Operators need in-home infrastructure to support their expanding service offering
New research from Premonvision shows the rapid changing home gateway market by 2011
LONDON, United Kingdom, -19 August, 2008 – Operators are set to expand their role in the home, with rich new service offerings, reveals Premonvision, which today publishes the 2008-2011 Western European home gateway insights report. As the service portfolio evolves, so do the requirements for the home gateway which acts as the bridge between the service provider network, and the home network. This raises the question of long term robustness of service and device platforms, and the choice of in-home networking technologies, according to Premonvision. The research, based on in-depth, confidential interviews with leading Western European operator, provides strategic insights to where and how operators aim to position the home gateway by 2011, as well as the gateway's future technology requirements.
"The home gateway market in Western Europe is truly changing, as operators are launching new advanced services, such as IPTV, security and remote monitoring, which raises the bar for the home gateway", says Principal Advisor Carl Gressum, responsible for the research. "Operators are at a cross road; either keep the home gateway as a 'dumb' device on the home network, or to position it an intelligent node on the network. A choice that will greatly impact the operator's cost structure, but also its ability to deliver advanced and flexible services to the home."
Operators are also incorporating technologies and standards to facilitate content sharing on the home network as the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is gaining mind share, and the home gateway could become a leading DLNA compliant device on the market.
In-home networking remains a challenge as most operators hesitate to roll out new wires in-home. The choice is therefore often to use Wi-Fi for services that require high bandwidth and quality of service, such as IPTV. However, even with beam steering technologies, there are concerns about the future robustness of Wi-Fi as more devices and services use the same spectrum. Powerline communication (PLC) is still held back due to cost, lack of integration into other products, and the competing PLC standards.
"It is clear that operators raise the bar for the home gateway, by combining frameworks such as IMS and the DLNA to create feature rich and robust products and services" added Gressum. Examples of new services are remote access, content sharing on the home network facilitated by the home gateway, storage, home automation and remote support features. As the residential gateway no longer is just enabling broadband access services; its architecture, services and features provide competitive advantages.
The world wide advisory module Insights: home gateway addresses key market and technology issues operators face in the market. The reports, which cover different geographical regions, map out functionality of the home gateway, in-home network technologies, and other hardware requirements for the next three years. This insight provides greater understanding of the dynamics of the residential Internet services market, which is a key requirement for web service providers, consumer electronics and IT vendors.
"The operators that have not clearly defined their service strategy, and how it relates to their home gateway strategy, will draw the shortest straw" concludes Gressum.
-ENDS-
NOTE TO EDITORS
For more information Insights: service delivery platform, please contact Premonvision on +44 2080994084, contact the company here. There are also freely available industry comments here.
ABOUT PREMONVISION
Premonvision is an advisory and consulting firm in the Internet services and consumer electronics market. It provides in-depth research and consulting services on operator strategies for the residential market, and the impacts of consumer electronics and IT on the services market.
