OpenSync is Making Proprietary Software a Thing of the Past

Proprietary software is dead

Four years ago we launched OpenSync based on the belief that the battleground for the hearts, minds and revenues of the home consumer sits between Service Providers’ connectivity and the smart devices of the internet giants. 

What we said then—and still believe—is that the biggest market opportunity is in that space in between. The space in the home that Communications Service Providers (CSPs) need to protect and grow. The space where a truly smart, managed WiFi solution can become the CSPs’ trump card.

A solution like our then-proprietary device middle layer—now OpenSync. It makes the “smart” possible by communicating with all of the devices in the home and with the Plume Cloud where data analytics, insights, and control messages are created to help improve services and drive personalization. Proprietary software, however, was not the answer. Like hardware, it creates vendor lock-in, starves innovation, and kills time-to-market in a world where winners need to curate and deliver new services fast. 

So we made OpenSync available as an open-source, silicon-to-service framework, and set out to change the market dynamics, making it easier for developers and operators to work together to grow the overall market. Has it worked? 

Since it launched, OpenSync has been adopted by over 22 CPE designers and makers around the world and deployed by over 350 CSPs including some of the largest: Bell Canada, Charter Communications, Comcast, Deutsche Glasfaser, J:COM, and Liberty Global. It is now the cloud-based framework that the industry is rallying behind. And this week we celebrate surpassing an important milestone: more than 2 billion connected devices have been managed on OpenSync-powered networks.

A platform for the future

In a competitive market where subscribers are looking for more value, OpenSync offers CPSs a key to providing an improved quality of experience, data security, and total network control. Furthermore, OpenSync helps Providers reduce their environmental footprint and build more eco-friendly strategies by extending the lifetime of their existing CPE. All OpenSync-powered CPEs—including gateways, extenders, and pods—can coexist on the same network, irrespective of device maker or WiFi generation. CSPs leveraging OpenSync create numerous business advantages, from the ability to push new services to existing hardware, deployment flexibility, and the capacity to respond to subscriber demands with unparalleled network insight.

“We’ve monitored OpenSync’s expansion closely since its inception four years ago,” said Anirudh Bhaskaran, Industry Principal from Frost and Sullivan. “The overwhelming support for the ecosystem—from standards creators such as Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to world-leading service providers including Bell, Charter Communications, and J:COM—has created significant momentum; OpenSync has quickly established itself as the global standard to enable service providers to deliver cloud-driven experiences to their subscribers.”

The promise of the smart home and intelligent small business has long required a brand-agnostic delivery platform on which this new world will be constructed—fulfilling the promise of simplicity, speed, and scale for all. Device makers and operators have been waiting for, in essence, an operating system to enable smart spaces to deliver the hyper-personalized services that consumers are coming to expect. This is exactly what partners have found through the OpenSync platform. And because an open-source network is only as good as its measurable inputs and outputs, we’re taking this milestone anniversary as an opportunity to look back on the last four years of OpenSync.

The data is in

No other industry initiative is as scaled as OpenSync. What we believed could be achieved in 2018 is now a reality: a massively rooted ecosystem which will lead to exponential growth year-over-year as we move into the future.

• 890 petabytes of data managed every single day
• 15.4 billion network optimizations performed in the last year
• 5.7 billion cyber-threats blocked in the last year
• 75,678 unique device kinds
• 9,994 connected device brands
• 85 connected device categories

A thriving ecosystem

As with any open-source initiative, the best way to measure success is through a diversity of players: contributors, creators, and adopters working together to enrich the initiative. A flourishing ecosystem requires participation from all types of partners including app developers, hardware manufacturers, and operators. 

OpenSync has developed a fully-functioning and thriving environment in its four years: 

2019

• Launch of OpenSync-enabled gateways into the largest CSPs in North America (Charter Communications, Bell Canada), Japan (J:COM),  UK (Virgin Media), and many other operators in Europe
• Advanced Device Typing, cyber-security, content filtering, and WiFi motion detection features introduced
• 10M homes managed

2020

• Deployment expansion with one of the largest CSPs in the world (Liberty Global) across their European footprint

• Selected by the Telecom Infra Project as the core WiFi Management Solution for OpenWiFi 1.0

• WiFi 6 network optimization, dynamic deep-packet inspection, device prioritization, and small business features added

• Expansion of the OpenSync ecosystem with additional SOC and ODM partners.

  • 7 SOC partners added
  • 10 ODM partners added

• 20M locations managed

2021

• Establishment of the OpenSync Integration Center (OIC)

  • Formal OpenSync integration certification available from Plume, accelerating CPE certifications

• WiFi 6E network optimization, LTE backup, DPP onboarding, configurable firewall, application detection, and Hotspot 2.0 features added

• Ecosystem growth

  • Expansion to 20 ODM partners

• 30M locations managed

  • First commercial deployments of generic OpenSync-integrated devices

• 1B client devices managed

2022

• Application prioritization, application QoE, IPSec tunneling, and 5G FWA features added
• Over 35 CPE devices are OpenSync-certified and -deployed
• 43M+ locations managed
• 2B+ client devices managed

Operators are adopting and contributing scale and experience.

The critical mass of OpenSync’s expansion comes from CSP operators who have adopted and contributed to the codebase, fueling its enormous scale and development. Over the last four years, OpenSync has not only been adopted by some of the world’s largest carriers; it’s also been adopted by NCTC, a consortium of carriers that are collectively the third largest in the US, and by many independent carriers, including Armstrong, C3, and All West Communications. Some CSPs using OpenSync, such as All West Communications, have seen an average threefold increase in the adoption of managed WiFi services. As more Providers around the world integrate with OpenSync, the more intelligent the platform becomes, resolving customer issues proactively and remotely, reducing latency, and affording subscribers the seamless connectivity they expect.

Making the adoption of OpenSync easier to accelerate innovation

As we move into the next era of OpenSync, we are devoted to making it cost-effective, enabling the creation of new and cutting-edge applications, advancing personalization and efficiency for device makers, and making it faster and easier for CSPs to introduce and support those services and devices in the home or small business. OpenSync remains the only platform of its kind, providing the critical building blocks to enable the ecosystem to deliver data-rich, cloud-controlled services to broadband subscribers at scale, and there’s no sign of slowing.