Dallas, TX--Service providers are rapidly increasing their deployments of residential gateways for connected home applications, according to "Networks in the Home: The Global Service Provider Play." This new report from Parks Associates forecasts the total number of households worldwide with service provider-deployed residential gateway solutions will grow to more than 70 million by year-end 2012.

"Service providers worldwide are scrambling to add value to broadband, communications, and other services," said Kurt Scherf, Parks Associates' vice president and principal analyst. "Connected home strategies are focusing on advanced customer premises equipment and related services that provide significant enhancements to both subscribers and service providers. As 2008 International CES demonstrated, home networking products aimed at the service provider community are growing in sophistication as carriers seek to enhance the features and applications available to their subscribers."

Scherf indicates that the strategy for residential gateway and other CPE deployments starts with value-added features such as multiroom DVR and streaming multimedia applications, enhanced communications features, and home monitoring. Secondarily, service providers are finding that the deployment of remotely manageable customer premises equipment provides significant benefits in reduced customer support costs and the opportunity to up-sell subscribers on digital home support services.

Networks in the Home: The Global Service Provider Play examines the role of home networking and managed services in helping service providers monetize their access networks . It provides a global look at current and anticipated home networking deployments by service providers and examines the consumer appetite for new services, the economics of managed services, and key residential gateway and home networking technologies.