Top telecoms vendors from across the world have welcomed the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 certification program (BBF.069 CPE) announcement made yesterday in Amsterdam, where the first companies in the world achieved certification on a day when the Forum also revealed that broadband subscriptions had passed 624 million.
Broadcom, Cisco, D-Link, Huawei and Lantiq were the first successful companies to achieve the certifications at the official testing laboratory, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). The program has been developed to verify that devices are compliant to TR-069, also known as the CPE WAN Management Protocol, which is the remote management standard used around the world to provision and manage the connected home. According to Ovum Reports, TR-069 is already managing nearly 150 million devices around the world but the new figures, showing steady growth almost everywhere – means that management around the Connected Home is more critical than ever before and interoperability also becomes more and more important.
“With today’s devices using different protocols, varying interfaces and a range of APIs, TR-069 has never been more important,” said Cisco engineering manager Kamel Chbaro.
“The Broadband Forum’s BBF.069 Certification significantly impacts the future of the industry and further supports Cisco’s commitment in enabling service providers to monitor and manage devices with in the connected home. Ultimately, the specification helps our customers accelerate software architecture advancements, while simultaneously speeding up our market penetration,” he added.
He was supported by Huawei’s Home Device Product Line President Yang Zhirong, who described the program as a key element to the success of interoperability.
“With such a huge influx of new devices coming online, the program has the potential to deliver significant improvements for the broadband industry with a new level of maturity for the connected home,” he said.
“Huawei’s adoption and support of TR-069 provides a springboard for the future of device conformance and interoperability. Achieving certification gives Huawei’s customers around the world confidence and assurance in our technology and services enabling a faster time to market.”
The BBF.069 certification is an industry first and sends a clear message within the industry that vendors must meet operator and service provider requirements. There are also advantages for everyone in the process; with operators having a higher level of confidence in what they are buying in terms of remote management and systems vendors being able to reduce their testing overheads.
The first operator to react to the news was CenturyLink. Its Industry Standards Program Manager based in the office of the CTO, Michael Fargano, said the program was a “great step forward” in helping service providers.
“It all comes down to happier customers, and that is what CenturyLink focuses on every day,” he said.
The figures announced at the same time as the new program, served to show the potential that lies ahead for TR-069. In IPTV alone, nearly 70 million set top boxes are in the Connected Home, with TR-069 providing a simple inclusive management platform and globally nearly 16 million new subscribers have been added in the last year alone.
Seems like good timing all round.
ENDS
