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CONCLUSION
Swisscom launched its new fibre network to allow
residential customers to benefit from the extra capacity
and speed of Fibre-To-The-Home in 2013. The Internet-
Box was especially designed to take advantage of this
ultra-fast network and meets Swisscom’s very demanding
requirements. Swisscom customers have expressed great
satisfaction with the new gateway’s performance and the
innovative features it provides.
New innovative features in the Smart Home area will be
developed for the Internet-Box in the coming months.
SoftAtHome will continue to help Swisscom as a strategic
partner providing future-proof features for the benefit of
Swisscom’s end-users.
INTERNET-BOX PROJECT
PRESENTATION AND REQUIREMENTS:
Technology requirements
• Multiple access technologies: fiber, DSL, Mobile 4G
• Ultra-fast bandwidth: 1Gbps access and 600 Mbps Wi-Fi
• ADSL2+/VDSL2 vectoring, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac
• 2 processors: 1 for traditional access management, 1 dedicated for apps
• Multiple WAN access fiber/xDSL/4G
• Direct fiber connection through an SFP Cage
• Dual band dual concurrent 2,4GHz / 5GHz Wi-Fi
• Guest Wi-Fi
• Wireless telephony DECT CAT-iq 2.0 with high sound telephony
• Parental control
• IPv6 6rd
• Interactive screen
• SD card + cloud
• Media centre with advanced NAS features
Business requirements
• Open platform
• Innovative roadmap
• Better time-to-market roadmap
• Performance
• Capex reduction
• Quality of services management
• Compete against cable operators
• Hardware independence
SWISSCOM
CASE STUDY

2. INTRODUCTION
CHALLENGE
Swisscom is Switzerland’s leading telecoms provider, with one of
the world’s most advanced broadband infrastructures that is all
fibre in 80 cities and municipalities. The operator has ambitious
plans to extend ultra-fast broadband to the whole population
using a mix of technologies to maximise speeds for customers
still relying on copper for the final hop, including the latest G.Fast
technology. Swisscom invests more than CHF1.5 billion per year
on expansion of the infrastructure, which will result in 2.3 million
homes and businesses enjoying bandwidths of at least 50 Mbps by
the end of 2015.The goal is double this total to 4.6 million by 2020
and have 80% of all homes and businesses obtaining bandwidths
of 100 Mbps or more by then.
A major motivation for this bandwidth drive is to enable delivery of
premium multi-channel TV services including ultra HD.
REMAIN THE
SUBSCRIBER’TRUSTWORTHY
COMPANION IN A FAST
CHANGING DIGITAL WORLD
Swisscom’s strategy is to remain the trustworthy companion for
its customers in the ever-changing digital world The company
needed to build the best Ultra broadband infrastructure and IT
networks.Swisscom has always been focused on creating the best
experiences for the end-users, and had set 5 top priorities: speed,
reliability, simplicity, security and mobility.
Swisscom has been investing since November 2013 in its new
fibre-optic network to allow its residential customers to benefit
from Fibre-To-The-Home in towns and cities, while pushing fibre
closer to the home in more rural areas. This brings higher capa-
city and the speed needed to deliver multichannel premium TV
services.
Having built the access delivery infrastructure, Swisscom’s next
major requirement was for a software platform to control and
manage the home network, while enabling rapid development of
a compelling UI and innovative personalization features. Swisscom
was adamant that this platform should be highly flexible and open
so as to remain completely independent of hardware manufactu-
rers. It should be robust, well proven in the field, simple to deploy
and enable a wide choice of hardware, with the ability to host
external applications developed by third-parties and partners.
Above all Swisscom needed to innovate very rapidly, with the
key objective of competing against cable operators. This was a
challenging checklist which narrowed the choice to just a very few
vendors in the embedded software field.
Faced with intensifying competition from cable operators in its
core markets, Swisscom wanted to launch a new generation box
to compete with a flexible and versatile media Gateway.With pure
Cloud players entering the industry with strong OTT TV offerings as
well,traditional Internet service providers andTelcos are extending
their services into multiple play, aiming to exploit fixed-mobile
convergence and also higher bandwidths to deliver premium TV
packages.Above all they need an end-to-end platform extending to
the box in the home that enables them to be agile and responsive
to customer needs in a fast changing and converging market for
communications and entertainment services. Operators need the
capability to deliver personalized services that help them not only
acquire customers, but most importantly keep them enthusiastic
and thus to counter churn.
SOLUTION
SOFTATHOME SOFTWARE GIVES
WINGS TO SWISSCOM ULTRA-FAST INTERNET-BOX
SOFTATHOME’S ROLE AT SWISSCOM SIDE:
Enabling flexible roadmap and faster time-to-market for
upgrades: can introduce key features quickly, so that for example
a new version can be deployed every three months.
Having an open service platform enabled partners to develop the
UI and applications based on SoftAtHome’s SDK and API.
Being an independent software provider: allows Capex savings,
because Swisscom can source the most cost-effective hardware.
Swisscom has greater control over the whole home ecosystem
and can ensure that it meets all the requirements of its customers
for performance and applications. SoftAtHome helped Swisscom
find the right partners through its numerous relationships with top
manufacturers and OEMs.
Being independent from hardware also helped to reduce the
time from conception to launch to under 12 months.
Being a global integrator:with just one entity managing the whole
project and relationships with all partners, the Internet Box is the
result of successful collaboration between Swisscom, Vestiacom
the applications developer, Siligence the hardware manufacturer
and SoftAtHome, the software platform developer and integrator.
The Internet Box is the fastest in the market so far with 1Gbps
download capacity. One very important aspect for Swisscom
was the ability to launch the product rapidly and this has been
accomplished with less than a year between the project kick-off
and the official launch. It offers a best-in-class user experience
with ultra high-speed connectivity in the home via the 802.11ac
Wi-Fi standard that provides up to 600Mbps over the air.
SoftAtHome helped Swisscom deliver a range of innovative
features for the box,supporting Swisscom’s key priorities of speed,
reliability, simplicity, security and mobility.
THE INTERNET-BOX BRINGS MANY BENEFITS
TO SWISSCOM USERS:
Guest welcome: a specially designed button can activate a guest
Wi-Fi network and show a password on the box’s display.
Parental Control: the Internet-Box has optimized parental control.
Parents can decide when children can access the Internet on their
tablets or computers. The connectivity to a device can be shut
down easily and specific time slots for connection to the Internet
can be scheduled.
Telephony in HD quality: the Internet-Box has an integrated
state-of-the art telephone base-station, so that it is no longer
necessary to plug telephones into wall sockets. A new feature,
added late in 2014, enables import Of contacts from a mobile
application. Contacts are then available from any phone at home.
Smart advanced display: the Internet-Box is one of the few boxes
equipped with an advanced display. This display enables end-
users to communicate easily with the Internet Box. It simplifies
installation and whenever connection issues or errors occur, the
display helps resolve them.
Top Speed: The Internet-Box can reach up to 1 Gbps. Thanks
to the latest integrated Wi-Fi standard, the wireless network
can match the speed delivered to the home over Swisscom’s
broadband network.
User entertainment: if the user connects an external hard drive
or a USB stick to the Internet Box, all computers and devices
connected to the home network can access the content. It allows
a real home network to be created, making it easier to save
data locally in a structured manner and share it with the family
everywhere.
Multimedia center: allows users to share their personal content
in and outside the home.
My stuff anywhere: through the Swisscom Internet Box app, end-
users have protected access to their personal documents, photos,
videos and musicfrom their connected devices at any time.
Application hosting: Extension to Cloud synchronization with
Dropbox, Google+ connectors
R E S U LT S