According to the latest figures published by the Broadband Forum and prepared by broadband industry analysts Point Topic, broadband subscriptions have soared to over 624 million, presenting a huge opportunity for the future of the connected home.  Amid this news, the Broadband Forum has launched its BBF.069 CPE Certification Program and announced the first certified devices, on the opening day of the Broadband World Forum. Congratulations to the companies whose products have achieved the first BBF.069 certifications at the official testing laboratory, University of New Hampshire-InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL): Broadcom, Cisco, D-Link, Huawei and Lantiq. (The Global Registry of certified products is available on the Broadband Forum website at http://www.broadband-forum.org/certifiedtr069.php.)

The BBF.069 CPE Certification Program has been developed to verify if devices are TR-069 compliant.  TR-069, also known as CPE WAN Management Protocol, is the remote management standard used around the world to provision and manage the Connected Home. According to Ovum Reports, TR-069 is already used to manage more than 147 million devices, making it the global standard for remote management, but with 624 million broadband subscribers today there is tremendous room for Connected Home services growth.

There has never been a more critical time to launch the Certification Program as the number of broadband subscribers, applications, devices and services continues to grow and a mass market for broadband is achieved globally.

“This is a real celebration as the BBF.069 CPE Certification Program launches, signifying another step forward in supporting innovation within the broadband ecosystem,” said Robin Mersh, CEO of the Broadband Forum. “Device conformance is critical in enabling interoperability and provides the key to expediting the exciting growth and potential of connected home services around the world.”

The Broadband Forum BBF.069 Certification is an industry first and sends a clear and simple message to the industry confirming that CPE vendors meet operator and service provider requirements. Certification has substantial advantages for all participants in the value chain, offering service providers an enhanced level of confidence that certified CPE devices will interoperate better with their remote management Auto-Configuration Servers. It also helps equipment and system vendors reduce testing overheads, and enables them to easily market their products – increasing their ability to address a much larger market overall.

The BBF.069 CPE Certification has been welcomed by service providers such as Michael Fargano, Industry Standards Program Manager at CenturyLink’s Office of CTO who commented, “Building on our commitment to customer service excellence and our active engagement in developing the TR-069 protocol, we at CenturyLink are pleased to support the launch of BBF.069.  This certification program is a great step forward in helping service providers like us rollout new products and services with great confidence and success, knowing that they are certified and will be easily provisioned and managed by CenturyLink.  It all comes down to happier customers, and that is what CenturyLink focuses on every day.”

 In June 2012, the Broadband Forum selected the UNH-IOL, an independent provider of broadband testing and standards conformance services for the networking industry, as the official test house for BBF.069 CPE Certification. This selection was based on the UNH-IOL’s leadership in TR-069 testing since 2006 with the Broadband Forum. The certification is now offered through the UNH-IOL’s recently launched Home Networking Consortium.

“The UNH-IOL’s experienced technical team worked closely with CPE vendors to bring the first wave of Broadband BBF.069 certified devices to market. We will continue to build on the positive momentum initiated during the first rounds of testing with a strong focus on certifying an increased number and broader range of devices for the home networking environment through the new testing program,” said Erica Johnson, director for the UNH-IOL.

As the market adoption of TR-069 proliferates, the reality of TR-069 is that it has massive potential. IPTV services alone have brought 69 million new Set Top Boxes into the Connected Home, and TR-069 provides a simple inclusive platform for managing all these devices. Globally 15.9 million subscribers were added over the last 12 months, and 3.57 million over last quarter.  In every region we are seeing great pick up of IPTV service, with China, France and the United States leading the industry in adoption.  Over the last quarter, Russia has also made amazing strides in rolling IPTV services out.

Source: Point Topic

And as providers make the investment in fiber deployments, customers are also benefiting from the speed and stability that that brings.  Point Topic reports strong 12-month growth rates for FTTx (27%) and FTTH (23.4%) and for the first time the market share for DSL fell below 60%.

Source: Point Topic

With high speed broadband options on the rise, customers are quickly layering on services, applications and devices that enrich their lives.  TR-069 takes the complexity out of expanding the Connected Home and provides the simple and stable experience that helps service providers around the world exceed customer expectations.  The new BBF.069 CPE Certification program takes another step forward in developing interoperability; ensuring products are market ready and easy to integrate into any Connected Home.

Companies with certified products express their support and strong backing of the Broadband Forum BBF.069 CPE Certification Program:-

Greg Fischer, Broadcom’s Vice President and General Manager, Broadband Carrier Access: “Broadcom was among the first to deploy TR-069 enabled products throughout the world, giving carriers the ability to remotely manage subscriber equipment on their networks. We are pleased to achieve Broadband Forum TR-069 certification on our Carrier Access Residential Gateway software platform. By extending our proven ability to integrate TR-069 on residential gateways to HomePlug AV adapters, we are achieving new levels of management across all connected devices in the home network.  This gives carriers a whole new level of remote configuration and diagnostic services in the home, resulting in lower costs and better customer service.”

Kamel Chbaro, Engineering Manager at Cisco: “With today’s devices using different protocols, varying interfaces, and a range of APIs, TR-069 has never been more important and has been a focal point of Cisco’s activity for many years. The Broadband Forum’s BBF.069 CPE Certification significantly impacts the future of the industry and further supports Cisco’s commitment in enabling service providers to monitor and manage devices within the connected home. Ultimately, the TR-069 specification helps our customers accelerate software architecture advancements, while simultaneously speeding up our market penetration.”

Hans Liu, Product Planner at D-Link: “D-Link depends on its reputation for connectivity and TR-069 has long been an integral part of our marketing strategy. It demonstrates that our products can connect in any environment and interoperate with other parts of the network. We welcome TR-069 Certification as the badge which will help us to become even more successful in marketing our products.”

Yang Zhirong, President, Home Device Product Line of Huawei: “Huawei fully supports the Broadband Forum’s BBF.069 certification program as a key element to the success of interoperability and, with such a huge influx of new devices coming online, it has the potential to deliver significant improvements for the broadband industry with a new level of maturity for the connected home. Huawei’s adoption and support of TR-069 provides a springboard for the future of device conformance and interoperability, and achieving certification gives Huawei’s customers around the world confidence and assurance in our technology and services enabling a faster time to market.”

Rainer Spielberg, VP of Marketing of Lantiq: “TR-069 has become de-facto remote management standard for customer premises devices. Its flexibility, from addressing critical field updates to configuring services based on subscription, makes it a mandatory standard for all the new generation broadband networks. Broadband Forum’s initiative to provide certification based on conformance and interoperability would help the operators build seamless networks and manage them remotely. Lantiq’s participation in the Broadband Forum certification program BBF.69 is a step to assure our customers that they have a highly conformant and interoperable TR-069 stack on which they can build their solutions.”