ADTRAN has introduced a cloud-managed whole home mesh Wi-Fi platform, another sign that the broadband industry is recognizing both the opportunities and challenges in supporting Wi-Fi and the services it supports. The ADTRAN Whole Home Mesh Wi-Fi platform is part of the company’s Mosaic Subscriber Experience Suite.

ADTRAN Whole Home Mesh WiFi
The platform offers five main features:

  • Zero touch deployment
  • Platform for machine learning to maximize performance & adapt to the environment
  • Dynamic Steering matches consumer with best available signal
  • Air Time Fairness ensures a fast lane for newer devices
  • Leverages Mosaic Suite tools to automatically provide security updates and parental controls

“Solving residential Wi-Fi issues has become a priority for service providers selling higher bandwidth subscriptions, as Wi-Fi is the primary means customers judge the quality of their broadband subscription and service provider,” IHS Markit Technology Principal Analyst John Kendall said in a press release. “Consumers expect their Wi-Fi to work everywhere, and work well. Deploying whole-home mesh networking with dynamic steering is a good way to ensure a seamless Wi-Fi experience for the consumer. Further, the ability to self-diagnose to proactively resolve issues and self-optimize the home network can be powerful tools to reduce both churn and operating expense.”

Broadband carriers see the great potential of Wi-Fi delivered services, but also see the challenges. These are not simple networks and subscriber skills often are minimal. For this reason, they are seeking to reduce support costs both minimizing truck rolls and the amount of time spent on the phone helping subscribers. This is a concern of broadband companies of all sizes. The basic thought is that Wi-Fi is becoming the in home platform for a large number of potentially lucrative home services.

These tricky Wi-Fi issues are a challenge to carriers across the board, including giants such as AT&T and Comcast and smaller providers, including Comporium and ITS Telecom.

Late last year, Telecompetitor spoke with Jeff Leslie, the CEO of ITS Telecom, an independent telco in rural Florida. Leslie said a number of applications are proving popular, including voice-controlled personal digital assistants – which are especially popular – smart doorbells, smart floodlights and smart thermostats.

ADTRAN and Calix are two of the players positioning themselves to be go-to suppliers to the broadband carrier segment..