central role of management and monetisation
of the connected home and not cede that
opportunity to outside companies. Service
providers are extending their connected home
offerings to include capabilities to manage
IoT, provide advanced security, and new
classes of Smart WiFi services. One of the
most important monetisation trends are the
use of Smart WiFi extenders as an incentive
to upgrade to a higher tier broadband or fibre
service or as an optional managed WiFi service
for a monthly fee.
Broadband Forum: IoT Management
and Managed Smart Home partnerships
with integrated third-party solutions are just
two examples that offer a real opportunity
to provide new profitable revenue streams,
especially with a falling decline in IPTV
revenue. With managed broadband service
delivery, it also positions the service provider
to be the first to understand what service and
application demands are needed inside the
home or business. The USP open standard
driven managed broadband services also
enable service providers to go beyond
connectivity services to complete an ‘inhome
managed’ communications service.
In addition, service providers can now offer
themselves the Smart Home service or
additional packages for secure management
visibility to third party application providers.
CommScope: There are two more phases in
home monetisation:
• All services aggregation and value-add
• Moving into high value services
management like telemedicine and aging in
place for the elderly
The service provider already aggregated video
on its HDMI connection. The next phase
will be to aggregate IoT using new standard
approaches like CHIP (Connected Home over
IP) and then the aggregation of the multiple
AI assistants in the home in their device(s)
as software added services. The shift to
higher value and monthly paying services
of telemedicine and aging in place has been
accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic with
an acute awareness of not wanting to go to
Emerging opportunities from
smart ‘lifespaces’
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, analyst firm Omnisperience
recognised a huge revenue growth potential for those
communications service providers (CSPs) who can better meet
the evolving needs of households as they transform into ‘lifespaces’.
In a discussion paper,
Unlocking the emerging
opportunities from smart
lifespaces, the firm
suggests that realising
the full revenue potential
of the opportunity,
and staying aligned to
customer needs, requires
CSPs to rethink the way
they provide services and
offers.
“Communications
service providers (CSPs)
have traditionally
segmented their
addressable market into
consumer and business
segments, where the
business sector covers
business-to-business
(B2B), business-togovernment
(B2G) and wholesale segments, and the consumer
sector covers households (fixed line) and individuals (mobile),”
notes Teresa Cottam, chief analyst. “Consumer services are
considered to be those that support an individual’s leisure or private
communication and connectivity needs and are centred on the home
environment. But, while offering growth potential, this market is
changing significantly,” she advises.
According to Cottam, CSPs have long held ambitions to cross-sell
and upsell a wider range of services to households and individual
mobile users. For example, providing:
• a household with more services (mobile, broadband, fixed line
and entertainment services)
• services to more members of the household (e.g., so that all
are using the same mobile provider)
• new services that support emerging or evolving household
needs (such as support for IoT)
• services for household business needs to support working
from home, micro and nanobusiness requirements.
“Understanding the composition of the household, as well as how
its members live, work and play, is essential to realising the full
potential of this sector,” she suggests. “As the household evolves it is
turning into a smart lifespace where technology is deeply embedded
into the everyday lives of its inhabitants. Some of the lifespace’s
technology needs –
such as the need to
communicate with others
– have always existed
but have continued
to evolve. The main
communication method
for households used to
be a single fixed line
phone; today’s lifespaces
now have a broadband
connection and multiple
mobile phones; the
Covid-19 pandemic has
stimulated large-scale
adoption of video calling
and conferencing. This
evolution impacts on the
connectivity speed and
quality of service (QoS)
that lifespaces require.”
“Entertainment
services consumed by the household have evolved from a single
television screen providing broadcast content to multiple screens
streaming video-on-demand, online gaming and higher definition
content. These services increase pressure on home broadband
because they are QoS-sensitive, with multiple sessions potentially
taking place within the lifespace simultaneously - driving the
requirement for increased capacity. Lifespaces are no longer passive
consumers of content but are now fully engaged in the Creative
Economy, which means they need faster upload speeds,” she says.
Smart home functions incorporate AI-driven devices,
the gateway to the network, smart objects and household
automation. This category overlaps with others: Amazon, for
example, has already incorporated e-commerce capabilities
into its Alexa-enabled devices and supplies complementary
entertainment or lifestyle services such as Prime Music and Prime
Video, notes Omnisperience.
EUROMEDIA 13