2021.01.29 – Open Broadband News

Adoption of open standards critical to the future of the connected home, according to new survey

More than three out of every four (76%) broadband service providers have either started to implement the Broadband Forum’s User Services Platform (USP) or plan to do so in the next year, according to a new report out today.

Respondents to a major new study into the future of the connected home commissioned by the Broadband Forum also predicted that a big increase in the number of smart home devices installed in homes would be a key driver for the continued growth of the connected device market over the next five years. The number of installed connected devices is expected to rise by a further 70% by 2025.

Craig Thomas, Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Broadband Forum said: “The survey report highlights the importance of USP in ensuring service and application providers can effectively manage devices and the Wi-Fi experience to seamlessly navigate the connected home environment. With the results of this global survey, we are delighted that so many service providers across the industry recognize the benefits in utilizing or planning to deploy USP in the near future.”

This free to download report is a follow up to the ‘Efficient and Automated Smart Home Rollout’ report produced in association with the Broadband Forum in 2015. As well as information and data from this survey and interviews, Omdia has included data from its extensive research sets across the broadband, connected and smart home industries.

Google set to deflate their internet balloon

Google’s parent-company Alphabet is scrapping a company set up to build giant balloons to beam the internet to rural areas.

Loon was a long-term experiment from the tech giant’s “X” business unit. But it failed to get costs low enough to make it sustainable, its chief executive said on Thursday announcing the winding-down. The balloons were the size of tennis courts and self-navigating.

The project was set up nine years ago but has struggled to make a profit from bringing the internet to remote places via high-altitude balloons. However, Loon wasn’t a total failure as it signed a major deal with a Kenyan telecommunications company, Telkom, to bring 4G to remote parts of the country.

Loon Chief Executive Alastair Westgarth said: “While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business. Developing radical new technology is inherently risky, but that doesn’t make breaking this news any easier.”

China to roll out 5G as part of new action plan

China has set out its latest targets for its national industrial Internet program, much of it revolving around 5G.

In its 2021-23 “action plan” released last week, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said the key “industrial Internet network infrastructure, covering all regions and industries,” had been completed, 5G and big data centers are at the heart of the plan, with 30 5G-connected factories in ten key industries already in operation.

According to the action plan, the national network of industrial Internet data centers is nearly complete, and another 20 regional level data centers and ten industry-level facilities are be built over the next three years. It also anticipates that the number of industrial enterprises based in the cloud will double.

The report states that 2021-2023 will see a “period of rapid growth” for the industrial Internet and from January to September 2020, the volume of investment in industrial Internet was 2.36 billion yuan (US$364 million), up 65 times from 2017, Sina Finance reported.

Fixed broadband and Mobile gives customers a boost

A new Assembly Research study of several countries has found that 60% of broadband customers benefit from faster speeds, higher quality connectivity and a greater range of products in markets where fixed and mobile networks have converged.

In keeping with the above, Assembly Research has been tasked with examining how converged fixed and mobile markets fair in other markets where Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) has occurred, such as France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Interestingly, some of the benefits that get associated with this include better coverage of 4G mobile services and wider availability of faster broadband networks, even though it could be argued that much of this may have occurred regardless.

Matthew Howett, Principal Analyst and Founder of Assembly said: “When faced with the data and evidence from other markets, it’s clear that, through Fixed-Mobile Convergence, consumers see more attractive propositions, greater value and access to the best of fixed and mobile networks. The evolution of these offerings over time has seen the majority of consumers in the countries analyzed decide to opt for a converged product.”

The number of US broadband users soared in 2020

US broadband providers will turn in another solid quarter in Q4 2020, but the gains won’t be high enough to match up with the blowout subscriber numbers seen in the third quarter of the year, the analysts at ISI Evercore predicted in a preview ahead of quarterly results.

US service providers are expected to add another 1.1 million broadband subscribers in Q4 2020. While those expected broadband adds will surpass the 780,000 adds from Q4 2019, they’ll mark a slowdown from the 1.5 million broadband sub adds posted in Q3 2020 as the pandemic-fueled surge tapers off, the analysts noted.

Evercore ISI also expects cable to capture the lion’s share of broadband sub growth, with net adds of 1.01 million, or a share of about 95% of all net additions. Telcos are expected to add 24,000 broadband subs in Q4, improving on a loss of 244,000 subs a year earlier.