Governments are fueling the biggest wave of broadband investment ever. And this isn’t a one-time massive expenditure, since most of the money is still to be allocated over the rest of the decade.
In this environment, the state of Maine has successfully obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money and other sources for broadband expansion. However, a new report commissioned by the Maine Connectivity Authority said Maine is expected to have a shortfall of 3,240 workers in broadband jobs. And this is without taking into account the goal of increasing broadband access to every part of Maine.
The shortage of broadband engineers isn’t limited to the state of Maine. In a recent blog, AT&T stated “we’ll need an even deeper pool of skilled workers to ensure that we’re able to capitalize on this once-in-a-generation opportunity to connect more communities to the internet.”
Potential Solutions
Many governments and broadband providers are planning to offer specialized training to bring more individuals into the broadband industry. However, with unemployment in the United States near historic lows, there aren’t enough people looking for new jobs to satisfy the need for more broadband employees.
Another option is to help current network engineers be more productive. To automate some of their tasks, so they can focus on higher-level activities with the greatest impact.
Network Virtualization and Productivity
Network virtualization provides many benefits to increase the productivity of broadband provider employees. For example, changes can be made in minutes, not days or weeks. Virtualization also automates common, inefficient manual tasks which saves engineering time and frees up resources to be spent on more valuable activities.
The network also becomes more agile with network virtualization. It’s much easier to make changes with software than making continual changes to proprietary hardware. With network virtualization, the focus is on more software and less hardware. This also results in lower costs.
Broadband Network Gateways Present an Opportunity
The never-ending demand for more bandwidth has made broadband network gateways (BNGs) a critical network component. Traditionally, broadband providers bought BNGs from large hardware router manufacturers, such as Cisco and Juniper. Unfortunately, making changes to these hardware-based BNG routers is complex, which also makes it time consuming. Broadband providers need to continually purchase, configure, and deploy additional hardware-based routers when their capacity is reached. Needless to say, hardware-based BNGs require significant engineering resources.
Software-based (or virtual) BNGs eliminate many of these problems. It’s easy to make changes to virtual BNGs with a few software commands. And the scalability of vBNGs means service providers won’t have to constantly purchase more hardware-based BNGs when their fixed capacity is reached. Less hardware also means less time spent managing hardware infrastructure.
netElastic vBNG – Delivering on the Promise of Virtualization
netElastic developed one of the first virtual BNGs and has become an industry leader by using virtualization technology to deliver market-leading scalability and flexibility. netElastic helps accomplish this with an optimized data plane and highly scalable design.
How does netElastic vBNG help increase employee productivity?
- Engineering personnel have to spend less time on tedious tasks, since netElastic vBNG automates subscriber management services.
- Runs on standard Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, which provides the scalability to handle increased network traffic and quickly make changes to network capacity.
- Removes the need to continuously upgrade hardware-based infrastructure.
- Provides a single pane of glass that makes it easy to configure your vBNGs and monitor how the network and vBNGs are performing.
By disaggregating vBNG software from proprietary hardware, netElastic vBNG is also helping broadband providers save money. netElastic vBNG customers report saving up to 70% compared to their previous vendors.
To learn more, please read the white paper on “Next Generation vBNGs: Is Your Broadband Network Ready?”
