The world is well full-on with the internet.

Every industry we can think and imagine of is being operated, developed and thrived with internet broadband service. In short, broadband connectivity is everywhere.

So, if we need to think of the future, we need to think of the future of broadband.

But in which direction is the future of broadband going?

What will happen to the broadband network service in 5 years?

Let’s dive in.

The future of broadband in a nutshell

The trends influencing broadband networks in the next 5-6 years were in a successful pattern until the COVID struck. yet, the next revolution is on the board.

The global halt in response to COVID-19 took away two years of proactive development on broadband internet, even though, the next phase of the revolution is already on the path to influencing broadband connection. Looking at many major divisions, the broadband connectivity is developing very well in cases including growth in bandwidth, more access to broadband, Fiber Deployment, and High & Low Altitude platforms.

Therefore, these are the major areas we will look into in 2022 as a future of broadband for the next 5 years, while they change the overall shape of modern broadband technology.

What is the future of broadband?

Many things can reshape the future of broadband connection worldwide as they are changing on a rapid scale. It’s been said that 10G is considered to be the future broadband platform—serving 10 gigabits per second to every residential or household there is on the planet, 10 times faster speed than what we have today. With this huge speed & capacity of broadband, society is hoped to be functioning a lot faster, allowing creators and innovators to bring visions to reality at a fast pace.

The changes we are already seeing on the way to the future are:

·        Growth in bandwidth

·        More access to broadband

·        Fiber Deployment

·        High & Low Altitude platforms.

So what will happen to the broadband internet connection in 5 years? What will the future of the broadband internet look like?

Let’s get into the details:

Growth in Bandwidth

Over the last 2 years, the world has witnessed around 20% increase in upstream & downstream average residential bandwidth usage during busyhours, with many times huge spikes and the world was stuck at home during COVID. Since then, the trend of staying at home and working remotely will actively keep the usage high, as the ‘new normal’ is taking shape with more people working remotely, using increased bandwidth in their two-way online communications like file sharing, video meetings, online conferencing, audio calls, uploading & downloading files and media to the cloud. In short, upstream & downstream capacity will continue to increase more on usage.

As more and more time passes, the usage and demand are increasing simultaneously. As every type of organisation & institution there is, is working remotely, more businesshours everyday are getting overwhelmed by the demand of up peak bandwidth levels. Major activities during business hours like online meetings, online classes, customer demand & expectations are rising, and the need for flawless upstream is getting much more important even though at peak times network interaction can cause jams& longer queues, which is not a good thing at all.

That being said, Cable MSOs can improve customer experience and satisfaction by evolving their operations support systems in four steps.

And there’s more.

Just to keep pace with the constant change in increased upstream, service level agreements (SLA) will be developed with incredible ranges in the future. That will causehigher bandwidth-intensive services like Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Holographic and many more to rise.

Access to Broadband

Growing bandwidth is not the only option, because, in the coming years, we will witness massive development in access to broadband services in almost every area on the face of the earth. Many developing countries have rural or underserved areas where the internet hasn’t even reached yet, that’s why many global initiatives and funds are being developed to make sure of the equality of access in increasing usage of the internet. Many initiatives like Rural Digital Opportunity Fund will input more innovation & technology with devices spread across the underserved areas so that more people can access broadband connections. For example, Fiber-based XGS PON, Coaxial-based DOCSIS 3.1 etc. are being spread across rural cities and urban areas. Investments like these will secure a larger network perimeter, more capacity, more human resources to operate, and more people to gain access to a larger broadband system, therefore seeing a large stream of revenue coming out.

Hopefully, every rural area and urban city worldwide will see a development in incredible broadband capacity within the next 5 years.

But that didn’t end there.

The world is witnessing a rise in competition in broadband internet services. The market is being dominated by the apex predators with the latest technology & innovation to take broadband to the next step. For example, Starlink by Elon Musk, launching satellites from Florida, has been giving a remarkable broadband service from low-earth orbit satellites. While in Asia, companies like KDDI Corp, a Japanese telco, have already chosenStarlink for backhaul in remote areas across Japan, just to provide urban mobile connectivity to the mobile users in the rural areas.

Even so, big companies like Amazon recently declared plans & goals to build internet satellites at the end of 2022 to provide higher-speed internet to any given location worldwide. Even in the United States, The C-band auction is taking action on the access of the operators countrywide to offer fixed wireless access to customers on a massive scale.

Fiber Deployment

Deploying Fibers will be the next big option for countries around the world operators in the next 5 years. Many cable operators are already reducing group sizes and jams in capacity by planning to deploy deeper HFC fiberdeployments. As a result, these actions will drive Ethernet and PON solutions to connect DAA nodes. In not so distant future, many other cable operators will start to shift massively from Coaxial-based broadband solutions to PON-based broadband solutions, which include both EPON and XGS PON. On the contrary, many renowned telco operators have already deployed PON solutions that will gradually expand over new areas that haven’t been touched by the internet.

With these deployments undergoing operations, CommScopehas already talked about the issue and the rising demand for the massive shift from Coaxial-based to PON-based. In that case, Fiber deployments by CommScopewill reinforce the fiber optic cabling system and connectivity solutions on fiber splice, terminals and many more. Their product ranges focus on OLT and ONT products, transmitting & managing optical signals across deployed fibers.

For many years to come, CommScope will provide the key technologies required by operators in their fiber deployments, with Node-based OLTs and Shelf-based OLTs supporting both EPON and XGS PON technologies.

Space Mobile, High-Altitude Platforms (HAPs) and Low-Altitude Platforms (LAPs)

Space Mobile is also taking over to take the broadband connection to a new dimension.

Companies such as Vodafone and Rakuten, for example, have already stated their intention to act as lead investors in Space Mobile, a space-based cellular broadband network. Meanwhile, Rakuten has already launched Blue Bird, a production satellite designed to expand Space Mobile's global coverage.

Over 168 satellites will be used in this project as of today. The goal is straightforward: launch LEO satellites to identify connectivity gaps and increase upstream capacity. Through the HAPS alliance, companies and organizations such as KDDI, Softbank, T-Mobile, Ericsson, and even Nokia are on their way to implementing High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS).

Bottom Line

The world is going at a fast pace, the same is for internet connection, faster broadband and access to more bandwidth. With access to innovative new technologies to reinforce bandwidth, efforts have gone across low-orbit satellites to make users have more access to broadband internet. Hopefully, in the distant future, we’re ready to see a massive shift in the rise of superfast broadband connectivity.