Nearly two years after the acquisition of Pirelli Broadband Solutions, ADB now offers a more diverse solutions portfolio to service providers and at IBC this year the focus was partly on whole home and multi-screen media sharing (e.g. an eight tuner gateway that can feed Pay TV to various devices) and partly on new broadband-centric applications that the company believes could boost ARPU once video revenues top out. ADB is convinced that there is an opportunity for Pay TV operators to evolve from aggregators of entertainment to aggregators of services, upselling their customers to the new broadband-centric applications.
In a demonstration, the company showed how a combination of Epicentro gateway software and a consumer portal provide consumers with the equivalent of an app store for broadband services. These services can be provided direct from the service provider or from third parties. The idea is that the broadband/Pay TV operator can provide an open market with trusted partners.
An example of the new broadband services is home security, which allows someone to monitor their home, via cameras, on their Apple iPad or other devices. Another is energy management, which begins with measuring energy usage using Powerline socket adaptors. In the demonstration ADB showed how much energy was being used according to room or device. Consumers can have alerts sent by SMS or email if energy consumption exceeds set limits on any device.
Another application provides access to stored content in the home when you are out of the home, and is called RNAS (Remote Network attached Storage). The fourth application demonstrated in Amsterdam was parental control for the home network. This enables parents to set policies for all devices from one place. You can create different access profiles, like for children or teenagers, with a list of what content is allowed or blocked in each case.
