Service providers such as Telstra are set to rapidly increase their deployments of residential gateways for connected home applications, according to a “Networks in the Home: The Global Service Provider Play” report from Parks Associates.
At the recent CES show in Las Vegas several senior Telstra executives met with various suppliers of home gateways including Thompson, Siemens, Motorola and Cisco who own Scientific Atlanta a Company that has up to 60 of the set top box market in the USA.
SmartHouse has been told that Telstra want to launch a home gateway offering with a new fast Bigpond broadband service by mid 2008. It is also anticipated that they will roll out new Internet TV services in co-operation with Foxtel. There is even talk of the new Telstra gateway box being able to deliver all Foxtel services via the same gateway along with wireless and new broadband services.
Park forecasts the total number of households worldwide with service provider-deployed residential gateway solutions will grow to more than 70 million by year-end 2012.
“Service providers worldwide are scrambling to add value to broadband, communications, and other services,” said Kurt Scherf, Parks Associates’ Vice President and Principal Analyst. “Connected home strategies are focusing on advanced customer premises equipment and related services that provide significant enhancements to both subscribers and service providers. As 2008 International CES demonstrated, home networking products aimed at the service provider community are growing in sophistication as carriers seek to enhance the features and applications available to their subscribers.”
Scherf indicates that the strategy for residential gateway and other CPE deployments starts with value-added features such as multiroom DVR and streaming multimedia applications, enhanced communications features, and home monitoring. Secondarily, service providers are finding that the deployment of remotely manageable customer premises equipment provides significant benefits in reduced customer support costs and the opportunity to up-sell subscribers on digital home support services.
“Networks in the Home: The Global Service Provider Play” examines the role of home networking and managed services in helping service providers monetize their access networks. It provides a global look at current and anticipated home networking deployments by service providers and examines the consumer appetite for new services, the economics of managed services, and key residential gateway and home networking technologies.
