Broadband Forum

Broadband Forum

Membership logo from 2008
Predecessor	DSL Forum
Formation	1994

The Broadband Forum is a non-profit industry consortium dedicated to developing broadband network specifications. Members include telecommunications networking and service provider companies, broadband device and equipment vendors, consultants and independent testing labs (ITLs). Service provider members are primarily wire-line service providers (non-mobile) telephone companies.

The DSL Forum was founded in 1994 with about 200 member companies in different divisions of the telecommunication and information technology sector. It is used as a platform for companies that operate in the broadband market. Its initial main purpose was the establishment of new standards around Digital Subscriber Line communication products such as provisioning. This cooperation has brought different standardizations for ADSL, SHDSL, VDSL, ADSL2+ and VDSL2.

The group was established in 1994 as the ADSL Forum, but became the DSL Forum in 1999, named after the digital subscriber line (DSL) family of technology.

Among its early design documents, the Forum created TR-001 (1996) system reference model, which together with later TR-012 (1999) core network architecture, recommended over an ATM transport layer as the best practice for a DSL ISP. This was subsequently refined in TR-025 and TR-059.

Starting in 2004, the Forum expanded its work into other last mile technologies including optical fiber. On 17 June 2008 it changed its name to "Broadband Forum". DSL-related specifications, while still a key part of the forum's work, are no longer its only work. For instance, the forum produced work specific to passive optical networking (PON). Its Auto-Configuration Server specification TR-069, originally published in 2004, was adapted for use with set-top box and Network Attached Storage units.