News | 07.11.2022

New generation of Smart Home Gateways

In the future, smart home gateways will play a more important role in providing applications such as cyber protection, parental controls, WiFi optimization, home energy management, etc. Along with this, service providers need tomorrow's technology today to gain a competitive edge in the market. At BN, we recommend that our customers focus on containerization, i.e. a platform that enables all the new services to be offered with a "Containerized Software Platform".

What is "containerization"?

Containerization is the packaging of software code with only the operating system libraries and dependencies required to execute the code into so-called containers. In this way, applications can be ported to different platforms, e.g. CPEs, independently of the operating system and executed consistently. Using the so-called DBUS API, communication between the application and the CPE is also ensured. By leveraging the Linux kernel and existing resources, the CPE becomes a service platform with flexible applications that can be orchestrated from the cloud. This allows service providers to embrace the transformation of the digital home and activate new applications with a simple mouse click, without having to update the firmware.

Why is it important now to virtualize in the CPE space as well?

Service providers that leverage virtualization technologies to deliver services will be able to innovate quickly and capture new market opportunities that were previously not possible. Examples include cyber protection, parental controls, WiFi optimization and home energy management. As containerization becomes more prevalent, the opportunities for integrating services into the network are almost limitless. Along with this, the revenue benefits for service providers are obvious. At the same time, user ARPU can be increased and churn reduced, increasing the value of their brand. Containerization can also reduce hardware costs by improving the efficiency of hardware utilization.

In a nutshell, service providers which use virtualization technologies to provide services benefit from many advantages:

• Service providers can offer various applications "à la carte" to their customers
• Applications can be downloaded and used by customers via an app directly on the smart home gateway 
• New markets can be developed more easily
• Increase the average revenue per user (APRU)
• Reduced customer churn
• Increase the value of your brand
• Decreasing hardware costs

Our Heights product support "Containerized Software"

Heights Telecom leverages Broadcom's latest chipsets and a very advanced SDK with containerized software, and its cloud-based orchestration system provides an off-the-shelf solution for enabling new services and managing the lifecycles of containerized software components for CPEs.