Today’s home provides a unique opportunity and challenge for Broadband Service Providers. Before I explain the reasoning behind that lets first take a closer look at the homes of today and the future.

These days most of the households have a broadband connection either using Cable, DSL, Wireless or Fiber. Typical service offerings in the Western world are currently between the 50 and 100 Mbps and with max service tiers around the 1 Gbps. According to a report done for the European Commission by HIS and PointTopic, in 2017, 55% of Europeans had at least a 100 Mbps Broadband service. Another interesting point is that most of the European countries today have a smartphone penetration of around the 90% and a tablet penetration of 60% (Zenithmedia). Besides smartphones and tables there are many more connected devices in our homes, with the “Internet of everything” ramping up big time. Think about the smart home: security systems, cameras, locks, doorbells, aircon and heating, light switches or home automation, health devices, entertainment, transportation and many more.

The home is turning into an internet enabled home with many devices and many services.
According to Forbes the global IoT market will grow from $157B in 2016 to $457B by 2020, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 28.5%.

Here is the opportunity and challenge for the Internet Service Provider. They are the gateway into the home. Regardless of the type of access technology used (Cable, DSL, Wireless or Fiber) the Service Provider provides a device into the home for access to their service. It is that entry point that allows them to become more than a plumber for their subscribers, to offer more value to their subscribers than price/bandwidth. The obvious challenge is how to morph in to an actual services provider. The answer lies in the entry point device, the home gateway and the growing Cloud services market that is directly tied into the burgeoning the IoT market.

If we look at the following forecast by Gartner we can see a significant growth in Cloud services. The only way for Broadband Service Providers to prevent becoming a simple plumber of bandwidth is to look for ways to address this market, providing incremental value with the Cloud services highlighted below.
  

After all, one of the most important ways to get closer to your customers and increase ARPU is in fact by simply improving the customers experience. Customers want a choice, but without the complexity of having to deal with all the different Cloud Services vendors. Here is where Service Providers can play a unique role.

So, what does all of that have to do with Inango Systems? Inango has been operating in stealth mode for a while now whilst developing a solution for the predicament of Service providers described above. Stay tuned for more…