Volume 48 No. 1 March 2026
inside this issue:
n SCTE ® Presents: TESTING & MEASUREMENT REVIEW n New! Letter from America n International Women’s Day n We talk to: Calix, VIAVI, Appear, Netgear, Vios, Rincon and the Syndeo Institute
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contents
VOLUME 48 NO. 1 - MARCH 2026
editorial Editor’s Letter Welcome to the March 2026 issue of Broadband Journal.
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from the scte SCTE News All the latest news and events from the SCTE. scte member focus Ben Allwright, CEO, Allwright Advisory
ISSN 1751-0791
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Thanks to our supporters The SCTE ® is grateful to the following supporters for their
continued support of Broadband Journal: Amphenol, ANGA, Technetix and Wisi.
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scte benelux news Benelux News All the latest news and events from the SCTE’s Benelux Group. scte presents Julian Clover, editor of Broadband TV News, reports on our very successful SCTE ® Presents: Testing and Measurement event in January. network perspective Network Perspective Phil Scott, Chief Sales Officer at Technetix, shares his take on the fast- changing world of telecoms and how it intersects with technology. international women’s day International Women’s Day Melissa Cogavin celebrates International Women’s Day interviewing women whose achievements set them apart and whose vision is worth amplifying.
SCTE ® - The Society for Broadband Professionals
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Officers and Members of the Executive Committee President and Chair Dr Anthony Basham FSCTE Vice President Dave Hodges FSCTE Director Dr Roger Blakeway FSCTE Secretary Beverley Walker FIAM Members Laura Baskeyfield, Keith Bail, Melissa Cogavin, Costas Kyriacou, Ian Nock, Peter Sealey, Chris Swires and Peter Veerman
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from the industry Industry News The latest global news from the industry. standards Standards Update A report on the status of SCTE work with BSI.
SCTE ® iMex Centre 575–599 Maxted Road Hemel Hempstead HP2 7DX Tel: +44 (0) 1923 815500
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44 48 52 56 60 64 66 70 74
office@theSCTE.eu www.theSCTE.eu
IPO Momentum, Software Ambitions and the Future of Live Production Navigating the Shift to IP: How Education Drives Success Why the Future of Broadband Must Be Built for Kids, Not Just Devices Intrapreneurship Academy A Journey of Growth, A Future in Expansion How to Stay in Control of Autorenewal Broadband Contracts
Managing Editor Melissa Cogavin Tel: +44 (0)7501 780342 melissa@theSCTE.eu
Hardware Isn’t Legacy! It’s Leverage!
Publisher Evolution Print & Design Ltd 143 Cavendish Road, Leicester LE2 7PJ, UK
You Don’t Need a Bigger Shovel AI for the Operators Who Actually Build the Network Sink or Swim for AI Why Performance Now Depends on Network Proximity Anti-Piracy as a Network Challenge: Why Protecting Content is now Essential to Safeguard QoE letter from the americas In a new regular column, industry journalist Alan Breznick reports on the evolving broadband, telecoms and technology landscape in the Americas
Tel: +44 (0) 116 274 7700 sales@evolutiondc.co.uk
Broadband Journal is published on behalf of the SCTE ® (Society for Broadband Professionals) by Evolution Print and Design Ltd. Neither the editor nor the Society, as a body, is responsible for expression of opinion appearing in the journal unless otherwise stated. Papers and contributions for consideration for publication in Broadband or for reading at meetings are welcome and should be sent to Melissa Cogavin. Letters Broadband Journal is your forum for debate on issues affecting the industry. Let us have your news and views. Write to The Editor, c/o Communications House, marking your letter ‘for publication’ or email melissa@theSCTE.eu. For reasons of space, we reserve the right to edit letters published in Broadband .
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technical Wi-Fi in 2025 when is Wi-Fi 7 the answer?
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VisualOn Optimizer Delivers up to 40% Bitrate Reduction
Quantum Networking Technologies Outlining the NCSC’s Approach to Quantum Security
How AI and ML are reshaping Telco TV Offerings in the EU
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spotlight Vios and the Danish broadband market
© 2026 Broadband Journal Information in Broadband Journal may not be reproduced, changed or used without prior written permission from the SCTE ® .
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industry events FTTH Conference 2025: Europe’s Leading Fibre Optic Summit comes to London on 14-16 April 2026 nodeQ Building the Software Infrastructure for the Quantum Internet startup zone GroundHawk Innovative technology to protect cables in the UK
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acronym explainer
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products Agentic SDK, a new test automation framework from Witbe 116 CommScope Launches Secure Boot Solution for Texas Instruments’ Arm-based AM6x Processors 118
service finder
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diary dates
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Volume 48 No.1 MARCH 2026
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EDITORial
Editor’s Letter
The news that Virgin Media O2 has acquired Netomnia has caused ripples of excitement across the industry, along with the Amphenol acquisition of CommScope and rumours of a TalkTalk sale of its broadband division. The long-anticipated acquisition phase is now underway. You can read all about this, and other industry developments in our News section on page 44. To celebrate International Women’s Day, this time around I ended up with four fabulous interviews which I just couldn’t bring myself to edit down into bitesize chunks, so you’re getting two in this issue, this one featuring Zenita Henderson and Laura Baskeyfield and two in the next. You can find this on page 36. We interviewed Andy Rayner, CTO of Appear for this issue and heard all about their recent IPO, Netgear share their thoughts on the transition to IP, Gigabit IQ issue a sage warning about child safety online and suggest reframing the proposition differently. And we examine the pitfalls of auto-renewal of broadband contracts with Crystaline. You’ll see Ben Allwright, another familiar face detailed on page 6 in our Member Focus section, sustainability covered by Sandie Brodier on page 66, Dave Hodges’ annual standards report on page 40, Camilla Formica on her Intrapreneurship programme at the Syndeo Institute at the Cable Centre, and we have technical papers on OTT-TV, bitrate reduction, quantum security technologies and AI and ML in telecoms TV in the EU. There is so much more but I am running out of room. I will let you get on. Enjoy. Melissa Cogavin
Welcome to another bumper issue of Broadband Journal, first one for 2026 and this one will certainly keep you occupied! We started this year straight out of the traps with our first of four SCTE ® Presents events on January 22 in London, focusing on the theme of Testing & Measurement. It was another sell out event and if you missed it, we have it covered extensively on pages 10 through to 29. You may have noticed this issue is slightly different as the print deadlines and next event neatly coincided, so we have designed the back end of this issue to complement the next SCTE ® Presents event, The Future of Tech, taking place on March 18. To save you thumbing through pages while the speakers are doing their thing on the day, just turn your Journal upside down and begin from the back - that’s your event guide. At the time of writing there are still a few places left – register here for your seat: https://thescte.eu/
Melissa Cogavin Broadband Journal SCTE ® , Society for Broadband Professionals melissa@theSCTE.eu www.theSCTE.eu
We’re going to need a bigger room.
The North American market is an important one, especially right now, it seems there is never a dull moment; we thought it timely therefore to focus on the US and Canada on a regular basis and are delighted to be working with industry journalist Alan Breznick, a familiar name to you all I’m sure, who has been liaising with our Corporate Members across North America to provide a fascinating and detailed American market review You’ll find his first piece for Broadband Journal on page 80.
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MARCH 2026 Volume 48 No.1
Visit us at
April 14-16 Stand G06
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scte news
Welcome to SCTE, Frame Communications!
March 18, so you can catch them there in person.
UK-based Frame Communications is a leading provider of advanced telecoms test and measurement solutions, supporting broadband, fibre, wireless and transport networks across the UK and beyond. We help operators, integrators and contractor engineers maintain reliable, high performing infrastructure through expert guidance and best in class test and measurement technology. Recent Platinum sponsors at the SCTE ® Presents: Testing & Measurement event in London in January, Frame are also supporting our upcoming conference, SCTE ® Presents: The Future of Tech on
Gavin McGowan, MD and Co Founder of Frame Communications, said: “We’re delighted to join the SCTE and contribute to a community that sits at the heart of our industry and brings together expertise, innovation, knowledge and collaboration — qualities that drive value and help set the direction needed to advance and overcome the challenges ahead.”
www.frame.co.uk
We also welcome these new individual members to the SCTE:
Aidan Fraser CommScope Account Manager (based in UK)
Emmanuel Kennedy Novegen Ltd Managing Director (based in Dublin)
Douglas Hall Lightning Fibre (LF Holdco 2 Ltd) Head of Network (based in UK)
Scott Tovell Corning Account Manager (based in UK)
Bursary for Members – that means you! All SCTE Members qualify for bursaries to assist with travel and accommodation costs for trade shows across the year. As we turn the corner into trade show season, the time to apply for your bursary is NOW - DEADLINE IS MARCH 31! We have a designated pot of funding with your name on it.
What’s included? E ach bursary package for either ANGA COM or IBC in 2026 includes pre-paid flights and hotel accommodation for up to 3 nights (courtesy of the SCTE) and entrance to the full conference programme (courtesy of ANGA or IBC as appropriate). The full terms and conditions of the bursary can be found on our website. At the end of the event you will be expected to write a report of your experiences, what you gained from attending and to highlight any specific areas that you found valuable or of specific interest.
How do I apply? Please write up to 300 words on why you would benefit from a bursary and email it to office@theSCTE.eu Winners will be notified prior to each event. Please make your application and your subsequent report (for the lucky winners) your original work! No ChatGPT please. Application deadline for ANGA COM is 31 March 2026, and 1 June 2026 for IBC.
Each year the SCTE offers bursaries to help with travel and hotel costs for our members to attend important and educational trade shows and events across the industry. This is open to ALL individual members, so do make sure you take advantage of this incredible membership benefit. This is not a hardship fund and is not means tested. Last year seven SCTE bursaries were awarded for ANGA COM in May, five from IPKO in Kosovo, one from ARDING, also in Kosovo and a final winner from the UK. Don’t miss out on this incredible membership benefit in 2026 and beyond!
We look forward to hearing from you!
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SCTE NEWS
*Out Now* The Mineral Imperative by Amanda Van Dyke
In January 2026 Amanda published The Mineral Imperative, which makes the case that minerals underpin every modern system - from energy and technology to defence and infrastructure - yet are dangerously taken for granted. As demand accelerates and supply constraints harden, it calls for an urgent reset in how governments, investors and societies approach mining and material security. “I wanted to connect the dots for investors, policymakers, environmentalists, and even for the miners themselves, because the lack of systemic understanding was leading to the tipping point, a structural supply crisis which has arguably already begun.” Amanda will be speaking at our next event, The Future of Tech, on March 18. See reverse of the magazine for more details.
Amanda is a senior investment professional with experience in private equity, public equity and capital markets, specialising in junior mining and critical minerals.
She founded Women in Mining UK and the ARCH Sustainable Resources Fund, and as founder of the Critical Minerals Hub Amanda is committed to raising awareness of critical mineral supply chains, the role they play in the world, and the countries and industries that produce them. If Amanda seems familiar it’s because we interviewed her for our June 2025 Long Read, ‘How On Earth Has It Come To This? The Sorry State Of Rare Earth Minerals’.
Buy The Mineral Imperative on Amazon now: https://amzn.eu/d/05QktuOT
XPS PON Remote MAC/PHY 4G / 5G Business Ethernet MACSec Outoor Installation PTP Support 10/25/100G Interfaces
Volume 48 No.1 MARCH 2026
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scte member focus
Member FOCUS Ben Allwright CEO, Allwright Advisory
What got you interested in a career in broadband/ telecoms and how did you get started? I’ve always enjoyed breaking, making and fixing things — from building model aeroplanes as a child to repairing bikes and restoring cars. Growing up through the 80s and 90s, I was captivated by the seismic technological shifts of the era: colour TVs, early PCs, the first mobile phones. I was glued to Tomorrow’s World and early sci fi, fascinated by what technology could unlock. Studying electronics felt like the natural next step, and engineering roles followed. With a bit of luck, my recruiter cousin introduced me to my first proper job at Carlton Cabletime in Newbury — an innovative young business at the vanguard of TV distribution technology, the early days of what we now know as cable TV. You’ve had a varied career across engineering and sales. How would you best describe what you do, and what do you enjoy most? Engineering was the perfect foundation. It allowed me to follow my curiosity and build a deep understanding of a complex, fast moving industry. From there I moved into project management and then line management, increasingly drawn to new challenges and broader responsibility. I discovered I loved building teams and soon stepped into senior leadership roles. Working in high growth, international environments accelerated my development, and I expanded into strategy, sales, commercial, HR and finance. When I recognised gaps in my knowledge, I completed an MBA at Henley to round out my skill set. Ultimately, I realised I enjoy all aspects of business. My curiosity, commercial drive and collaborative leadership style have allowed me to explore many fascinating avenues. Over time, I found my vocation in designing, growing and leading companies — and that naturally led me to the CEO role.
Ben Allwright has been a longtime member of the SCTE and is a well known industry figurehead. Most recently, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Ogi, Wales’s home-grown internet company, which he founded to deliver next-generation full fibre services to underserved homes and businesses. Under his leadership, Ogi secured cornerstone investment from Infracapital and Cardiff Capital Region and became a leading regional provider.
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What memories really stand out for you over the years you’ve been involved in this industry? It amazes me how far the industry has come, yet how much of the underlying mission remains the same. My proudest moments are seeing businesses and teams grow from small groups into scaled, motivated organisations delivering real value for customers. I’ve especially enjoyed the early cable start ups at NTL (including ComTel and Telecential), the establishment of Isle of Wight Cable & Telephone (now WightFibre), the growth of SeaChange International in IPTV and VOD, the expansion of Flomatik and Teleste’s ANS division in services and FttX, and most recently building Ogi — a Welsh Altnet created from scratch. Each chapter brought different but related challenges, where technology and services were honed and deployed to solve real world problems. That sense of purpose — moving society forward through connectivity — has always stayed with me. The sector has changed a lot over the last 10–20 years; what for you is the biggest shift? Technology and business models are always evolving, but the most significant shift has been in customer expectations combined with stagnant pricing. Today’s empowered end user expects huge capacity, rock solid reliability and exceptional customer experience — yet many services haven’t increased in price for years. The recent wave of fibre investment has been enormous, but slower than expected take up and depressed ARPUs are creating real pressure. The sector’s structural resilience is being tested, and the lack of sustainable investor returns is a growing concern. This tension is reshaping how operators think about value creation and long term strategy.
What do you get out of being a member of the SCTE? What would you like to see more of? The SCTE has done an excellent job of reinventing itself — evolving from a cable-centric engineering association into a broader, multi sector learning and networking community. I’ve been impressed by the magazine, the breadth of the lectures, and the diversity of members now involved. The increased collaboration with INCA and others has been particularly valuable. Looking ahead, I’d love to see even more cross sector engagement — especially between fibre, wireless and content delivery communities — to reflect the converging nature of our industry. It must have been difficult to step away from Ogi after everything you built. What have you learned? It has been hugely disappointing to see full fibre plans and businesses slowed by blanket funding constraints. Banks appear unable to differentiate regional, rural, vertically integrated Altnets from urban, heavily overbuilt wholesalers — unless vouchers are involved. I understand why confidence has been shaken by macro under-performance, but the lack of nuance is frustrating. That aside, I wouldn’t change much about the Ogi journey. It was thrilling to build a telecoms company from scratch and to tackle the challenges across build, marketing, sales, care and operations — each with its own systems, processes, stakeholders and people complexities. I believe we created something purposeful that will matter to the people and businesses of Wales for generations, whatever form it ultimately takes. My only wish is that we could have done more. Personally, I learned a huge amount — about leadership, resilience, clarity of purpose and the importance of building teams that can thrive long after you’ve stepped away.
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What would you like to see improve across the sector? Capital availability remains the key to moving past the current stagnation — for consolidation, for system and CX improvements, and for efficiency gains. This will improve as more businesses reach profitability and as opportunistic M&A gathers pace. Copper switch off and better fibre awareness are essential to accelerate take up. But ultimately, we need clearer, more compelling use cases for gigabit connectivity — whether delivered via HFC or fibre. Demonstrating tangible value will drive adoption and help restore sustainable pricing. Have you had any mentors over the course of your career, and how did they help you? Yes, several. Early in my career, experienced engineers, PMs and line managers helped me progress. As I moved into management and later consulting, Mike Thornton was a consistent guiding light — deeply supportive as I learned the ropes at ComTel, where I became a director at 28 under his leadership.
What do you anticipate happening in the industry over the next 2–5 years? With debt funding constrained, consolidation is widely seen as the primary route to value creation — and significant rationalisation will follow. In the meantime, operators will need to hunker down, sell hard, cut costs and push towards profitability. It will be painful to scale back after so much investment in scaling up. Technology will play a major role in the next phase. IT and AI will be essential for innovation, efficiency and leaner operating models — from predictive maintenance to automated provisioning and smarter customer interactions. Consolidation will bring complexity and engineering challenges, but within that lies real opportunity for those ready to solve them.
As I progressed, other leaders provided inspiration and perspective. More recently, I’ve leaned on my Boards and Chairs — sector specialists whose experience and objectivity were invaluable in tough situations. I also work with an executive coach, who has helped me understand my strengths, potential blind spots and leadership style, and provided tools that have genuinely improved my performance. I’ve always tried to pay that forward by supporting others coming through the ranks. What would you tell a young entrant just getting started in this industry? Work hard, show initiative and stand out. Ask questions and keep learning — not just within your role, but across the business. While you’ll get support, don’t expect others to build your career for you. Embrace change, stretch yourself and take on challenges that make you uncomfortable. Build a strong network inside and outside your organisation and seek out mentors. Your knowledge, skills, initiative and relationships are your future in telecoms — one of the most dynamic and exciting industries to be part of.
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SCTE 81 st Annual Gala Dinner & Awards 2026
Saturday 20th June 2026
SAVE THE DATE. details will be circulated to members very shortly but in the meantime more information can be obtained from the SCTE office or by emailing bev@theSCTE.eu CENTRAL LONDON
scte PRESENTS
SCTE ® PRESENTS: Testing and Measurement Julian Clover, editor of Broadband TV News, recently reported on our very successful SCTE ® Presents: TESTING & MEASUREMENT event in JANUAry.
22 January 2026 The Institution of Civil Engineers, One Great George Street, London
PLATINUM SPONSOR
Test and measurement underpins confidence in modern networks
are putting far more weight on proactive measurement. It’s being used to validate build quality, establish performance baselines, spot early signs of degradation and support closed-loop assurance as networks become more automated and software-driven. Accurate, trusted measurement data matters not just for internal decision- making, but for proving compliance with service-level commitments and maintaining confidence among enterprise and residential customers alike. “As networks become faster and more software-driven, the old rule still applies: bad data in means bad decisions out. If measurement is inaccurate, automation doesn’t work. If data isn’t trusted,
“From fibre build and activation through to optimisation, assurance and the customer experience, our ability to operate with confidence depends on what we can prove about performance.” That observation, shared by SCTE President Dr Anthony Basham as he opened the SCTE Presents day on Testing and Measurement, reflects a wider shift across fixed and hybrid networks. Test and measurement are no longer confined to fault-finding or acceptance testing; it’s increasingly central to how networks are built, run and optimised over time. Historically, measurement tools were often deployed reactively – called upon when performance fell below expectations or services failed outright. Today, operators
DIAMOND NETWORK SPONSOR
GOLD SPONSORs
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scte PRESENTS
plays an important role in improving both the technologies deployed in the field and the methods used to verify their performance.
Against this backdrop, the SCTE continues to emphasise professional standards and engineering discipline. Ongoing work on standards development, peer review and shared best practice
analytics don’t help. And if we can’t clearly demonstrate performance, SLAs and the customer experience, we’ll suffer,” said Dr Basham.
Testing and Measurement PLATINUM SPONSOR PRESENTATION You’ve Been Framed
Frame Communications’ managing director Gavin McGowan made a simple point: if you’re not testing properly, you don’t really know what you’ve built – and you can’t prove what you’ve paid for. McGowan opened by taking the room to Jamaica, where his team had been asked to verify a fibre build for a UK operator. After around 10 days on site, with five engineers carrying out walkouts, visual inspections and testing, the numbers were ugly. “We had a failure rate of over 40%,” he told the audience, describing the moment he hit send on an email report late on a Sunday night that, in his words, “was going to set off a bomb in the boardroom” back in the UK. The lesson, he said, cuts both ways: without test data, operators can’t validate work done by contractors, and contractors can’t prove they’ve delivered to spec. It also set up a pitch for the Newmarket-based company: the hardware test-set market is mature, but the workflow around it is still messy. McGowan argued there’s “very, very little difference in hardware between a Japanese machine, a Chinese machine or a green machine,” but there’s still a “gap in terms of reporting and automation.” Frame’s answer is an IoT- and GNSS- based layer that connects directly to test equipment, aiming to centralise asset control, standardise configuration and Quality Assurance (QA), improve utilisation, and tackle the practical problems of loss and theft. The company is starting with support for two tool types: an “active V-groove machine for fibre to the home” and a “core alignment machine” for deeper network work.
reflects — all of which can complicate OTDR trace interpretation, including large apparent gains or losses at interfaces and more reflective events. For near-term FTTH operations, McGowan favours bidirectional testing to counter measurement mismatches, smarter in-home testers spanning Layer 1 to Layer 4, field-replaceable ferrules and cleaner ways to move results off tools — for example QR/NFC workflows designed for secure sites. He also visited network validation and proactive assurance, spanning pre- production stress testing and security scenarios, then moving into Ethernet service OAM (Y.1731). With Frame’s 2023 majority stake in Bristol-based AIOps firm NetMinded, he said they’re pushing beyond continuity-check “Ethernet ping” into synthetic traffic that can quantify loss, delay and jitter. The approach, he stressed, is deliberately lightweight in production: “It’s only a little bit of test traffic going on in the background.” Frame has deployed the system at National Broadband Ireland, claiming it scales “up to a million” endpoints.
McGowan also leaned on security, describing a “sovereign cloud… hosted in London,” alongside geolocation, proactive maintenance triggers and the ability to remotely disable stolen tools. McGowan pointed to multi-core fibre and hollow-core fibre as the next big innovations. Multi-core’s selling point is its density: pack lots of cores into one strand, potentially turning a 48-fibre cable into something closer to “nearly 1,000 cores” without changing the footprint. Hollow- core’s promise is latency, thanks to light travelling faster through an air-filled core. As McGowan put it: “Light travels about a third faster in hollow-core fibre than in traditional fibre,” which he linked to data centre and 5G use cases. But both come with new splicing and measurement headaches: tight rotational- alignment requirements for multi-core; thermal management to avoid deforming outer cores or collapsing a hollow core; and sensitivity to dust (multi-core) and humidity (hollow-core). On the test side, he pointed to shifts in dispersion, bend sensitivity (he suggested hollow- core needs far more conservative bend control), and big changes in how light
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scte PRESENTS
Testing and Measurement Panel 1: NETWORK BUILD TEST AND MEASUREMENT
Ben Allwright’s panel gave us a reality check on the UK’s fibre-build era. The gold rush may have slowed, but “voucher projects continue, infill continues, customer connections continue, diversionary works continue and so do network extensions.” With
“around 20% of the UK still to fibre,” he said the sector wasn’t so much at an end as in “a pause… a period of strategic reflection.” Allwright, founder and former CEO of Welsh altnet Ogi, told SCTE members he wanted an honest discussion about what operators and contractors learned during a decade of rapid rollout. He cited the familiar ingredients of pain: “pressured build plans, shortages of experienced staff… lightweight procurement in some areas, umpteen contractors… [many] didn’t actually always meet the mark.”
Guy Miller, a non-exec director at MS3 Networks and its former CEO, set out the investor view of test and measurement through the idea of a “trusted network”. Drawing on MS3’s build in Hull – “a very interesting UK telecoms market where Openreach are not present” – he admitted that even well-
funded builds can cut corners early. “We started testing and measuring six months into build, which is quite terrifying to think about now,” he said. Miller described how, in a rush to scale, MS3 sourced customer equipment at speed and paid for it later. “We flew over 10,000 boxes and only found out two years later, after a rigorous testing regime, that they all leaked. There was water everywhere in our network,” he said. When the team challenged the supplier, the response was surreal: “We were told it was because the UK had different rain to China.” For Miller, testing isn’t a technical nice-to-have – it’s part of building the valuation. Buyers in due diligence don’t just want test results; they want fast access to them, traceability and evidence that failures were fixed. “Access to every test you’ve ever done… the ability to have it all in one platform… [and] a complete understanding of your test records was critical,” he said. He added: “It’s remarkable how many businesses I’ve come across that have vast amounts of test results – 25% of which are terrible – but didn’t actually do anything with them.”
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More testing, he argued, delivers simple operational outcomes: fewer staff required, better first-time install rates and fewer due diligence red flags. MS3, he said, reduced engineering headcount while growing and hit “first-time installations in Hull to 92%,” a figure he claimed rises further once no-access visits are excluded. The point, he argued, is that boards respond to clear financial outcomes. “Unfortunately, the board aren’t always as interested technically in some decibel levels as they are in the financials,” he said.
Virgin Media O2’s Sean Pillans shifted the focus upstream, to component assurance and what happens before field testing even begins. “If I wanted you to buy five million sausage rolls, you might start thinking about this a bit differently, right?” Fibre components may be
“relatively low-cost items,” he warned, but at scale “it’s very expensive” when something goes wrong. His prescription: clear specifications, scrutiny of vendor datasheets, formal test plans, factory visits and meaningful field trials. “Don’t just rely on the paperwork,” he said.
Lightning Fibre’s Douglas Hall described arriving in 2023 as the market began to tighten – and having to shift the organisation from “build fast mode” to “build right mode”. He set out what he found: “Proper testing and documentation was sometimes skipped… Materials were
specified loosely… We had test results, but we didn’t trust them. We had records, but they weren’t reproducible.” And there was more to come: “We ended up retesting significant sections of the network after they were already live… We paid twice, once to build, again to prove what we’d built.”
On the contractor side, SCCI’s Shaun Richards agreed that quality failures often trace back to competence and supervision. “There are a lot of people out there that proclaim to be fibre engineers… and they don’t really know what they’re doing,” he said. His message
was end-to-end discipline: “Quality isn’t something we only inspect at the end — it’s something we build from the first flight to the last test.” Allwright closed with an operator’s confession about oversight. Even when contractors look capable on paper, he said, “you kind of have to stand over them all of the time to make sure you’ve got that consistent quality and quality of the work.”
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Testing and Measurement Panel 2: NETWORK ACTIVATION TEST & MEASUREMENT Network Activation and the Speed Test
The panel acknowledged that speed tests are also messy in practice.
In practice, that can mean two sets of proof: formal reporting and stats to claim vouchers, and a basic reassurance test before the engineer leaves: “hopefully your engineer does a nice speed test”. That “speed test” went on to dominate the first part of the discussion, with a debate over whether it’s the right metric or simply the only one the customer will recognise.
The Network Activation panel had a deceptively simple problem to solve: at the point of install, what exactly are you proving – and to whom?
Gavin McGowan, MD, Frame Communications noted that results depend
heavily on the test server location (“on- net” versus “off-net”), and that customers repeatedly confuse Wi-Fi performance with broadband access. You can’t ignore speed tests, he argued, but you can improve how you do them: “We look at it at layer two, layer three, layer four, and… we’d recommend… a proper TCP test… People use speed tests. You can’t ignore it.” Latency and “responsiveness” then emerged as the next battleground, but again with caveats about what operators can control. Paddison highlighted a real-world reality: gamers care about the Fortnite or Activision server, not just the access link – “you’re only in charge of it until you hand it over”. Whitehead pointed to Comcast as the best example of an operator working end-to-end, not just access-only: “What Comcast have done is they’ve worked with the application providers to specifically mark packets… that marking is honoured through the access infrastructure… through the backbone network… and then hopefully all the way back to the gaming server…
Moderator James Saunby reminded us of what government agency Building Digital UK (BDUK) was looking for:
Harmonic’s David Whitehead argued speed tests are a blunt instrument: “You don’t need anything over 100 megabits downstream…
minimum gigabit download, minimum 200Mbps upload, latency targets and further requirements “at busy hour”. For any operator taking public funding, he said, that means measurements are no longer optional. But the panel questioned whether those were the same measures understood by customers.
It’s all about responsiveness… and that is the key metric.” The challenge, others suggested, is that speed is what’s marketed – and what’s sold becomes the customer’s yardstick. As audience member Ian Nock put it: “If it’s not important, don’t sell it. That’s all you sell right now. Customers look at what you sell, and they expect exactly what you sell, which means if you sell gig, you need a gig 24 hours a day whenever they test it, and that’s why they’re testing it.”
“There’s two people you need to satisfy… There’s His Majesty’s Government… and then there’s the consumer who is now paying the money,” said
INCA CEO Paddy Paddison.
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So they do a really, really good job of managing end-to-end latency.”
A second major theme was frontline capability: whether the people doing installs can explain results, handle customer questions, and avoid needless callouts. CityFibre’s Chris Kelly warned that customers now arrive armed with advice from AI tools and forums, and installers can end up on the back foot. He put forward a simple solution: “getting more knowledge into the installer side of things… so they can actually answer it with a bit of confidence… rather than trying to shove it off”. Without that, he said, contracted workforces under time pressure will default to “we’ll just put it in and whether it’s working or not, we’ll leave.” Audience member Doug Williams, took us from “install testing” to “lifecycle testing”, arguing activation is the beginning, not the end: “I don’t think it’s about early life testing, it’s about continuous testing… we have to get to the point that we are measuring that life cycle… from cradle to grave.” Williams also offered a hard definition of failure: “If a customer has to call into your customer care centre, you failed… we should be able to have that data to tell the customer there’s an issue either in your network or an issue on the Internet.” But this is complicated by who holds the customer relationship. CityFibre’s Kelly noted the first touch point is often the
Kelly described CityFibre’s approach: inspection probes that use a simple rating (“Red, Amber, Green”), mandatory photo uploads, and AI evaluation; optical power tests captured at required points; and speed-test results uploaded to a cloud system with geolocation and service- ID checks. The logic is to lock results to tools and automate validation: “As soon as you introduce anything where there’s geolocations and stuff, people quickly realise that they will get found out.” McGowan agreed, describing systems where “the results are locked into the test tools, and the data has come straight off the test tools… so there’s no interference.” Kelly’s final warning was that the conversation itself has become a warning sign: “We’ve probably been talking about the same stuff for the last five years. What I don’t want to be doing in five year’s time is to be having the same panel discussion.”
ISP, not the network operator – even if customers blame the wholesale brand. Whitehead argued those interactions can still be a competitive advantage: “having a customer service interaction is a chance… to excel and gain loyalty… you’re allowed to fail once… but that customer experience has to be great every time… because eventually they’re not your customer anymore.” From the floor, Tim Clark (CityFibre) argued we may be focusing on the wrong measurements. Instead of obsessing over consumer speed tests, he said, activation should ensure a quality optical install ready for next-gen services: “We shouldn’t be looking at the speed test, we should be looking at things like optical power meters, inspection probes on a customer install. There was concern over how to prevent “blagged” test results. Asked how to stop engineers gaming the process,
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continuity errors to distinguish network faults from headend/encoding faults that can look identical on screen. “The cool thing with this graph was that it was able to do one significant thing,” he said. “If you look at the TV screen and it’s… blocking or stuttering… that can have multiple causes… something wrong with your TV encoder back in the headend… Or you can lose some packets in the network. And it will also look exactly the same way.” In this case, the evidence pointed squarely at the network. “Can you guys guess what the problem was?… Well, it was of course a network problem,” Frostad said, adding that hard data helps end the “blame game” because it “cannot be discussed away”. Frostad said video was the service that forces networks to improve because consumer tolerance for visible errors is low. “The killer service is video. Because video is unforgiving,” he said, pointing to premium viewing scenarios where stutter or blocking becomes unacceptable. He also noted that modern high-quality HDR streams can sit in the region of 17–25Mbps, meaning capacity alone is not the issue; stability and packet integrity are. Bridge has since expanded beyond IPTV monitoring into high-bandwidth production and contribution environments. Frostad said the company’s high-end platforms can support dual 200Gbps interfaces and very large media flows – up to 86Gbps per flow – underscoring how quickly professional media networking requirements are scaling. He praised the progress across the sector compared with earlier “cowboy cable days”, while maintaining that the same core challenge remains: giving both network and broadcast teams the same operational view of what is happening, so faults can be found and fixed faster.
switch would periodically disrupt the network when faced with the steady, unidirectional media flow. “Every two minutes… [it] flooded, of course, the network with all of these traffic,” he said, arguing the switch expected the two-way signalling typical of “computer chatter”, not a “one-way street”. The workaround was straightforward: add periodic keepalive signalling to reassure the network. “Every 20 seconds, [it] sends out a small return message that basically says ‘Elvis lives’,” Frostad said, crediting the engineer’s fix for making the stream stable long term. “After that, everything worked as planned… every single day since that time.” From those early deployments, Frostad said Bridge Technologies was founded in 2004 to “bridge” the broadcast and telecoms worlds with tools that generate shared, objective evidence. He argued that network engineers often underestimated how small impairments could become visible in video services. “Losing a packet, what the hell? Does that really matter that much?… Losing one or two, who cares?” he said, describing the mindset gap when broadcast-grade media first moved onto IP. Bridge’s early proving ground came in IPTV, at a time when global deployments were still largely pilots and vendor stacks were immature. Frostad cited a Norwegian fibre-to-the-home trial involving a traditional headend supplier, a major networking vendor and an early IP set-top box platform – and a familiar outcome when things went wrong: everybody blamed everyone else. His answer was a compact probe device, the VB10, that could be inserted at multiple points through the delivery chain to isolate where impairments were introduced. The accompanying diagnostic concept – the Media Window – combined timing behaviour (packet inter-arrival variation/jitter) with transport stream
Bridge Technologies founder and CEO Simen Frostad set out how early Scandinavian broadcast contribution and IPTV deployments
exposed a persistent problem: broadcast and telecoms teams were trying to run the same services, but lacked a shared way to diagnose faults on IP networks. Frostad took us back to the turn of the century, when he worked on a Scandinavian sports contribution network using IP/MPLS across a mix of radio towers and fibre. The shift, he said, was not driven primarily by cheaper transport, but by the difficulty – and cost – of satellite- based logistics across long distances. “Networks are very expensive too. So it wasn’t for the cost savings, it was for the logistics savings,” he said. “Being able to replace one person or two persons or sometimes even three persons travelling with all of this hardware somewhere was actually the game changer.” At the time, however, the broadcast equipment ecosystem was not quite ready for IP contribution at scale. Frostad described struggling to find reliable devices to convert SDI video into IP streams, and he recalled scepticism from vendors who viewed IP as risky compared with established approaches. A turning point came through a back- channel collaboration with a Tandberg Television engineer, who produced a prototype transport stream encapsulator capable of pushing high-quality MPEG-2 4:2:2 video over a 100Mbps interface. But the project then hit an unexpected networking hurdle: continuous, one- way high-bitrate video didn’t behave like normal IT traffic in the eyes of some switching equipment.
Frostad pointed to a particular issue on Cisco 3550 switching, where the receiving
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create a logistics and process nightmare making sure engineers “are plugging the right box into the right OLT [Optical Line Terminal].” He also warned that chasing the cheapest ONT can backfire. In one example, pushing costs down too far led to inadequate power supplies – and expensive truck rolls. Gannon argued modern simulation changes everything: you can replicate operational conditions end-to-end without touching live subscribers. And instead of warehouses full of powered devices, you can simulate “tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of devices” to stress throughput and back-office interactions (DHCP/DNS/registration storms), cutting test cycles from days to hours.
Steve Kingdom, CTO, Fixed Networks at Xantaro, argued testing is now a baseline requirement because
A recurring theme of the Test and Measurement and Beyond session was that, as networks become multi- vendor, software-driven and operationally complex, test and measurement has to evolve from point checks into continuous,
modern networks are inherently complex. He listed multiple layers of testing: physical fibre tests, performance, systems/OSS/BSS, qualification and regression, monitoring/ telemetry, plus multi-vendor and multi- operator interoperability. The discussion quickly centred on what mergers, acquisitions and phased buildouts mean for altnets. Moderator Paddy Paddison, CEO of INCA, warned about the risk of being told “those ONTs [Optical Network Terminals] work, don’t worry about it,” only to discover later “it’s a lie”. Shrivastava’s answer was that the hardest part is operating two networks – and multiple vendor stacks – at once, often on different software versions, with “legacy” and “modern” environments co-existing, alongside the acquired company’s tools and processes. He described an AIOps [Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations] “federated architecture” that can ingest data from “100 systems”, integrate signals, reduce noise, and output a simpler operational procedure for NOC and field teams. Kingdom said the sharpest pain is often at installation and fulfilment: if you don’t have proven interoperability (for example, one ONT that works across the estate), you
end-to-end assurance that drives decisions – not just dashboards.
Vecima’s Mike Gannon set the tone with a push for a “better-than- source” video quality enhancement that would deliver dramatic improvements in perceived stream quality, up to 80% bitrate reduction, and low- latency (around 30 milliseconds) real-time processing for live streaming and VOD.
Manish Shrivastava described VIAVI’s role as turning measurement into action across the full lifecycle (build, turn-up, verify, operate, optimise).
Digital Twins
A lively exchange followed on digital twins, simulation risk, and over-reliance on software layers. One audience member highlighted the promise – and the anxiety: “The problem in having software layers upon software layers upon software layers upon software I can continue, you know, is that when you start changing not 1, but 2, but 4, but 10, but 20 different parameters at the same time.” He argued digital twins work well in construction- like scenarios, but in networks – where change is continuous – “a single source of truth resides in the actual world, not in a digital simulation.”
His focus was multi-domain service assurance: combining active tests, passive monitoring, telemetry, KPIs/KQIs, and fault/event context, then automating “evidence packs”, repeatable diagnostics, and post-fix verification.
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Shrivastava tried to demystify digital twins by arguing there isn’t one twin, but many – each tied to an outcome (parameter-change impact; configuration/ service-introduction impact; utilisation and pathing effects). He said the concept is maturing, but valuable today as a change-management confidence tool that augments engineers rather than replacing them. Dashboards and the “single pane of glass” also got a reality check. Bridge Technologies chairman Simen Frostad rejected the idea of adding yet another “intelligence layer” on top of the OSI model, arguing simplification matters more than new abstraction. Shrivastava was equally sceptical about the classic promise of a unified view: “We all talk about single pane of glass. They cannot be a single pane of glass ever. The glass is always broken or scratched.” Instead, he argued the future is dynamic, role-based views – potentially generated on the fly using AI models curated to the operator’s network “truth” (with the ability to save or discard views) – while accepting that confidence scoring and verification remain essential. Preventative maintenance and cost reduction were framed less as “fix faults faster” and more as better capacity, performance and commercial insight. Kingdom suggested operators need clarity on what they truly control (owned backhaul vs third-party wholesale, interconnect capacity), plus visibility into OLT port utilisation and customer usage to predict both problems and upsell opportunities: “easier to upsell to an existing customer than… bring in a new customer.” He went as far as suggesting the creation of “10 hottest customers” reports.
Training Places
and spotting patterns humans can’t, but dangerous if it’s trusted to make changes without strong guardrails, accurate data, and verification loops. A field story about an HFC outage reinforced the human factor: a technician knew how to run a meter, but not what the results meant – evidence that tools don’t replace understanding. To close, Paddison asked for one capability likely to matter in the next 18 months. Gannon pointed to the sheer volume of modern telemetry (for example, OFDM complexity) and the need to learn where errors truly are, warning about false positives — like historical leakage detection programmes that were disabled because they created too much noise. Shrivastava picked “closed-loop assurance, with verification”: not just detecting and recommending, but proving the fix worked. Kingdom emphasised the looming skills gap: installing is one thing; fault-finding and diagnosing fibre issues at scale is another — and it will take years for altnets to embed that mindset. Frostad closed by arguing management also needs “training” to understand that resilient networks are worth more than fragile ones — and that the industry must invest ahead of the curve to remain sustainable.
Training and de-skilling became the other major thread. One audience member questioned whether digital twins and automation deskill “common sense engineering”, and asked for evidence that it improves time-to-delivery or type approval. Gannon responded that adoption has to be “show and tell”, and that automation can free scarce experts from repetitive testing – while still correlating automated outcomes against manual tests until trust is earned. Shrivastava described “workflow-based training” that teaches engineers which signals matter in a scenario, how to reduce alarm floods to one actionable root cause, and – critically – how to capture evidence of the fix and feed it back into the system. There was also a strong caution about AI reliability standards in telecoms and broadcast. Frostad put it starkly: “In our industry, you know, 85% is not fine, 95% is not fine, 99% is not fine. 99, 999. We’re starting to get somewhere.” AI Requires Guardrails That led to a broader debate: AI is powerful for analysing huge datasets
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