With shipments of residential gateways rising but revenue dropping, service providers are looking to expand beyond traditional triple play services, according to new research from Infonetics Research. The fastest growing of these additional services are home automation, home security and multiscreen video, said Infonetics in “Residential Gateway Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey.”
“With residential gateway revenue dropping because of price declines and a saturated broadband subscriber base, operators are looking to new services to increase revenue per subscriber,” notes Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and video at Infonetics Research. “From our recent interviews with operators around the world, it is clear that they see their broadband access lines (be they DSL, cable, or FTTH) as a conduit for new revenue-generating services, far beyond today’s voice, data, and broadcast video services.”
Highlights of the survey include:
- The percentage of operators offering IPTV services using a residential gateway increases from 88% now to 100% by 2013
- The number of operators offering Wi-Fi hotspot access using a residential gateway grows to 82% by 2013
- The most critical residential gateway features are those that help operators deliver video and ensure video quality, including IGMP, TR-069 management, and IPv6
- Service providers are reluctant to offer integrated ONTs and residential gateways
- In an open-ended question asking operators who they consider to be the top 3 residential gateway vendors, operators most often named Huawei, Pace, and ZTE
“The fastest growing new services that operators plan to offer over residential gateways are home automation, home security, and multiscreen video (wireless distribution of video to set-top boxes, PCs, tablets, and mobile phones in the home), but there are many others gaining popularity, including online gaming and video telephony, Heynen added.
“Residential gateways are a better fit than basic modems for these types of services because they can be remotely managed and provisioned, have an open application layer to add and customize new features, and offer higher throughput and greater security features. In essence, residential gateways are becoming the gatekeeper for new, high-margin, revenue-generating traffic for operators.”
The new Infonetics report offers telecompetitors insight into service providers’ pricing and deployment strategies, as well as the applications driving deployments and Infonetics’ top picks for residential gateway vendors, services, technologies and features.
