Application-aware QoE prioritisation is key focus for broadband providers
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John Moulding
| 31 October 2023
2 Application aware QoE prioritisation is key focus for broadband providers
Service-aware and application-appropriate network capabilities, backed by open standards, will help broadband service providers improve their products and differentiate themselves, according to a new report from Omdia in conjunction with Broadband Forum.

The report points to a future where a great broadband experience is less about speed and more about providing value-added and tailored services to the end customer. Based on a survey of broadband providers, the report reveals that a majority plan to introduce technology which automatically directs greater bandwidth and lower latency to the services being used by customers.

72% of 111 global broadband service providers interviewed have identified broadband application prioritisation as a key focus and plan to differentiate customer QoE on a per-service basis. This is to meet the growing demands of high-bandwidth applications including video streaming and gaming, and to improve QoE for homes and businesses.

Broadband Forum is the open standards development organisation focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards and ecosystem development. The report is sponsored by Axiros, CommScope, F-Secure, Friendly Technologies, Incognito Software Systems Inc., and Nokia.

The report provides insights on the roadmaps for the broadband service providers. Those companies are looking to offer additional premium services beyond those related to the connection itself. This includes home security, working from home packages, energy management, and IoT enablement through Matter. More than a quarter of operators plan to deploy these four new service types.

Home broadband, Wi-Fi speed and reliability guarantees, and speed testing/diagnostics, were among the most popular value-added services telcos plan to offer, with more than 60% of respondents stating they had infact already deployed these. Managed Wi-Fi, premium customer support, voice assistants and cybersecurity also feature heavily in the responses.

Another key finding was that USP, the User Services Platform (USP) open industry standard from Broadband Forum, remains critical in the delivery of new value-added services. 85% of respondents to the survey said they had already deployed USP or planned to within the next 6-18 months.

USP was developed to help deploy, implement, and manage all aspects of the smart home. The data model, architecture, and communications protocol enable broadband providers to remotely manage devices in the home network (including the Wi-Fi home gateway) independently of the vendor that manufactured the device.

When asked which value-added services operators plan to use USP for, the most popular response was Managed Wi-Fi (with 58% of respondents). Other popular services that would use USP included premium customer support, cybersecurity, voice assistants and energy management.

All respondents agreed that reduced fragmentation and proprietary technology at the chipset, CPE and software platform level would drive greater innovation and lead to faster onboarding of value-added services.

Michael Philpott, Research Director - Service Provider Consumer at Omdia explains: “The integration of devices and platforms that may use different vendors and proprietary technologies has been a time-to-market barrier for new services from network operators.

“Some network operators may opt for a ‘best-of-breed’ strategy to develop their own, bespoke, in-home platform to take full control over the ecosystem they create and give them the best chance of differentiation in the market. Adopting a fully open standards model at both the lower and higher layers can ensure that both applications and software, or hardware and chipsets, can be quickly and efficiently swapped out at any time without the need for further integration work.”