Who Makes What: Telco Home Gateways

The advanced home gateway is the telco’s foot in the consumer’s door –- and a relatively new class of telecom customer premises equipment (CPE). And the rollout of ultrafast next-generation broadband access networks (such as fiber or VDSL2) carrying triple-play services is focusing a lot of attention on this new adjunct to the digital home.

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) industry standards group defines a home gateway as “a device that acts as a hub between the home environment and the broadband network. Under the control of the service provider, it simplifies the user experience when utilizing broadband services.” [emphasis added]

This is partly the standard definition of a network gateway – a device that allows two separate or different types of network to interwork –- but, as the italics stress, it introduces a key second aspect, namely allowing the service provider or telco to control the device in various ways. This is partly to hide the technicalities and undoubted complications of IP-based networks and services from the user, and partly to give scope for the offering of improved or new services for competitive differentiation –- and, as always, to cut costs.

The home gateway in simpler forms has been around for some time. Infonetics Research Inc. recognizes three broad categories of these devices that can be arranged in a hierarchy of increasing sophistication through which the industry has moved.

“One is the data modem, which is typically a broadband gateway (both cable and DSL). The next step up would be an integrated access device (IAD), which adds a DSP for analog/digital voice conversion,” says Jeff Heynen, Infonetics' directing analyst for broadband and IPTV. “The third layer up is what we see as the endgame for residential gateways, which is the digital home gateway. This has all the intelligence built in, the TR-069 remote management and provisioning capabilities, QOS, as well as the in-home networking –- the MOCA, HPNA, and that type of connectivity.”

Overall, the general home broadband gateway market is now substantial, currently reaching about $6 billion annually, according to Infonetics estimates. And the increasing impact of IPTV triple-play is clear. For example, Actiontec Electronics Inc. has pointed out that it sold 4 million residential gateways, modems, and routers during its first decade of business, and then 1 million broadband gateways in four months in early 2007, mainly for triple-play IP video applications with Tier 1 and Tier 2 carriers.

This Who Makes What Report is about telco-grade products, not general home networking products with some gateway-type capabilities. By telco grade, we mean devices (frequently customized) that telcos could use long-term as the basis on which to build a presence in the subscriber’s home as the result of an ultrafast broadband rollout. So ADSL2+, VDSL2, fiber, Ethernet, or WiMax WAN interfaces and acceptable remote configuration, maintenance, provisioning, and so on are crucial, as are capabilities for supporting triple-play and IPTV on the service side.

Like previous Light Reading Who Makes What Reports, a key part is a categorized list of vendors that aims to be representative and as complete as practicable, so please email significant corrections or omissions to hills@lightreading.com.

In addition, the Report aims to provide a guide and overview to this burgeoning area of telecom technology by looking in more detail at what telco home gateways are, why they are important, what the key technologies are, what sorts of products are available, and how they may develop over the next few years.

Here’s a hyperlinked contents list: