Estimated reading time - 3 min
By Luis Martinez-Amago, President and General Manager, Technicolor, Connected Home Division, known as Vantiva
2019 will see more Network Service Providers (NSPs) around the world embrace “managed services” as a core strategy for generating new recurring revenues and competing with retail offerings. It will likely be the key to developing new value-added revenue streams and avoiding the prospect of simply becoming a dumb pipe provider.
Within this strategy, the ability to provide innovative services to consumers will be critical to offering value propositions that compete effectively with technology that is available in retail stores. Smart Wi-Fi is an early example of such an offering, and one that is already being deployed. That said, the underlying basis of these services will extend beyond consumers’ Wi-Fi experience to include security, privacy protection, video quality of service delivery, and more.
Re-Envisioning CPE as Service Platforms, Not Just Connectivity Tools
To pursue these opportunities to re-establish and redefine relationships with consumers, NSPs will have to think differently about the role of Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) — including gateways, set-top boxes, and routers — in their business development activities. The new generation of CPE cannot simply be seen as access and connectivity tools; they must serve as platforms from which a wide range of revenue-generating value-added services can be delivered to consumers.
To realize this, these platforms will have to be open and powerful enough to support the integration of an ecosystem made up of many innovators.
For instance, we are already seeing today the presence of best-of-breed providers in the market that effectively manage the plethora of cybersecurity issues rising as a result of more connected devices in the home. Other technology innovators are developing solutions that optimize the performance of broadband video services within the home, ensuring that all devices — including TVs, tablets, gaming consoles, etc.– have network resources properly allocated to maximize the customer experience.
At Technicolor, we are building our CPE devices to provide a platform from which the most interesting services from the most innovative providers can be delivered to the home in the most cost-effective manner. The robust ecosystems we are offering to NSPs will help them get the most out of their managed services strategies.
It Takes an Ecosystem to Optimize Managed Services Strategies
Over the past year, Technicolor has been honing its already successful strategy of providing more open solutions to the NSP community.
We have established ourselves as the market leader in Android TV, with more CPE deployments in the market than any other manufacturer. We have a similar leadership position in the Reference Design Kit (RDK) community as well as our own OpenWRT-based software solution, Homeware.
Technicolor is matching its platform-oriented approach to CPE development with the establishment of a rich strategic partnership initiative that can rapidly enable new revenue-generating services for NSPs through next-generation gateways and set-top boxes.
This represents an entirely new paradigm for how Technicolor can contribute to the success of our clients in the NSP industry as we go deeper into the new year and beyond.
