Imagine that you arrive at a hotel after a long drive, and something remarkable happens: nothing. Your connected car has automatically uploaded telemetry data and downloaded updates over the hotel’s Wi-Fi. Your medical monitoring device has seamlessly maintained its secure connection to your health care provider. Your laptop and phone have instantly connected with the same performance and security policies you enjoy at home. No passwords. No QR codes. No fumbling with apps. All your devices are simply connected upon arrival.

This vision of effortless connectivity isn’t science fiction. It’s the promise of the Context-Aware Network (CAN), a transformative framework that CableLabs is developing to revolutionize the way devices, users and applications interact with network infrastructure. By making networks truly context-aware, we’re shifting the paradigm from location-bound connectivity to experiences that follow users wherever they go.

The Problem With Location-Bound Connectivity

Today’s connectivity model is fundamentally broken. When we think about “our network,” we envision the Wi-Fi router sitting in our home — a fixed point in space that defines where we can connect. Step outside that bubble, and our devices become digital strangers, forced to navigate a maze of guest networks, captive portals and security compromises. Even within our homes, every new smart device demands its own setup ritual: entering passwords, scanning codes, downloading apps and hoping everything connects properly.

This fragmentation isn’t just inconvenient; it’s holding back entire industries. Connected vehicles rely almost exclusively on expensive cellular connections because Wi-Fi networks can’t provide the seamless, context-aware connectivity they need. Health care providers struggle to deploy remote patient monitoring at scale when each device requires manual configuration by patients who may not be tech-savvy. Hotels consistently rank Wi-Fi issues among guests’ top complaints, from login difficulties to dropped connections.

The root cause? Networks today lack the essential ability to understand device and user context. They treat devices as anonymous endpoints rather than known entities with established trust relationships, ownership models and service requirements. This limitation prevents networks from delivering the differentiated, portable and secure experiences that modern connectivity demands.

A New Framework for Modern Connectivity Experiences

CAN represents a paradigm shift in the way network infrastructure understands and interacts with the devices, users and applications that connect to it. Built specifically for hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network operators and their ecosystem of customer premises equipment (CPE) — including Wi-Fi access points, cable modems, optical network units (ONUs) and gateways — this framework standardizes the capabilities needed to make connectivity truly intelligent and aware.

At its core, CAN enables three transformative capabilities. First, it allows networks to recognize and authenticate devices as known entities rather than as anonymous endpoints. Second, the framework associates those devices with their owners and the policies that should govern them. Third, it makes these contextual relationships portable, allowing devices to maintain their trust relationships and service levels as they move across different networks and operator footprints.

This isn’t about creating new protocols from scratch. Rather, CAN provides the orchestration layer that allows existing technologies — including Wi-Fi, DOCSIS, Passive Optical Network (PON), the Matter smart home standard, Device Provisioning Protocol (DPP), Network as a Service (NaaS) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) — to work together and deliver context-aware experiences at scale.

Building Blocks of Context-Aware Experiences

The magic of CAN comes from two foundational capabilities that work in concert: Zero-Touch Onboarding and trust domains. Together, these concepts address the key challenges of device provisioning and policy management that have plagued connectivity for decades.

Zero-Touch Onboarding eliminates the manual burden of connecting devices to networks. Through a protocol-agnostic NaaS API, operators and third-party service providers can pre-provision devices to automatically join the correct network without any user intervention. Imagine a health care provider shipping a heart monitor to a patient: Before the device even arrives, the provider uses the Zero-Touch Onboarding API to register it with the patient’s home network. When the patient powers on the device, it automatically discovers and connects to the right network with the appropriate security policies already in place. The solution is flexible and can support a number of onboarding technologies, including Matter Commissioning and Device Provisioning Protocol (aka Wi-Fi Easy Connect).

The framework is designed to be protocol-agnostic, allowing device manufacturers to leverage whichever onboarding method best suits their use case. Regardless of the underlying protocol, the principle remains the same: Devices can securely authenticate themselves and join the network without manual intervention.

This flexibility ensures that the framework works across a broad range of devices — from sophisticated connected vehicles to simple Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that lack user interfaces — while allowing operators to adopt emerging standards as they mature. As the industry evolves, the CAN framework can seamlessly incorporate new onboarding protocols, ensuring that operators maintain a future-proof connectivity platform.

Trust domains provide the policy and ownership framework that makes context awareness meaningful. A trust domain is a logical construct that groups devices under common policies for access control, security and quality of service. But trust domains go beyond simple network segmentation. They encode ownership relationships and make policies portable across networks.

When that medical device connects at home, it joins a trust domain specifically configured for health care IoT: isolated from other devices, with encrypted connections to authorized endpoints only, as well as quality-of-service settings for reliable data transmission. When the patient travels to a hotel equipped with CAN, the device’s trust domain travels too, maintaining the same security policies and connectivity requirements without any reconfiguration.

This portability extends to all types of devices and use cases. A connected vehicle could maintain its high-bandwidth offload policies whether parked at home, at the office or at a shopping center. Business laptops could enforce enterprise security policies regardless of which operator’s network they join. Gaming consoles could maintain their low-latency configurations across different locations.

The framework also integrates with complementary NaaS capabilities that enhance the context-aware experience. Quality on Demand APIs allow dynamic adjustment of bandwidth and latency based on device or user tier. Quality by Design APIs provide real-time monitoring and troubleshooting, giving service providers visibility into connectivity health. Together, these capabilities create a complete ecosystem for delivering differentiated, intelligent connectivity services.

Help Us Shape the Future of Connectivity

CAN represents more than a technical evolution; it’s an opportunity for the cable industry to redefine what connectivity means in an increasingly connected world. By making networks aware of context, we can finally deliver the seamless, secure and portable experiences that consumers expect and that new markets demand.

The market opportunity is substantial and immediate. Connected vehicles represent a significant revenue opportunity for data-offload services, with automakers actively seeking alternatives to expensive cellular-only strategies. Remote patient monitoring offers strong growth potential while improving health care outcomes and reducing costs. The hospitality sector sees additional opportunities for monetizing premium connectivity experiences that follow guests across properties.

But seizing these opportunities requires industry alignment and action. The technology is ready. What’s needed now is collective commitment to deploy these capabilities uniformly across cable networks. By working together to implement CAN, operators can establish cable as the definitive platform for next-generation connectivity services.

CableLabs is actively working with members and technology partners to refine these specifications and accelerate deployment. We’re developing reference implementations, creating interoperability test suites and fostering the ecosystem necessary to bring context-aware experiences to market. The window of opportunity is open, but competitors aren’t standing still. The time to act is now.