Craig Thomas, CEO at Broadband Forum
There is massive opportunity for service providers to go beyond providing broadband or internet to customers. Investment in branded services can elevate the ISP’s position to a “techno provider”. As well as the conferment of a cooler title (although supplying rave music is not a requirement), the responsibility of a techno provider is to give customers value-added experiences from gaming to video. But first, they need to build trust.
ISPs are well-positioned to build a unique brand that is deemed trustworthy, predictable, and reputable to increase their ARPU. In a developing world of AI and how much private versus public data is available, service providers must focus only on the user information that is critical in offering the right level of service and user experience.
This subsequently places ISPs, and potentially the third-party application providers, in a trusted position where they can reassure the subscribers and not threaten their privacy or data.
The need for speed – and service differentiation
While the industry is 90% there when it comes to solving the ‘connection problem’ by delivering faster and more inclusive broadband connectivity, there is still work to be done. Slow broadband speed is no longer an inhibitor for the majority of broadband subscribers in developed countries, receiving a plethora of different services in the home.
ISPs must now consider the three key characteristics of broadband: speed, reliability, and QoE. Quite rightly, the focus has zeroed in on services-led broadband strategies that places the user experience at the front of the queue. As such, the very make-up of broadband bundles is changing. Subscribers want broadband alongside their TV connection, Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) non-live streaming, home security, mobile or landline.
We are in an era where customers want to pick and choose their favourite dishes plus add their own preferred side-dishes from an à la carte menu. Agile “bolt-on’s” in a traditional monolithic firmware CPE approach is driving the need for app-store-like containerized dynamic services.
Clued up on quality criteria
Growing competition and slow take-up rates of multi-gigabit broadband is driving down broadband pricing. As ISPs are constantly looking for ways to differentiate their offerings, they have the perfect opportunity to monetize their networks with relevant QoE per application, which is a key differentiator. A differentiator that firstly reduces subscriber churn and lays the foundations for value-add new services to monetize investments.
In Figure 1 below from last year’s ‘The Future of the Connected Home: The Rise of Home Applications’ Whitepaper in conjunction with Omdia, 72% of service providers planned to differentiate customer QoE per application.
QoE doesn’t just sit in the home. The ISP needs to ensure and implement QoE in the last mile of the edge network and all the way to the cloud. 
We must transition to sustainable and multi-service broadband networks that cater for multiple users from the IoT, wholesale, mobile, enterprise, to the residential customer. These networks require end-to-end latency and application aware intelligence and monitoring.
This additional agility and dynamicity will help ISPs shift from a self-build network to an autonomous one. Greater understanding and education of QoE for subscribers is critical and can come from the entire supply chain, whether that be user communities, app providers, hyperscalers, or ISPs. This education can range from application appropriate latency, delay, jitter, to consistent and reliable user experiences.
Delivering greater value beyond speeds and pricing
It is abundantly clear that there are differentiation and monetization opportunities available for ISPs beyond connectivity plus services that add real value to the user experience. These connectivity plus services help reduce customer churn and range from premium customer support, speed guarantees, to voice assistants.
But true value-added services are required in parallel with the connection and can drive the transition from telco to ‘techno’ provider. Planning to offer value-added services and features as part of your broadband offering can cater for teleworking, IIoT, the smart home, and the metaverse. Key value-added services range from Matter enabled IOT, enhanced gaming, OTT streaming optimizations, and whole home AI.
The targeted take-up rate for typical bundle products may be around 40-60% of homes. While mass niches, such as gamers, may only account for around 20 to 30% of homes, they must be catered for. Lower latency, and assured bandwidth in a traffic hungry home can immerse those in the VR and AR markets. Similarly, teleworkers or hybrid workers may equate to anywhere between 20-40% of homes, but they will require assured QoE, dedicated bandwidth inside and outside of the consumer video hungry home plus higher levels of network security.
But the barriers to value-added services are slow standards adoption, customer uncertainty and awareness, and interoperability and integration with existing legacy investments.
A gateway to supercharging service offerings
BBF’s app-enabled services gateway project (WT-492 ‘Software-Based Architecture for the App-Enabled Services Gateway – Design Principles’) provides the reference architecture to leverage an open-source platform for the whole supply chain to thrive. 
This allows ISPs to leave the proprietary world, scale more quickly and avoid fragmentation.
Containerization avoids time-consuming firmware upgrades and increases time-to-market of new services rapidly and securely. The traditional model involved walled garden environments, sandboxing, testing and experienced potential downtime. In some cases, ISPs could only deliver around three firmware upgrades a year. But with containerization, subscribers can use applications and services within secure and trusted software containers. The old marketing adage of being fast to market, first to win or quick to fail will never be truer than when in a services-led broadband environment where QoE and service differentiation will be critical beyond simple broadband connectivity.