Altice Labs and Calix Unveiled as First Vendors to Achieve BBF.398 Grade Wi-Fi Industry Benchmark Recognition

Broadband Forum today announced Altice Labs and Calix as the first two vendors to be listed as part of its newly launched BBF.398 Grade Wi-Fi Program. Service providers and device manufacturers will be able to reduce the number of customer complaints they receive about poorly performing devices thanks to the latest performance test plan released by Broadband Forum.

Issue 2 of TR-398 can seamlessly validate the devices used in broadband deployments and optimize their performance while addressing and identifying potential operational issues before the devices are introduced to the field. It also updates a number of performance test cases and adds additional test cases for mesh and Wi-Fi roaming between Access Points (APs), and for the recently published IEEE Standard 802.11ax™-2021.

“Issue 2 builds on the foundations laid by TR-398 - the industry’s first open Wi-Fi performance testing program - in allowing operators to efficiently test Wi-Fi performance, capacity, coverage and stability. The performance test plan measures an Access Point’s performance against the growing expectations of service providers to make sure devices used in their deployments are meeting customer needs and expectations,” said Lincoln Lavoie, University of New Hampshire InterOperability Principal Engineer and Broadband Forum Technical Chair.

Lavoie added: “Operators around the world continue to use TR-398 as the Wi-Fi performance admission specification for broadband Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) products into their networks. It is vitally important that test labs, vendors and service providers continue to come together to meet subscriber Wi-Fi demands and elevate the overall customer experience.”

Receiver sensitivity, throughput, coverage, multi-user support, anti-interference, and stability are quantitatively evaluated in TR-398 and due to the defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the standard helps operators select optimal Wi-Fi solutions. These tests will also provide a clearer overview for service providers regarding the overall performance of devices used to build their products and services.

“Altice Labs has been successfully deploying FTTx networks throughout the market over the past few decades. In-House networking is one of the critical segments for us to take into consideration when looking deep into technical and operational Quality of Service and Quality of Experience aspects as perceived by our end-users,” said Alcino Lavrador, Altice Labs General Manager. “In our view, the BBF.398 initiative is fulfilling a significant industry and market requirement by positioning the advantages of Wi-Fi 6 performance together with the relevant technical metrics.”

“Calix is proud to have achieved BBF.398 Grade Wi-Fi industry benchmark recognition, which is the latest milestone in our longstanding and continued commitment to open industry standards,” said Shane Eleniak, Senior Vice President, Revenue EDGE products for Calix. “A collaborative industry approach ensures that broadband service providers of all sizes can accelerate innovation and achieve excellence at scale. In doing so, customers know that our solutions offer superior performance and in turn, amazing experiences for their subscribers. This is a far more productive strategy than proprietary approaches that limit the kinds of ground-breaking advancements required to continue propelling the industry forward. We are excited to work with other members of the Broadband Forum to support broadband businesses in their quest for excellence.”

The recently published Broadband Forum ‘The future Telco – Connected Home 2021 Survey report’ in partnership with Omdia, highlighted that customer dissatisfaction around Wi-Fi experience is becoming a growing driver of customer churn. Any service calls related to the customer network can be costly and may lead to further operational expenses through engineer call outs or equipment replacements. The report found that over 30% of user support calls were related to poor Wi-Fi performance. Having access to high-quality Wi-Fi is crucial to deliver an enhanced broadband experience for subscribers and Issue 2 of TR-398 is the next step in providing a unified performance testing standard.

Broadband Forum’s BBF.398 Grade Wi-Fi Program has a primary goal of providing a standard set of test cases and framework to measure aspects of the performance between the AP (such as CPE with Wi-Fi), reference Stations (STAs) (such as a Personal Computer, and integrated testing equipment), and if applicable, a Wi-Fi repeater environment.

For more information about Broadband Forum’s BBF.398 Grade Wi-Fi Program, visit: https://www.broadband-forum.org/testing-and-certification-programs/bbf-398-carrier-grade-wifi.

About the Broadband Forum

Broadband Forum is the communications industry’s leading open standards development organization focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards, and ecosystem development. Our members’ passion – delivering on the promise of broadband by enabling smarter and faster broadband networks and a thriving broadband ecosystem.

Broadband Forum is an open, non-profit industry organization composed of the industry’s leading broadband operators, vendors, thought leaders who are shaping the future of broadband, and observers who closely track our progress. Its work to date has been the foundation for broadband’s global proliferation and innovation. For example, the Forum’s flagship TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol has nearly 1 billion installations worldwide.

Broadband Forum’s projects span across 5G, Connected Home, Cloud, and Access. Its working groups collaborate to define best practices for global networks, enable new revenue-generating service and content delivery, establish technology migration strategies, and engineer critical device, service & development management tools in the home and business IP networking infrastructure. We develop multi-service broadband packet networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market.

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For more information about the Broadband Forum, please go to https://www.broadband-forum.org/ or follow @Broadband_Forum on Twitter. For further information please contact Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 7899 914168 or [email protected] or Josh Wright on +44 (0)7795 615466 or [email protected].

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