Survey:
The Future of the Telco-Connected Home

RAMAT GAN – February 28, 2021 – The Broadband Forum and Omdia have released a comprehensive report on The Future Telco-Connected Home, sponsored in part by Friendly Technologies, a member of the Connected Home Council. The quantitative survey received responses from over 100 service providers across 19+ countries and highlights the importance of technological protocols that support remote management of IoT-enabled connected home products.

Nearly half (49%) of communication service providers either currently or plan to offer home security, while only 37% envision home automation as part of their portfolio of smart home services. The path to smart home varies across the board, however, nearly 69% of those offering smart home security services choose to partner up with a third party in their efforts.

Telcos to increase in Smart Home offerings by 2023

Friendly Technologies predicts that TR-369/USP will play a significant role in the near future. 96% of telcos that were surveyed expect to have implemented TR-369 through Smart Home and other IoT-managed services as soon as mid-2022. While 33% of tier 1 service providers have already deployed support for the TR-369/USP protocol, another 45% plan to do so by next year. These trends reflect the burgeoning expansion of IoT-enabled services and underline the importance of the Broadband Forum’s TR-369/USP protocol, which enables remote management of customer-provided equipment (CPE) on internet-connected networks.

The Broadband Forum released a statement explaining “The evolution of the popular TR-069 (CWMP) system, USP is the standardized, interoperable platform that uses the best of open source and standards and enables faster, more efficient, and reliable monitoring, controlling, and management of the multitude of connected devices and subscriber Wi-Fi in real-time.”

With more than 13.4 billion connected devices globally, the survey results point towards a change in service providers’ attitudes, eradicating fragmentation, developing open platforms to scale third-party development, and establishing data standards that sustain consumer trust.

Michael Philpott, Research Director at Omdia, said “The connected home has become an essential part of the broadband network” and added that “industry standards such as Broadband Forum’s USP and open frameworks are vital to this success in order to fully equip broadband service providers to dynamically compete with global tech and consumer electronics companies.