About author

Since 2008, Duncan Bees has been the Chief Technology and Business Officer for the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI). Under his watch, HGI addressed many new topics, including an industry test programme, energy efficiency, Quality of Service, software modularity, and home networks. Mr Bees has also overseen redesign of web site and internal processes, while growing its membership. His focus is on bringing value to all the members of the organisation.

Previously Mr Bees worked for eight years at PMC-Sierra in Vancouver, leading systems teams in broadband access, VoIP, voice quality, high-speed serial interfaces & switches. He gained a high profile for PMC at many industry bodies, both at technical and steering committee level, and led in-depth technical dialogue with carriers and customers. He also worked for nine years at Bell Northern Research in Montreal, where he led DSP and development teams in wireless speech, mobile data, and voice recognition systems. His team deployed a wide range of technologies from DSP cards for mobile networks to newly designed speech processing algorithms. Mr Bees started his career at MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates where he developed circuitry to support remote sensing satellites. He holds a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Science from the University of British Columbia.

Article abstract

The HGI publishes agreed requirements for home network equipment to help Broadband Service Providers converge services on whatever device is most convenient. Due to the great appetite for content consumption in the APAC region and the rapid mass adoption that often occurs here, such services can bring a great advantage to service providers. The HGI’s Next Generation Communications (NG-Com) project identifies services for the digital home, especially for Voice integrated with Internet services. These services, e.g. home automation, energy management, medical monitoring and home surveillance, may run on TV set-top-box, mobile or PC and should be available in or out of the home. The HGI seeks consensus from its members, which already include the majority of equipment vendors from Taiwan, Japan, and China.

Full Article

The challenge of service convergence
The last few years have seen the near-ubiquitous rollout of fixed broadband services to consumers in many areas of the globe – including many regions within the Asia-Pacific market. In the same timeframe, we’ve seen the deployment of highly advanced smartphones, tablets, PCs, and terminals of all types that provide wireless access to the internet – either from within or from outside the home.

Fixed broadband now offers very high speed access at an economical price, and offers services – such as streaming HDTV – that may be impractical on commonly available wireless networks. Yet wireless access speeds have also increased, and wireless terminals available to consumers are far more capable then even three years ago. At the same time, wireless data prices have also declined, and the range of broadband services available from wireless – from checking email to accessing social media - has become more similar to those available on fixed broadband.

All this has changed customers’ expectations. They expect to receive consistent service no matter where they are, and no matter which terminal they are using. That presents both opportunities and challenges to service providers. The opportunities are to present consumers with a service package that integrates fixed and wireless services within a common framework and makes the services work seamlessly. This offers service providers the potential to differentiate their service offerings, prevent churn of their customer base, and also to extend their traditional revenue-generating services like wireline voice, to be offered in new ways on new platforms (smartphones, tablets, even televisions) and in new scenarios.

The challenges involve integration of a broad range of technologies and service enablers. Service providers, particularly those that offer both fixed and wireless services to the same consumer, must solve this challenge to deliver a compelling and modern set of services - otherwise, consumers may shift their preferences to vertical ‘over the top’ service offerings. While service providers have the opportunity to integrate services in a compelling way, they also have the challenge to tie these services together. This also involves outreach to a broad range of consumer electronics manufacturers on whose devices the services can reside (smartphones, TVs, tablets). Having in mind energy management and home automation scenarios, this also needs to involve white goods manufacturers or service utilities other than telecommunication operators.

This is the opportunity and challenge behind the concept of convergence as it is being discussed within industry bodies such as the HGI (Home Gateway Initiative). In this article, we provide a short introduction to some of the candidate services, describe some of the challenges being addressed and relate how these services may be perceived from the consumer’s point of view.

Converged services examples
A service scenario can be defined as convergent, when a typically vertical service developed as stand-alone application is blended with at least another one, sharing resources at various layers (from connectivity to service logic , terminals, user interfaces etc.) and building up a new enriched experience for the final customer.

The converged digital home is a concept in which consumers can access communications, entertainment, home automation, and home office related services – irrespective of their location and from the wide set of terminals that consumers now expect to ‘consume’ their services upon. While we speak of a converged digital home, consumers should be able to access their service both from within and from outside the home.

Let’s start with examples based upon communications. In the HGI project called Next Generation Communications (NG-Com) broadband service providers are working together with consumer electronics manufacturers to re-think the forms that traditional voice communications services take. Currently, many consumers access voice communications on in-home wireless phones (DECT, for example). Those wireless phones may have some advanced features like displays, address books etc., but in other ways are close to traditional fixed telephones – not integrated with internet services or other home services.

NG-Com is addressing more integrated call scenarios. Some examples of convergence regarding communications are:

• When the consumer is watching television, he or she can be notified when an incoming call arrives – using a message shown on the television screen. The consumer can be given options for disposition of the call.
• While the consumer is browsing the web on his or her laptop, an incoming voice can be delivered to the laptop using the same speakers and microphone used for VOIP.
• The smart phone at home can switch to WiFi rather than 3G or 4G wireless – potentially, saving money for the consumer.
• The same address books used with mobile smart phones can be used with in-home wired or wireless phones.
• Video calls initiated on a laptop could be transferred to a television.

Another set of examples of convergence services involve media and entertainment services. Many broadband service providers are already delivering television services over the internet. This provides an opportunity to integrate additional services and content within the entertainment experience. For example:

• Sharing of personal videos and photos on the television.
• Personalized content searches to integrate non-broadcast content from the internet on the TV.
• Use of the TV to present information services.
• In many of these services, the smart phone can act as a remote control to allow the user to select content, initiate service requests, and respond to prompts.

A final set of examples that build upon similar elements (broadband access, advanced terminals such as smartphones, and advanced home networking technologies) are services that access a range of networked devices in the home and allow the user to interact and manage them. Examples are home automation (control of lighting, door locks, etc.), home energy management (presentation of and management of home energy utilization), medical monitoring (collection of signals from medical monitoring devices), and home surveillance.

While some of those services are already available, convergence offers the promise to tie them in to innovative, integrated services offerings. For instance, a consumer who would like to check the household’s energy use for the past two weeks could tune the TV to a special information channel, or could check a screen available on the smartphone. Thus devices designed for other purposes are integrated (converged) with new sources of information to form new services.

Converged services challenges
Within HGI, we’re addressing the technical challenges to deliver those services. Some of the key pieces to the puzzle are:

• The platforms – where the service logic is located;
• The communications protocols – how the devices and platforms communicate both at physical and logical levels;
• The formatting and rights management of the digital media.

In converged service offerings, the logic behind the services can reside in a variety of locations. In fact, the challenge from the provider of the services can be to integrate service logic from disparate platforms. Some of the key platforms involved are:

• The Home Gateway (HG). This is the broadband access server that interconnects the subscriber’s broadband connection with the home network. The HG provides wireless and wired networking within the home, and it is increasingly used to deliver value-added services such as those described above.
• The smart phone, including in-home and mobile wireless phones.
• PCs and tablets.
• The TV set-top-box or the smart television.
• Servers located in the Cloud.

Those platforms talk to each other using, for the most part, standardised communications protocols. Again, finding agreement among the platform developers about the choice of protocols and the use of the appropriate profiles is one of the challenges that industry forums like HGI address. Some key choices involve the extension of voice communications signalling (which has traditionally taken place within the domain of the service provider) onto devices in the home network. Alternatives being addressed include SIP, IMS, and UPnP telephony.

From a physical point of view, there is a range of home networking media. HGI is setting requirements for the HG and devices in the home network for required support. Key technologies include WiFi, DECT, Ethernet over dedicated wiring or over home power wiring, and a range of low power alternatives for wireless or wired networking to the devices involved in home automation, home energy, and related services.

Consumer point of view
What does all this mean to the consumer? From the consumer perspective the converged home chimes well with modern lifestyles, in which there is an increasing demand for entertainment, information and communications to be available at any time, anywhere in the home, on whatever device is most convenient. Associated with this growing desire for on-demand consumption of content, many Asian consumers now expect the conveniences - and possible cost savings – that are delivered by the remote control of, and networking between, in-house utility, security and environmental systems.

At the same time, a number of government-sponsored initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region are aiming at rolling out and using networks of smart meters to manage better energy consumption, and potentially cut consumers’ household bills. Broadband service providers are well placed to offer this service to their customers.

Many of the Asia-Pacific markets are characterised by rapid mass adoption of new technology, applications and services, and will see quick take-up of convergence services.

HGI’s role in convergence
HGI plays a key role in translating the near and mid-term service plans of broadband service providers (BSPs) into published requirements for home network equipment and technologies. By agreeing common requirements and testing strategies for convergence among the service providers and the supporting ecosystem vendors, the HGI helps to consolidate the understanding of what is needed, bring additional vendors into the ecosystem, and speed the evolution from services concept to deployment reality. Convergence services being addressed will bring new and innovative services to customers in Asia-Pacific.

Service providers and equipment vendors from Asia-Pacific play an important and growing part in HGI activities and achievements. HGI currently represents the majority of equipment vendors from Taiwan, Japan, and China in the HG market, as well as selected consumer electronics companies and key Asian service providers.