Top telecommunications operators BT, Orange and Verizon have already welcomed yesterday's announcement of the union between the Broadband Forum and the IP/MPLS Forum.

The news, which will see a "new" Broadband Forum emerge, was announced in Valencia, Spain, yesterday, where the two organisations came together for the first time. This consolidation in the standards and specifications community creates a Broadband Forum with more than 200 members, comprising service providers, vendors, chip manufacturers and regulatory bodies from across the world.

Kevin Foster, Head of Wireline Access at BT, said: "This union means we will all benefit from a greater end-to-end approach for network and protocol standardisation, and that includes end-to-end performance, interoperability, architecture and protocols. It is good news for the industry".

His views were echoed in the United States, where Verizon's Stu Elby, Vice President of Network Architecture, said that Verizon had been an active member of both organisations and applauded the move.

"As broadband convergence continues, the Broadband Forum will be a key organisation to ensure providers' needs are met with a holistic end-to-end perspective, ensuring no gaps in critical network specifications," he added.

The new Broadband Forum will cover a much wider scope of activity. It is expected that it will be increasingly influential in defining interoperable network equipment for local broadband access, advancing mobile backhaul solutions and empowering the next wave of business services, IPTV, gaming, and other applications as they arise.

Consolidation in this part of the industry was welcomed by Orange.

"We are very enthusiastic to see the industry defragmenting," said Philippe Lucas, Vice President, International Standards and Industry Relationships at Orange.

"The union will allow better efficiency and coherence for some key topics for this industry, such as transport equipment interoperability, mobile backhaul, access and core networks integration," he added.