Technicolor's Ashwani Saigal Explores How the Future of Open Software for Broadband Access Will Improve the Connected Home Experience

BARCELONA, Spain - Feb. 25, 2019 - PRLog -- MWC 2019 -- Network service providers (NSPs) are quickly coming to the conclusion that effective ultra-broadband and gigabit services strategies will hinge not just on technical performance, but on the quality of the end-user experience. This is where standards and interoperable technologies can play an important role, according to Ashwani Saigal, Vice President of Broadband, Connected Home Division of Technicolor, in an audio interview for journalists.

"We are already beginning to see an important shift take place," explains Saigal.  "Service providers' broadband offerings are moving away from simply focusing on the bandwidth and speed war, and bringing their attention to the overall user experience."

For example, he says, the quality of the in-home Wi-Fi service has emerged as a very prominent user experience issue. As more wireless-capable devices become present in the home, having a connection that is fast, reliable and available in every part of the home enables the customer to consume the growing number of services that they are interested in.

"This is just one example of how NSPs are thinking beyond broadband access to evaluate their role in improving the customer experience," says Saigal.

Rising Role of Standards in the Global NSP Environment

Standards, he predicts, will play a critical role in this process. The industry is recognizing the need to develop standards around the "gateway stack" -- which is the layer responsible for the routing and the access termination in a box.

On top of this environment, different types of NSPs -- telcos and cable providers -- are developing standards that make it possible to mix and match services involving different software developers.

"For instance, in the telco world, there is the OpenWrt-based community -- which has formed around a Linux operating system that provides a fully writable filesystem with package management. This frees telco operators from the application selection and configuration provided by individual vendors so that NSPs can customize devices through the use of packages to suit any application," Saigal says.

"On the cable side of the equation he describes the  tremendous amount of momentum behind the Reference Design Kit for Broadband (RDK-B)," he points out.

RDK-B is an open source initiative to standardize functionalities for broadband devices enabling cable operators to efficiently deploy different services to a large customer base, by making it possible to more easily manage different functions -- including Wi-Fi and Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) and Internet of Things (IoT) controllers,

"Technicolor is a market leader and has developed a broad set of offerings based on both OpenWrt and RDK-B standards that are enhancing the value proposition our NSP clients can bring to their subscribers. That is why Technicolor has placed such an emphasis on playing a leadership role in the Linux Container framework (LXC)," he says.

This framework allows service providers to work more effectively with application developers by providing a mechanism, which when integrated with lifecycle management (LCM) functionality, enables operators to control applications that reside on the gateway.

"Technicolor is leading the effort to expand and integrate this initiative with different standards bodies, including OpenWrt, Broadband World Forum, Purple Foundation and the RDK Consortium," he concludes.

The full audio interview with Technicolor's Ashwani Saigal is available by visiting:

https://bit.ly/2DERU9J