The Smart Home – The next destination in the quest for a “sticky customer”

By Dennis Edens, Sudheer Dharanikota

March 15, 2017

What is the Problem?

In the past, service providers worked to offer bundled triple play (Internet, Voice, Video) services to get multi-year agreements from their subscribers and secure a stable reoccurring monthly revenue stream.

Offering triple play services is no longer enough to keep customers, resulting in high customer churn and reduced profits. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future, so service providers need to act.

Key Takeaways

While triple play-based revenue is seeing a decline, the operators are presented with the exciting opportunity in supporting smart homes. There are many players in this area though. This white paper delves into how an operator can cash in the opportunity.

We recommend the following:

  • Cash in your relation as a “Trusted Provider”
  • Invest in providing a strong in-home platform
  • Classify your customer needs
  • Offer cost reduction → convenience → life style → WoW services in that order

Executive Summary

With the commoditization of the triple play service bundles, the operators are seeing reduced profits and hence are in search of next generation own-the-home bundles. The exponential adoption of the smart home ecosystem is offering the operators a chance to redefine their business models to recapture the “sticky” customer, that provides a regular monthly revenue stream and is less likely to switch providers.

This paper outlines the evolving smart home ecosystem that makes up the current state of the market and what service providers need to do to be a player in this expanding market during this short window of opportunity. A comprehensive plan is needed to support the smart home infrastructure requirements, with the intent to be a service integrator that is the one stop shop that provides all the broadband and networking services needed to support the home.

The winners in the Smart Home space will be those that act quickly and provide a sustainable solution that meets consumers needs.