Broadband Forum USP standard enables smart-home device management

smart home
Image credit: Andrey Suslov / Shutterstock.com

The Broadband Forum has published its new User Services Platform (USP) standard for implementing, deploying and managing all types of devices in the broadband home.

An evolution of the TR-069 standard, USP brings a unified, common approach to securely deploy, manage, and control network-aware consumer electronics, including home and enterprise Wi-Fi, IoT and more. This enables a vast number of devices from different suppliers to be integrated into service providers’ offerings, enabling them to offer new, revenue- generating services to end-users, said AT&T’s Barbara Stark, USP project lead at Broadband Forum.

“USP makes use of the same data models [as TR-069], but instead of simply having a single auto configuration server, there are now many end points that control not only the devices but also individual executables on each one,” said Stark. “This means deployments with IoT devices, smart Wi-Fi, set-top boxes, and smart gateways can be controlled by anyone in the household, while permission levels for service providers can be created to allow any necessary updates or troubleshooting of the network and devices connected to it. Ultimately, we designed USP to be flexible, scalable and secure.”

With USP, service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and end-users can perform lifecycle management of connected devices and carry out upgrades for things such as critical security updates.

Newly installed or purchased devices and virtual services can also be easily added, while customer support is improved by remote monitoring and troubleshooting of connected devices, services and home network links.

The specification enables secure control of IoT, smart home and smart networking functions and helps map the home network to manage service quality and monitor threats.

Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh said around 800 million CPE WAN management protocol devices worldwide use TR-069. “The time is right to move this into the hyper-connected, virtualized world and provide an evolved specification to enable the industry to provide for and monetize the opportunities presented by modern connected users and homes.”

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