Eighty-eight percent of broadband service providers (BSPs) are planning to implement the Broadband Forum’s User Services Platform (USP/TR-369) standard to facilitate home networking, according to the “Future of the Connected Home” report.
The report, which was written by the organization and Omdia, says that USP standard is seen as a way to deploy networking services such as artificial intelligence (AI), Wi-Fi sensing, and low latency, low loss, scalable throughput (L4S).
Work-from-home was found to have been the fastest growing broadband value-added service (VAS) since the 2023 report — almost 30% of BSPs already are deploying it. Other services with good growth are smart or managed Wi-Fi, speed testing/diagnostics, and consumer cybersecurity. Parental controls have been widely deployed. The category is new to the survey.
BSPs are taking a cautious approach to investment in VASs due to growing uncertainty on monetization.
AI is an especially hot topic. Ninety-seven percent of respondents said AI-powered features are important for the connected homes; 42% are using it for network traffic optimization. A third of respondents are considering AI in relation to energy consumption.
“The latest report is enlightening and builds on our previous connected home survey for a global perspective of today’s smart home,” Broadband Forum Connected User Work Area Co-Director and QA Cafe Director of Technical Marketing Jason Walls said in a press release about the networking report.
“It’s incredible that 88% of operators have or are planning to deploy USP/TR-369, solidifying the industry’s evolution from TR-069. Finding ways to monetize value-add services enabled by USP will only get easier.”
The networking report was sponsored by Aprecomm, Calix, Friendly Technologies, Incognition, Motive, and Nokia. It surveyed 116 companies in 32 countries.
In March, The Broadband Forum introduced three projects to provide “open source software blueprints” that will help harness AI machine learning to reduce latency, improve user experience, and broaden in-home applications choices.
