By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
This year’s OpenSync Summit announced an expanded new roadmap for OpenSync Release 6 while OpenSync founder Plume unveiled an aggressive new go-to-market model for distributors and ODMs: ‘Plume PxO’ (Powered by ODM) enables partners to bundle Plume ‘HomePass’ and ‘Frontline’ service subscriptions into hardware sales. OpenSync is now backed by more than 30 CPE manufacturers and 400 service providers, the organisation says. The tagline for the event was “easier, faster, more valuable.”
It has been a wild ride for broadband equipment spending over the past handful of years and as the markets continue to contract (in North America by up to 25% year-on year for 1Q24 according to Dell’Oro) the question becomes: What can be done to create new revenue streams for ODMs and their CSP clients? At this year’s OpenSync Summit – held in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 12-13 – Plume unveiled a new go-to-market proposition for ODMs and distributors.
Plume says the new proposition – dubbed ‘Plume PxO’ – enables partners to offer ‘significant additional value’ to their CSP customers when buying hardware compared to offering devices without pre-installed services. It also improves ODM cash flows, raises gross margins, and differentiates ODM products, Plume says. “Plume HomePass and FrontLine services boost ARPU and increase the subscriber lifetime value, while driving down OPEX,” said Niall Robinson, Head of Global Channels at Plume.
The idea is for ODMs and distributors (predominantly CPE providers) to bundle Plume services with CPEs, Plume says. “For a committed annual subscription to Plume, our partners receive the right to sell our HomePass and Frontline services to CSPs for the lifetime of the hardware. The CSP makes a single payment to the ODM at the time of purchase,” Niall Robinson said.
The new model relies on the field-proven value of Plume’s Cloud-based Wi-Fi optimisation service HomePass (including a Wi-Fi management app for subscribers) and its analytics and troubleshooting platform, Frontline. Both are currently enjoyed by 60 million homes globally, the company reports.
Meanwhile OpenSync – the open-source middle layer framework founded by Plume – is now in its sixth year of existence and continues to expand both its capabilities and ecosystem. At the OpenSync Summit, new features for OpenSync 6 were revealed: This year support for Hotspot 2.0 (Passpoint), 5G FWA neighbour reports, OFDMA and MLO controls from the Cloud will be added, plus more.
“Our focus for OpenSync 6 this year will be ease of upgrading, features for cellular and Wi-Fi convergence, as well as improvements on Wi-Fi 7 management for lowered latency,” said Adam Hotchkiss, Co-founder & VP of customer solutions at Plume. “For next year’s OpenSync 7 release we’ll be focusing on containerisation, WAN latency optimisation, and advanced power reduction,” Adam Hotchkiss said.
He also says that OpenSync is still the only open source networking framework to reliably and dynamically deliver programmable services at scale in CPEs and consumer networking devices. OpenSync recently released ‘OpenSync Lite’ – a reduced package aimed at faster integration for less capable CPEs – read more about OpenSync Lite here.
/Claus.
