New research from Premonvision provides insights to the Western European home gateway market 2010 – 2013
LONDON, United Kingdom, -21 June, 2010- The Western European home gateway market overview 2010 – 2013 report by consulting firm Premonvision reveals detailed information on how operators in the region will develop and position the residential gateway in the coming three years. Highlights from the research show:
-The popularity of apps on mobile phones is spilling over to home gateways. Operators are pursuing applications on the gateway either as customer facing services or as support tools for the back office and operations.
-While IMS (integrated multimedia subsystem) has languished in the previous research releases, it now has more thorough longer term traction with five out of six operators expecting IMS on the residential gateway by 2012.
ITU-T's new home networking standard, G.hn, has a very low awareness amongst the senior level executives participating in this research. Few were even aware of the standard. None of the operators expect to use G.hn in the three year period.
-All operators expect to have both DLNA Guidelines compliant and TR-69 (Technical Report 69 from the Broadband Forum) gateways on the market by 2012, and five out of six will provide users with tools to better understand home networking and assist and guide the customer in network trouble shooting and / or configuration.
“As the economic uncertainty from last year persists, operators explore how new revenue streams can be driven by turning the residential gateway into a applications and services platform. The home gateway is key for operators to reduce customer support costs and to increase customer satisfaction with the overall broadband product and multi-play services”, says Carl Gressum, Principal Advisor and responsible for the research. Even though there is a great interest in applications and services on the gateway there less clarity on the approach, as both Linux package management and Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) are under evaluation. Customer applications, such as security and web services integration for the home network are positioned to drive revenues. At the same time trouble shooting, customer support and analytics tools on the home gateway are likely to be used to reduce truck rolls and to move to standards based solutions instead of in-house developed or proprietary tools.
Home networking remains an often overlooked component in an operator's ability to deliver multi-play services. The region is gearing up towards an increased focus on Wi-Fi to deliver voice, video and data services throughout the home. “While operators increased their focus on Wi-Fi for service delivery, the ITU-T and Home Grid Forum released in 2009 the physical interface specifications for the new in-home network technology G.hn. However, our research shows that the our respondents, many from large Western European telcos, had little or no knowledge of the standard. The ITU-T and Home Grid Forum have a significant education job to do to first raise awareness and then sway interests in the region”, adds Gressum.
The use of Integrated Multimedia Subsystem in the residential market has for some time been a game of corporate politics and supply chain management. While in previous research releases IMS has languished, in this year's update there is more firm longer term support in the operator industry. “Although we note an increase in longer term plans for IMS on the home gateway it is not clear how far reaching IMS will be on a services level. Operators typically plan to use IMS for rich media communications, however, the fit between IMS and video entertainment and content services, security, energy and remote management and access is debated”, comments Gressum.
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NOTE TO EDITORS
For more information Insights: service delivery platform, please contact Premonvision on +44 208 099 4084, contact the company here. There are also freely available industry comments here.
ABOUT THE RESEARCH
The home gateway research is conducted on a regional basis, and are based on confidential and in-depth interviews with residential market decision makers. In these interviews operators discuss their three year residential gateway plans, including topics such as features, services, in-home networking, and positioning of the gateway to support the broadband experience. This programme covers Western Europe and Asia Pacific.
ABOUT PREMONVISION
Premonvision, the advisory and consulting firm, focuses on the converged market of telecommunications, content and consumer electronics. The company consult the telecommunications, media and entertainment industry on service models, business process reorganisation, and value chain and value appropriation realignment.
