Operators take action: Is the nightmare of router manufacturers coming?

Smart routers are an entrance, and the giants are scrambling to lay out their plans, with the intention of occupying the entrance to the living room in advance. In the BAT camp, except for Tencent, which has not yet launched smart router products, Alibaba and Baidu have launched corresponding products. In addition, home appliance giants such as Xiaomi, 360, Xunlei and even Haier are all using smart routers to seize the entrance to the living room.

Since Jilu Router made the concept of smart routers popular, giants and small manufacturers in Shenzhen have all rushed into this market. However, after the manic smart router manufacturers forgot about the operators in a corner, nightmares followed. A piece of paper may end the bright future outlined by smart routers.

Operators push routers

According to reliable sources, after a small-scale pilot, Shandong Unicom, Hebei Unicom, Henan Unicom and other companies are preparing to promote optical modem devices with built-in wireless routing functions to users. In fact, telecom operators in many regions, such as Shanghai Telecom and Zhejiang Telecom, have already started to promote optical modem devices with built-in wireless routing functions on a large scale in the year before last, in order to firmly control the entrance to the living room.

From banning routers in the past to actively promoting router products to users, the attitude of operators has made a 180-degree turn. Behind this amazing change is the huge profit temptation of the entrance to the living room. When the BAT giants and 360 compete for the entrance to the living room, the operators finally woke up.

Perhaps many people think that the promotion of routers by operators does not pose a threat to existing smart router products. However, they do not know that operators are using their own resources to "force" the interfaces of external routers.

It is reported that the way operators promote routers is to write the user's account and password into the optical modem device that supports wireless routing functions. After the installer completes the debugging, the operator's network management system automatically closes the management entrance of the optical modem device. In this way, users cannot enter the management interface of the optical modem device, and naturally cannot configure it.

In fact, as early as the ADSL access era, operators have tried to promote ADSL Modems with integrated wireless routing functions, but the efforts were not strong. According to reliable sources, in the future, China Unicom and China Telecom, the two major broadband operators, will force user account information to be written into optical modem devices to promote their own router products. To put it bluntly, the intentions of the operators are very obvious. By forcibly promoting their own routers, they firmly control the entrance to the living room.

The living room showdown of routers

From a technical point of view, the operator writes the account information into the optical modem device and closes the device management entrance, which does not affect the user's use of a router connected to the back. But we should not ignore that the operator has firmly controlled the first entrance of broadband in the living room, so blocking the router connected to the back is a piece of cake, right?

In response to the practice of operators such as Shanghai Telecom and Zhejiang Telecom writing accounts into optical modems and blocking management entrances, there are already many mature cracking methods on Taobao. The cracking cost is not high, 20 yuan. After cracking, the optical modem with built-in wireless routing function becomes a simple optical modem modem, and the routing function is turned off. After ZTE and Huawei, two major equipment suppliers, upgraded the optical modem and connected it with the operator's network management system, all the popular cracking methods on Taobao have become ineffective.

In other words, if users want to use their own routers in the future, they can only connect them to the routers of operators and make them secondary routers. Operators can technically block or completely shield routers that users connect to without permission.

According to feedback from the pilot areas, after the operator writes the user's broadband account and password into the optical modem device, it will be encrypted after the first dial-up verification is successful. This encryption method is similar to the encryption mode of China Telecom's InterStar client, and China Unicom also has a similar encryption platform.

After users lose their broadband account information and control over the built-in wireless router optical modem, there is little practical significance in purchasing a router. For ordinary users, the operator has already given them an optical modem with an integrated wireless router, so purchasing a wireless router is redundant and requires additional costs. It is not difficult to predict that once operators and smart router manufacturers compete over the entrance to the living room, smart router manufacturers will be at an absolute disadvantage.

The fate of traditional routers

Frankly speaking, this practice of operators is very overbearing and unreasonable. Once this forced promotion model is widely implemented, the survival space of traditional routers will be ruthlessly compressed. Especially in the national conditions of state-owned enterprises monopolizing the market, the strong position of operators is bound to impact the market of smart routers and traditional router manufacturers.

The optical modems with built-in wireless routing functions purchased by operators are mainly provided by Huawei and ZTE, and are also open to other third-party manufacturers. From this point of view, the real purpose of operators' forced promotion of routers is to firmly control the entrance to the living room, rather than to completely squeeze out traditional router manufacturers.

Take 360 ​​security routers for example. If operators do not promote their own router products, 360 security routers will firmly control the entrance to the user's living room, which is obviously not what operators are happy about. Once smart routers are established and occupy the entrance to the living room, telecom operators will face the fate of broadband networks becoming pipelines after becoming pipelines in the mobile Internet field. There is no doubt that operators must not lose their position in broadband networks.

It is not difficult to predict that under the strong pressure of operators, smart routers and traditional routers will not be able to survive unless they change their thinking. To survive, router manufacturers can only cooperate with telecom operators and add optical modem modules to their router products to turn them into optical modems with built-in wireless routing functions that meet the requirements of operators. To be precise, the fate of routers occupying the entrance to the living room has been ruthlessly ended by operators.

As a router that carries the function of connecting to the operator's network, it has certain special features just like the box. Under the environment where the radio and television tightens the supervision of the box, the speed of the operator's control over the entrance to the living room will also rise to a political level. You know the reason. Under the special national conditions, the operator uses the strong promotion of routers to seize the entrance to the living room, which is undoubtedly a nightmare for router manufacturers.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.