Global demand for broadband Internet access is as strong as ever. A tough economy, rising

energy costs, and flu epidemics often turn consumers and businesses to broadband as a costeffective

and green alternative for communication, collaboration, and entertainment. Service

providers are not only working hard to expand service coverage and increase subscriber

penetration rates, they are also asking how they can significantly improve interoperability and

network performance, increase bandwidth, and lower latencies for demanding applications such

as IPTV, interactive gaming, and video chat.

Broadband access has reached yet another generation, thanks to the continued advancements in

DSL, introductions of passive optical networks (PONs), optical Ethernet fiber to the premises

(FTTP), and wireless access via Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) or

Long Term Evolution (LTE) in the last mile. The landscape of broadband technologies has

grown more capable and complex with the addition of these exciting alternatives. Decision

makers and technologists alike are faced with choices on access technologies and network

architectures that have long-term implications. The purpose of this white paper is to provide an

overview of next-generation access technologies, and to show how these new technologies can

both enable new services and still coexist with, and make use of, currently deployed broadband

access infrastructure.

The Broadband Forum, successor of the DSL Forum, has recognized the need to shepherd new

access technologies to market since 2005, and has been actively working on incorporating fiber

and other alternative broadband access methods into its standardization work. In doing so, it

strives to align future architectures with the existing global deployment of more than 400 million

broadband lines, while meeting the demands of future applications.