-led work of Broadband Forum’s Access, Connected User, Network Architecture and Provider Cloud work areas.
Since its formation just over a year ago, the Service Requirements Work Area is nearing the first release of two major projects. The ‘AI in Broadband Network’ project (MD-529) entered final ballot, while WT-524: ‘Service and QoE Definitions’ entered Straw Ballot following the completion of its development phase.
The work area agreed to initiate a new project, ‘AI in Broadband Network – Phase 2’, which will examine a high-level AI driven fixed access and in premises service framework. Further progress on projects involving Agentic AI and wholesale access.
Read the full update here: https://www.broadband-forum.org/events/spring-2026-member-meeting-roundup/#ServiceRequirements
YANG Ninjas: Leading YANG across the broadband industry
The “YANG Ninjas” is an advisory group of volunteers responsible for reviewing YANG data models created within the Broadband Forum. Its task is to ensure consistency and adherence to the Broadband Forum YANG Best Current Practices (OD-360). The group is overseen by the YANG Sensei: Joey Boyd (Adtran) and Sven Ooghe (Nokia).
Prior to the Spring Meeting, Amendment 3 of OD-360 was published. This revision includes several new guidelines that were reviewed and approved since the last publication.
Read the full update here: https://www.broadband-forum.org/events/spring-2026-member-meeting-roundup/#YANGNinjas