Broadband Forum today announced the launch of Open Broadband – WWC Reference Implementation for 5G-RG (OB-5WWC) for assisting vendors and operators to bring products to market in a shorter timeframe and reduce development times and cycles.

The Open Source project will bring the full benefits of the 5G ecosystem to fixed-line services and offer a full end-to-end solution to operators.

OB-5WWC aims to create a reference implementation of the Broadband Forum specified Wireless Wireline Convergence solution for 5G capable Residential Gateways (5G-RGs), and builds on the important Broadband Forum and 3GPP specifications already available.

The founding members from BT, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, Telstra, Verizon and Vodafone UK had a formal kick off meeting last month.

“We have already received strong support from the service provider community and are calling for all interested parties across the industry, including customer premises equipment (CPE) manufacturers, end-to-end integrators, and hardware and software vendors, to join the project and share ideas,” said Broadband Forum OB-5WWC Project Leader David Woolley.

OB-5WWC aims to provide a production grade 5G solution stack capable of integration with OpenWRT / RDK-B frameworks, and will provide a reference for testing Access Gateway Function (AGF) and RG test tool development. Integrating the 5G Quality of Service (QoS) model to the home, 5G-RG can natively support 5G signalling protocols and capabilities, as well as help connect services and opportunities.

“With key 5G specifications already available, the project is an opportunity for industry players to work together and collaborate on implementations that create the best reference implementation for 5G-RG,” Broadband Forum Vice President, OB-5WWC Project Leader and Deutsche Telekom Senior Expert Technology and Innovation Manuel Paul said.