The DSL Forum announced it has changed its name to The Broadband Forum to reflect its scope of work, which has moved beyond pure DSL solutions to include access-agnostic management specifications, PON solutions, digital home optimization models and standards for real-time application support.
"The Broadband Forum name captures our true mission, which is to develop the full potential of broadband,” said George Dobrowski, chairman and president of The Broadband Forum.
"For some time now, we have been dealing with much more than DSL. 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.”
Dobrowski said The Broadband Forum will continue on its DSL standards, adding more support for the digital home as well as more policy control, QoS and network optimization in support of multiplay 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,” he added.
The DSL Forum has produced more than 150 technical reports since it was founded in 1994 as the ADSL Forum. It later changed its name to DSL Forum.
The upcoming BroadbandSuite Release 3.0 aims to simplify management and architecture of hybrid DSL and fiber networks. The group also continues to focus on expanding the TR-069 BroadbandHome initiatives. “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,” said Dobrowski.
