Cornel Ciocirlan, CTO EMEA at ARRIS, answered the following industry questions prior to the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe event, which took place 10-11 November in Amsterdam:

What challenges does Europe face with rolling out new smart home & connected entertainment services?

• There is a tremendous amount of innovation going on but the IoT industry is still fragmented from the point of view of protocols, physical radios used (and frequencies as well) – which does not help consumer adoption as consumers are confused about what standard to adopt and whose ecosystem to join.
• Europe faces an even bigger challenge with the fragmentation of standards for in home connectivity and electrical connections which generates a requirement for vendors to build specific SKUs for i.e. Germany, the UK or Italy for example.
• However, the broader barrier to IoT adoption is similar across the world – and it is mostly about the requirement for professional installation of devices combined with ease of use of onboarding new devices and managing the devices with a simple interface. The IoT industry today (certainly the “smart home” component) is far from being a mass market product from an ease of use and ease of installation perspective.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing your company in the next 12 months?

• We’re always keeping a close eye on the continued consolidation in our industry
• However, we’re optimistic that the expected closing of several operator M&A deals in 2016 should change current industry conditions
• Furthermore, we believe that anything that makes customers healthier/stronger is good for our business
• Provide success-based solutions
• Ultimately, we and our customers are driven by consumer demand.
• Our proposed acquisition of Pace will also help counter some of these industry conditions
• Providing  synergies as well as enhancing international presence and large-scale entry into the satellite segment
• Pace is on track to close in December or Q1 2016

How will companies leverage the growth in the market in the next 12 months? What is the impact of the Internet Giants (Google, Amazon) getting involved in the market?

• Service Providers have a unique opportunity to insert themselves in the IoT value chain and take advantage of their existing customer relationships and existing installation services expertise to remove the barriers to IoT adoption.
• The Internet Giants are on one hand fostering innovation in this area and leveraging their size to seed the market for specific applications. On the other hand, the simple fact that they are already “giants” (and thus have a captive market), and they are aggressively competing against each-other means that they are not fully cooperating in driving common standards across the industry.     

Cornel spoke during the panel session “Connected Entertainment: Expanding Revenues through Innovative Services” on 10 November at 16:00.

For more information on the sessions, sponsors, and speakers at the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe event, visit www.connectionseurope.com. 

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