DENVER — Comcast, Charter Communications, Cox and other cable operators benefit from bundling wireless services and offering these low-cost wireless price plans to their existing customers as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). But these types of broadband/wireless service bundles are just the start. Cable operators are also eying more advanced forms of fixed mobile convergence that they believe will drive bigger benefits to consumers and create more stickiness with their subscribers.
Speaking at the Cable Next-Gen Technologies and Strategies Conference, hosted by Light Reading, Erik Kuhlmann, senior director of engineering and architecture at GCI, said that his company, which has deployed fiber, coax cable, and wireless in Alaska, is currently evaluating a new customer premises equipment (CPE) that merges both cable and wireless and provides the customer with a backup connection should one technology go down. “We see this as benefiting our customers,” Kuhlmann said. “Secondarily, we realize operational savings by combining these assets.”
He added that customers don’t really care whether they are using a wireless network or a cable network, they just want reliable services.
For cable operators, fixed mobile convergence has several different forms. For example, FMC can mean the consolidation of broadband traffic so that the consumer doesn’t know which network they are using only that they are getting a reliable connection.
In fact, having reliable broadband services that follow the consumer from their home to their car and beyond, is considered a premium offering that customers value.
According to Randy Levensalor, principal architect at CableLabs, broadband providers may want to consider offering premium broadband services that follow the customer just like mobile roaming. “Why not get premium Wi-Fi when you aren’t at home? It’s not universal today but it could be at some point,” he said.
Or fixed mobile convergence can go a step further and mean that these converged networks are accessible and programmable with intent-based application protocol interfaces (APIs).
Levensalor said that cable operators are interested in opening up their networks to developers through open APIs. In fact, CableLabs members are working with the GSMA’s Open Gateway Initiative, which was formed to develop a framework of universal APIs so that application developers can use standard APIs to create applications that can be used across many different operator networks, and not just mobile networks. Levensalor said that CableLabs is looking at CAMARA, the open-source project being managed by the Linux Foundation, that developers can use to access these network capabilities.
Levensalor added that CableLabs members see many potential benefits from having applications, for example, a virtual reality application, that can deliver the same user experience regardless of whether it is running over a fiber network, a Wi-Fi network, or a DOCSIS network.
Transparency and a consistent customer experience is the ultimate goal of fixed mobile convergence, according to Brady Volpe, president of The Volpe Firm, a technology consulting firm. “The transition from Wi-Fi to 5G needs to be transparent,” he said. “Subscribers need to be plugged into so they never detach from us. They never leave the network.”