The telecom industry combines services into quadruple and even multi-druple plays. The major driver for this trend is to cross-sell services, which aims to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU). The consumer perceives the lower cost of the bundle compared to the sum of the individual services as a benefit. However, nowadays are the telecom services now perceived as expensive, given the visibility on the total price of the bundles.

A new trend is the increase of consumer spending for additional services brought to him over the internet from by over-the-top (OTT) providers. This kind of divergence occurs in three different perspectives, from a content perspective, from a service perspective, and from a business model perspective. Additionally, the divergence is accelerated by a flood of smart devices that is thrown on the market by consumer electronics manufacturers.

There are two important reasons for the ambition of the telecom industry to capture the market of additional services. First, the telecom industry wishes to take their share from the OTT spending, and therefore seek to extend the actual service offerings. Second, home devices provided by OTT providers could become Trojan horses, as these providers once entered in the home then can provide additional services and thus become a competitor to the network provider.

It is clear that there is the fear within the telecom industry of being pushed into a business model where the telecom operator becomes a dumb pipe provider. On the other hand, dominance of network services by the telecom industry in the market could lead to the regulation of the market. Regulatory offices (such as at European level) observe the market closely and will use their power to avoid any kind of market dominance.

Now, what are the next services that could be provided by the telecom industry? Let's take a look at four categories of future services, which are (1) media & entertainment, (2) safety & security, (3) energy & home management, and (4) health & well-being.

- The first category media & entertainment is not a totally new area. Nowadays, services such as IP-TV and Video-On-Demand are already provided. Over-the-top providers offer services such as Games-On-Demand, content sharing (friends & family), music streaming, and digital locker. Telecom providers could liaise with these service providers and bring these services to the consumer through the setup-box to bring a new user experience on the TV. Creating new service-bundles, including such services, will most probably primarily reduce churn and avoid further price erosion. The profit contribution risks to become marginal, this for two reasons. The first reason is that margins on reselling these third-party services are thin.

- The second reason is that these services will become part of existing bundles, where the price remains the same for the consumer, but the third party service provider must now be paid. A service that might bring additional revenue is hosting third party content and leveraging the IPTV and VoD platform and customer base. This would be a dual-side business model. On the one side third parties could build their environment with own look & feel, and on the other side consumers could buy additional content. The second category safety & security can be divided into the 'hard-security' and the more 'soft-security' services. With 'hard-security' we mean the rigid alarm systems, which are mainly in the hand of security services companies. The telecom industry could try to enter that market and thus must compete or partner with security services companies. However, here we see that security services companies are among the first to exploit the capabilities of the existing devices installed in the house to provide additional services. The 'hard-security' services remain expensive and focus on the small market of premium properties. Therefore it might be interested to look into the more 'soft-security' services, which are more related to bring convenience to the property owner or user. Of course, these services will have a lower service level agreement and consequently have a lower pricing level, but could address therefore a much bigger market. The 'soft-security' services would be more informative, bring convenience, and bring a feeling of safety.

- The third category energy & home management will be the area of growth in new services. The increase of energy prices and the increasing complexity of the home environment trigger the consumer to explore new ways to manage his energy consumption and home environment. In the past, several architectures have been trialed. The home gateways were to complex to manage, and to expensive to have a viable business case. Also standardisation was a major issue, the wide variety of standards was costly to manage. Nowadays, new cloud-based architectures shift the complexity from the home gateway to the service delivery platform in the cloud, and thus light & low-cost home gateways can be used. Different standards are still in place, but these converge and can now be integrated through software. Additionally, telecom providers are already present in the home environment with setup-boxes, which are managed centrally and replaced on a regular basis. Telecom providers could include the necessary hardware and software for these services in their next generation setup-boxes, and leverage in the near future these capabilities in a wide variety of services. These services will not only be of interest for the consumer, also enterprises are interested to receive valuable information from the home environment. Telecom providers can keep the mass of data in the network, and turn this data into valuable information.

- The fourth category health & well-being (aka. assisted living) is of particular interest in our western world. The number of elderly people will keep growing, given the known demographics. Consequently, our society faces a serious challenge in terms of managing the costs caused by the demographic shift. It is well known that people whom remain living at their own home are not only likely to be happier, but cost also less to our society. An enablement platform that assists people at their own home environment is a viable option. A wide variety of services have been trialed already, the time has come to bring these services together and establish a service delivery platform consolidating the possibilities and bring the acceptable user experience. Telecom providers could take the integration role and leverage their presence in the home environment, e.g. through the TV platform. A dual side business model can be established, with revenue from the consumer (and his relatives) and from the professional health organisations (e.g. insurances, practitioners, government, home services).