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August 6, 2024

The World Broadband Association (WBBA) Membership Exceeds 100

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On August 1st, WBBA achieved an important milestone with its membership exceeding 100, covering more than 30 countries across five continents. This marks a new stage of development for the association, with its global influence achieving a qualitative leap.

Currently, WBBA is committed to the following work:

  1. Promoting high-level international cooperation and exchanges, establishing a global summit system to significantly enhance global influence.;
  2. Strengthening the construction of high-standard association organizations, improving the governance framework to significantly enhance governance level;
  3. Undertaking high-quality technological innovation cooperation, building an ecosystem to significantly enhance the cohesion of the cloud and broadband industry.

The association actively participates in the ITU's Partner2Connect program and engages in multi-level, multi-field, and all-around cooperation with organizations such as GSMA, WTO, OECD, WEF, and WIC. Continuously expanding the industry ecosystem, WBBA has formed a "1+2+N" global summit system, including the annual WBBA event in Paris and the Broadband Development Congress held concurrently with the MWC in Barcelona and Shanghai. In the future, WBBA will also hold regional meetings in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to discuss the challenges, trends, and key initiatives for high-quality development of the global cloud and broadband industry with its member partners. WBBA will gather global consensus and expand its global influence.

WBBA adheres to the belief that technological innovation is the core competitiveness, and has been continuously pushing forward the research on the cloud and broadband industry as an important service for member units and a leading force for industrial development. The association has established 7 working groups so far, including:

WG1-Generational Roadmap & Demand Side Requirements and Timing: By better understanding the scale, nature and timing of the future demand for services and applications, the first WBBA working group is responsible for the Next Generation Broadband Roadmap.

WG2-Broadband advocacy: Developing a set of arguments for why it is important and beneficial to invest in developing broadband.

WG3-Environmental Sustainability: Embracing sustainability as a core element of corporate strategy offers great potential for the telecom industry, enabling companies to mitigate risks, improve operational efficiencies, enhance their reputation, access capital and drive innovation.

WG4-Network technology: Understanding the landscape of cloud network convergence, assessing and advising on how to achieve “cloud and network as one” and realise congestion-free new transport infrastructure with better network elastic scalability, enhanced intelligence, and true deterministic experience.

WG5- WBBA Broadband and Cloud Development Index: The purpose of the research is to support the development and growth of the broadband and cloud industries by ranking its performance across major countries. The benchmark combines coverage of broadband, which is the gateway to the internet and digital economy, and cloud computing, one of key enablers of digital applications services worldwide.

WG6- Customer Premises Network: In a rapidly evolving digital landscape marked by the rise of UHD video, Metaverse, online education, healthcare, and smart manufacturing, the demand for robust home and business broadband services has never been greater. To meet these demands, the Customer Premises Network (CPN) Working Group has been established.

WG7 - Artificial Intelligence: Experience the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it revolutionizes life and work, both locally and globally. Stay ahead of the curve and embrace the dynamic shifts in our economy and society with confidence. Discover how AI is shaping the future today.

In the future, WBBA will deepen international cooperation and continuously enhance its global influence, with the vision of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and helping to bridge the digital divide. It will provide guidance and advice to members on cloud and network industry policies, industries, investment, technology, and markets, and drive global cloud and network enterprises to achieve high-quality development. The association will continue to establish global partnerships and become an important bridge for international cloud and network industry cooperation.

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Key Messages
Key Messages
Recommendations
Recommendations
The Importance of Greater Broadband Investment​
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Key Messages

Advanced cloud technology together with superior end-to-end connectivity can enable a wider and more sophisticated range of applications that can in turn drive greater innovation, efficiency, and wealth.
Both enterprises and broader industry ecosystems are actively looking at broadband’s role in enabling their digital transformation. Most respondents to the WBBA’s Thought Leadership Enterprise Survey stated that they need faster and more reliable internet to run their business applications.
Certainly, in the short to medium term, xDSL, cable modem, fixed-wireless access (FWA), and satellite are all expected to have a role in the delivery of broadband services. However, full-fiber access will always deliver the optimum experience and remains the most sustainable and cost-efficient option.
There is a danger therefore for governments to base their cost-benefit analysis on a national economic view. However, such analysis will miss all the social benefits, as well as the more local economic benefits, that advanced broadband networks can bring. Governments must take all benefits into account, including more localized ones, when creating national broadband policies.
However, future applications will not only need ultra-high-speed services but also ultra-low latency and jitter, with high levels of reliability and consistency if they are to function properly. Countries with networks that are not capable of meeting such criteria will be left behind as the world moves to the next phase of internet applications such as the “metaverse.”
Fiber networks are significantly more environmentally friendly than equivalent copper-based networks, and can help support other green initiatives such as greater working from home, the use of advanced videoconferencing, etc. Fiber-based networks also require less maintenance due to there being less active equipment in the field, and can therefore reduce operators’ operational costs.
With rollout of new access technologies like 5G and Fiber, IPv6 reached more than 30% penetration worldwide (APNIC) and is rapidly growing. IPv6 Enhanced technologies, including segment routing over IPv6, per flow monitoring and AI, enable a multitude of objects and people to be flexibly connected to the proper services, granting end-to-end quality of experience.
Based on the responses from the WBBA Thought Leadership Survey, respondents believed, on average, this coverage could be expanded to approximately 70% through private investment. It is clear that government support will be needed to get to 100%.
However, a lack of data on the available infrastructure, access to key infrastructure such as ducts and in-building networks, and a lack of understanding both internally and externally are also key barriers to further investment.
Respondents to the WBBA survey stated that a reduction in regulatory barriers, greater flexibility in partnership arrangements, copper switch-off regulations, and setting out minimum service standards for network installations, would all take priority over financial support.

Recommendations

All countries must look to maximize the potential of broadband. This means creating long-term national broadband plans that evolve around three basic phases of broadband adoption:

  • Phase 1: Fast deployment of basic connectivity (most likely focusing on wireless technologies)
  • Phase 2: Continued rollout of fixed-broadband access to 100% of premises
  • Phase 3: Continued investment in advanced broadband technologies to move to gigabit societies and beyond.

In order to help facilitate this evolution to advanced broadband networks, government organizations and regulators must consider:

  • Implementing regulatory flexibility, including the removal of outdated or non-essential regulation
  • Introducing flexibility in partnership arrangements; for example, allowing agreements between players, such as co-financing, collaborative models, public-private partnerships, etc.
  • Facilitating deployment through municipality approvals, using existing resources (government buildings, streetlights, ducts, etc.) and sharing infrastructure and facilities, including in-building networks. This should also include other types of utility infrastructure where possible
  • Providing financial assistance through investment support, incentives, and subsidies; e.g., universal service funds
  • Improving access to telecom facilities and physical infrastructure; improving procedures for rights of way and accessing public infrastructure, as well as broadband mapping.
Making the Recommendations a Reality

Operators, enterprises, vendors, regulators, and policy-makers should seek to create a collective voice, to evangelize, advocate, co-create, and partner in the drive toward the provision of ultra-broadband networks and services for all. Organizations such as the WBBA can help by influencing key stakeholders through discussion, education, and promotion. Specifically, the WBBA should aim to:

  • Set out the importance of greater broadband investment, not just for the good of the service provider but for countries as a whole
  • Promote regulatory, legislative, public relations agendas that help advance the interests of members through WBBA publications and live events, highlighting best-practice business models from around the world to remove any “lack of understanding at boardroom level”
  • Influence through research, discussion, and promotion of new potential marketing or naming concepts for fixed broadband to ease mass-market understanding of the different generations of broadband access – hiding technical jargon such as “Mbps,” “latency,” and “jitter” from the customer
  • Through thought leadership, media activity, and live events, continue to make the case for what governments need to recognize and do to close the industry innovation, socioeconomic, and environmental benefit gaps through infrastructure investment
  • Explore through new research the challenges and opportunities arising from changes in the industry structure, addressing its impact on the business and the standardization landscape. This includes aspects of fiber wholesale, the move toward horizontal industry structure with separation of infrastructure and services, and the change of customer relationship to digital
  • Work with stakeholder partners to understand and promote the potential of future applications that will bring new benefits to broadband customers and wider society
  • Develop in-depth thought-leadership research on the new revenue opportunities advanced networks can provide to service providers in both the consumer and enterprise markets
  • Develop and highlight best-practice investment models that show the true return on investment of a full-fiber rollout to both private companies and government organizations
  • Champion the needs of its members to highlight barriers to future investment, creating a platform to enable open discussion between different types of stakeholder to encourage greater cooperation and new partnerships.