In the era of the smart home, it's critical for Communications Service Providers to optimize their WiFi offering
Today's WiFi networks must support much more than simultaneous streaming and scrolling. For homeowners with smart appliances, IoT-enabled HVAC, or connected security systems, robust WiFi is more than a "nice-to-have"—it's a critical need.
There are quite a few obstacles that may stand in the way of strong and secure WiFi in a smart home, including:
Our latest whitepaper examines how CSPs can adapt their WiFi offerings to ensure continued relevance, a competitive edge, and improved customer satisfaction.
How CSPs can strive for better Quality of Experience
Quality of Service (QoS), the traditional metric for measuring customer satisfaction with WiFi, is outdated. So Plume coined a new term for the modern smart home era: Quality of Experience (QoE). QoE takes a much wider range of data points pertaining to signal path, network performance, and specific device requirements into account.
Adapt offers a variety of advantages over traditional WiFi solutions, including:
Intelligence: A cloud-based system that employs AI, data analytics, and optimization algorithms to keep home networks fast, efficient, and secure.
Adaptability: Continuous monitoring of home-network demands, and automatic adjustments where needed to cut down on latency and other issues.
Flexibility: Improved ability for CSPs to roll out new features, and greater autonomy for customers to install and manage their own services, so there's no need for on-site support technicians.
Read the full whitepaper to learn more about how Plume's suite of products and services can help CSPs deliver better QoE.
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The essential foundation for smart home success
WiFi hurdles in a smart home
Physical barriers like walls or doors
The slew of new and bandwidth-intensive connected devices now entering the market means that CSPs have their work cut out for them. As the foundation of smart home ecosystems, secure and seamless WiFi coverage is now an imperative. Delivering it is key for CSPs to remain relevant in a highly competitive landscape.
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As the Smart Home Services market ramps up, there's increased pressure for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to ensure customers' WiFi is up to the task. But most CSPs developed their WiFi offerings in a bygone era with far simpler bandwidth demands. What's more, legacy CSPs must now compete with behemoths like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, which have considerable clout when it comes to cloud-based services.
Some homeowners may attempt DIY solutions for strengthening their WiFi networks, such as installing WiFi boosters or extenders that promise to stretch in-home signals to every nook and cranny. Others may turn to mesh WiFi systems that strategically add access points throughout the home. But neither fix is optimal—extenders have significant limitations, and mesh systems can quickly become cost-prohibitive.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increased number of people working from home has also stretched many homes' WiFi capabilities. Over the past year, Plume observed an increase of 100% or more in time spent online at home during the work week, meaning there's even more strain on already-stressed networks. As a result, load, congestion, and optimization surges have risen by as much as 252%.
Adapt, the adaptive WiFi technology that's part of the suite of HomePass services, can help CSPs deliver better QoE to their customers. Adapt uses intelligent algorithms to monitor device connections throughout a smart home ecosystem, flagging instances of interference, optimizing traffic loads, and assigning a QoE score to each connected device. The solution provides distributed WiFi coverage via optimally orchestrated access points.
Long distances between routers and smart devices
Interfering signals from neighboring homes
More sophisticated
cyber-security concerns
Miscellaneous technical issues that are difficult to identify
Download the whitepaper
Download the whitepaper