Category: Blog
Gigabit broadband speeds have become the norm. Once seen as a competitive differentiator, broadband services with speeds of 1Gbps or even higher are now offered by a majority of service providers across the world. According to a survey¹ earlier this year by Omdia, 60% of service providers surveyed offered 1Gbps+ speeds, compared to 45% in 2019.
What is driving this surge? The consumer appetite for high-quality bandwidth is increasing as they indulge in hi-speed, low-latency applications and push towards creating connected homes of the future. Since the last two years, working from home, remote learning, video streaming, smart home devices have become common in an average household and the extensive use cloud gaming, AR/VR applications have pushed up monthly data usage beyond half a TB².
However, for telcos and service providers, simply providing high speeds is not enough. It is ultimately the Quality of Experience that helps a provider emerge as a market leader. Omdia clearly establishes the relationship between home QoE and broadband as they believe consumers associate in-home bottlenecks and issues with service providers’ networks and will churn for a better experience. Innovation with home solutions such as smart Wi-Fi is key to guarantee a reliable and satisfactory experience.
At Airties we strive to do just that. We see home Wi-Fi as not just an enabler of basic connectivity and entertainment but as a facilitator of the ‘Digital Lifestyle’. Home Wi-Fi today supports diverse applications, smart home and mobile devices and enables new use cases such as smart healthcare, motion detection and much more. With the Airties Smart Wi-Fi Platform, telcos and broadband service providers can ensure that their high-speed offering translates into a wonderful experience within the home too. Here is a snapshot of our Smart Wi-Fi Platform in action and its extensive capacity to steer the best quality of experience for each home and drive actionable business insights for telcos and service providers to help create a business model that is truly future-proof.
Airties platform in action
Our cloud-based platform not only manages the day-to-day experiences for subscribers but also proactively provides actionable insights for telcos and service providers to make better business decisions. Additionally, our cloud platform also supports the customer care function by providing clear visibility into individual homeowners Wi-Fi performance.
¹ https://omdia.tech.informa.com/OM024143/How-gigabit-became-the-broadband-standard
² https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/average-data-consumption-eclipses-half-terabyte-per-month—openvault/d/d-id/775689
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Press release | June 6, 2024
Hear from Philippe Alcaras, CEO of Airties, share his perspective on home Wi-Fi and connectivity.
At Airties, our mission is to empower broadband service providers to deliver the best connected home experience for their customers. The pandemic has shown us that connectivity, and home Wi-Fi in particular, is as essential as electricity. People have come to depend on their home Wi-Fi more than ever… whether that is for remote work, connected house, online learning, entertainment, or simply staying connected with friends and family.
Airties is fortunate to be a world leader of managed home Wi-Fi solutions for broadband operators, with deployments such as AT&T, Sky, Telia, Telstra, Vodafone and many others. But, providing this level of consistent connectivity presents significant challenges, and opportunities for broadband operators and Airties’ focus is to help them innovate to meet these demands.
With Airties, operators can deliver significant Quality of Experience, generate additional ARPU, while driving down costs for customer care and churn. Beyond the strategic importance of home broadband, managed Wi-Fi opens the door for new ARPU-generating services, such as home security, remote care, motion-sensing applications, and smart home automation. So, whether you are a cable, telco, or fixed wireless 5G service provider, there is arguably no better return on investment (ROI) than managed Wi-Fi and connectivity.
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Press release | June 27, 2024
Press release | June 6, 2024
Hear from Oz Yildirim, EVP & GM Americas Business Unit at Airties, what are the key benefits of EasyMesh for operators
Oz Yildirim, EVP & GM Americas Business Unit at Airties, discusses the benefits of EasyMesh with
Kevin Gray, Vice President, Technology, Media, and Telecom, Fierce/Questex
Airties advocating for standards that help improve home Wi-Fi
Airties has always been an advocate for standards that help improve home Wi-Fi. EasyMesh, in particular, is a Wi-Fi Alliance® program which brings a standards-based approach to Wi-Fi networks that utilize multiple access points (APs). Specifically, EasyMesh Release 2 provides a standardized communication layer for home networks that utilizes multiple Wi-Fi extenders.
Over 250 Wi-Fi EasyMesh device certifications are recognized by Wi-Fi Alliance to date on Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E products across every major chipset vendor and OEM.
Adopting EasyMesh allows Airties, and our customers, to focus more on adding value with business logic and less on platform integration—as certain core functionalities are now able to work consistently across chipsets and OEMs. It enables us to focus more efforts on the advanced Smart Wi-Fi and cloud management capabilities that really make a difference to our customers, such as advanced steering, channel optimization, zero-touch installation, and remote Wi-Fi troubleshooting.
Airties’ software enabled the world’s first service provider deployment of Wi-Fi EasyMesh with Telstra in Australia. Since that time, we now have multiple EasyMesh-based service provider deployments underway that we expect will be announced later this year.
While each deployment is unique, more service providers are seeking the kind of interoperability that EasyMesh provides, coupled with Airties’ hybrid cloud-edge software architecture to maximize the responsiveness, performance, and control of their subscribers’ home Wi-Fi experience.
At Airties, EasyMesh is the foundation for delivering leading Smart Wi-Fi functionality, granting broadband operators flexibility to deploy Airties Edge (our Smart Wi-Fi software for gateways/routers/extenders) on a massive number of products.
In addition, Airties Cloud provides broadband operators with the ability to manage both legacy and EasyMesh extenders in a unified way, since only the most recent extenders are available with EasyMesh.
The benefits for operators to adopt this EasyMesh approach versus alternatives
- EasyMesh both simplifies and speeds up the integration of advanced business logic onto Wi-Fi hardware platforms, by reducing the bespoke integration efforts typically needed across OEMs, chipsets, and software. It does this by standardizing the basic building blocks of a managed Wi-Fi mesh solution for operators.
- EasyMesh is supported by all major Wi-Fi chipset vendors and OEMs for their mainstream and future generation products. This also means operators can support multi-vendor deployments more seamlessly.
- EasyMesh is fully compatible with the Airties hybrid cloud-edge architecture that leverages Smart Wi-Fi capabilities embedded on the CPE as well as the analytics and optimizations operated through the Cloud.
- EasyMesh allows operators to work with partners like Airties to focus more of their efforts on the advanced Smart Wi-Fi and connected home services that really make a difference to consumers – things like zero-touch installation; remote home Wi-Fi management; and new services.
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Press release | June 27, 2024
Press release | June 6, 2024
Hear from Nicolas Fortineau, CMO & EVP of Airties, what are the key Wi-Fi trends to watch this year and what they mean to broadband operators.
The expectations for the connected home have changed forever. This trend presents significant opportunities and challenges for broadband operators around the globe. A recent survey of more than 1,500 consumers commissioned by Airties, found:
- Consumers strongly prefer their broadband operator take the lead in ensuring a quality home Wi-Fi experience. 80% said they would rather their broadband subscription include all of their home Wi-Fi gear — instead of purchasing anything through retail.
- 58% said they would consider upgrading to a faster tier of Internet service – if their broadband operator offered a premium Wi-Fi system that guaranteed consistent Wi-Fi in every room.
- Notably, 71% of consumers expect to continue working from home post-pandemic. 39% of respondents said they were reimbursed by their employer for new Wi-Fi gear they purchased, and 32% had their broadband subscription subsidized by their employer. This represents a significant new business opportunity for broadband operators.
At Airties, we’re fully committed to helping broadband operators live up to, and exceed, consumer expectations by providing them with the world’s best managed Wi-Fi solution.
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Press release | June 27, 2024
Press release | June 6, 2024
Hear from Metin Taskin, our CTO on the reasons Airties adopted Wi-Fi EasyMesh.
When we developed Mesh systems in the past, we were one of the first companies, in the home network space to develop and deploy Mesh solution in the home. There was no standard to be able to establish a Mesh network and manage the Wi-Fi home network from a higher level. We had to implement lots of lower-layer protocols and lower layer improvements on the Wi-Fi chips and the chip driver level. But there is a lot of work, a lot of time spent on the low-level support[Wi-Fi] EasyMesh – we really pushed for getting EasyMesh standard into a good operator-level.
Wi-Fi EasyMesh R2 is definitely there. This is where we put all of our efforts to integrate Wi-Fi EasyMesh into our Smart Wi-Fi system and interface with the Wi-Fi chips and the Wi-Fi interfaces of gateways, and the extenders using the Wi-Fi EasyMesh protocol. That helped us focus on more value-added features, like optimizing Wi-Fi and building all the QS-level, channel optimization level features, but at the same time, it also helps us integrate with different chips, different gateways, different manufacturer’s products on Wi-Fi EasyMesh standard level, because now we can talk the same language, we can describe what we need, based on Wi-Fi EasyMesh protocol. We just need EasyMesh R2 support on the extenders or the gateway, where we integrate our Edge software, and it also puts a clear boundary about where the responsibility is when we integrate our software into a 3rd party device, we can test it at the Wi-Fi EasyMesh level so that we can make sure that the product works well, at that standard level.
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Press release | June 27, 2024
Press release | June 6, 2024
Introduction
Over the last year, dependency on home broadband was significantly heightened due to the “enterprization” of the home, telemedicine, distance learning, entertainment, and the need to stay connected with friends and family. Connectivity has become almost as essential as electricity and water.
The COVID-19 lockdown caused both consumers and broadband service providers alike to recognize that greater dependency on home Wi-Fi® is now a fact of life. Airties recently published the findings from a survey of 1,525 respondents across the U.S., U.K., and Germany. The survey* examined the impact this new normal has had on the perceived needs and expectations for Wi-Fi and the important implications this has for broadband service providers.
The increased importance of home Wi-Fi
With usage up for 90 percent of respondents, the standard Wi-Fi offering now needs to support more bandwidth-hungry applications and more intensive usage—with up to 20 active devices in use at once and a “peak usage” period that has gone from evenings and weekends to continuous 12–15+ hour periods per day.
As cities and nations shifted to remote working this past year, Airties saw a marked development of what we call the “enterprization” of the home, and the lines between home and workplace have permanently blurred. A significant number of companies are considering or have already committed to a hybrid or fully remote work model post-pandemic, with 71 percent of survey respondents reporting that they expect to continue working from home. Users’ connected experience becomes critical in a work from home environment. While this is not without challenges, it also represents a massive opportunity for operators who double down on service delivery and seize the opportunity to develop new business models aimed at employers. Recognizing this trend, employers have also started to take action. Thirty-nine percent of consumers surveyed were reimbursed by their employer for new Wi-Fi gear purchased to work from home and 32 percent said their broadband subscription was subsidized by their employer.
Consumer experience and expectations for broadband operators
The broadband operator is emerging as a key lifeline provider amidst the pandemic. Consumers strongly prefer that their operator take the lead in ensuring a quality Wi-Fi experience and manage the end-to-end delivery of their connected home. This presents another significant opportunity for operators, both now and post-pandemic. Despite the plethora of retail solutions available, 80 percent of those surveyed said they would rather their broadband subscription include home Wi-Fi networking gear instead of purchasing it themselves through retail. This also matched an increased willingness to pay more for top tier offers, Wi-Fi guarantees, advanced self-support features via companion apps, and additional services such as cybersecurity. Most consumers said they would consider upgrading to a faster tier of internet service if it was bundled with whole home Wi-Fi for faster and consistent connectivity in every room. Of those who would upgrade, 70 percent said they would pay at least $5/£5/€5 extra per month.
The survey also found new patterns of connecting, with 65 percent using Wi-Fi in unusual places in their homes, such as garages, attics, and patios. This correlates with the 56 percent who said they have areas in their home where Wi-Fi does not work well, and demonstrates a significant need for whole home Wi-Fi solutions. With the sudden and unexpected rise in remote working and learning, 58 percent of respondents said they encountered more home Wi-Fi issues than before the COVID-19 pandemic, and a remarkable 55 percent said they had daily issues with their home Wi-Fi during the pandemic.
As noted, we have crossed an inflection point where Wi-Fi is as vital as electricity for sustaining our way of life—keeping us productive, informed, entertained, and connected. Even as more countries begin to open, the pandemic has permanently changed consumers’ expectations for and reliance on home Wi-Fi, and the increasing enterprization of the home, as well as remote learning and telemedicine, are trends that are here to stay.
Airties’ priority is to support broadband operators as they focus on keeping their customers connected and productive during these unprecedented times. Additional survey details and the entire report can be downloaded here.
* Survey on Wi-Fi during COVID-19 pandemic from 1,575 respondents across the U.S. (525), UK (525) and Germany (525), who either worked or studied from home, commissioned by Airties in Q2 2021, and conducted by Qualtrics.
Article by:
Juliet Bonnard,
Head of Marketing and Corporate Communications
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Press release | June 27, 2024
Press release | June 6, 2024
Introduction
Wi-Fi 6, the latest generation of Wi-Fi connectivity, can offer a first to market advantage for early adopter service providers. Designed to maximize efficiency in response to the massive number of connected devices in use today, it can bring a significant improvement in crowded networks and deliver the throughput and user experience that broadband customers demand. However, as connected homes represent a mix of legacy and new devices, managing this reality is one of the greatest challenges service providers may face to fully harness the benefits of this technology.
Managing complexity in connected homes
There are 20 billion Wi-Fi enabled devices in the world today. Wi-Fi technologies are progressing with new standards being adopted to support evolving uses and consumer expectations. However, it typically takes anywhere up to 5-6 years for a new Wi-Fi standard to penetrate even 50% of the installed base, because the installed base is so big.
Penetration for Wi-Fi 6 devices reached about 12% in our deployments in the 15 months¹ since the standard launched. In fact, we are still seeing 47% of devices are Wi-Fi 5 and 40% are using Wi-Fi 4¹! Wi-Fi 4 is 15 years old and yet it still represents 40% of the installed base¹. As a result, we not only have a growing number of the latest Wi-Fi 6 client devices connected to Wi-Fi 6 access points but we also observe a greater range of different generations of devices that are simultaneously in use.
In the current environment, Wi-Fi 6 devices must share the same 5 GHz band with all the other Wi-Fi devices. Client devices are not only getting smarter, but they are also very selfish. They would like to connect to the fastest available radio in the network, not considering the overall impact on the network performance. So, when very old and slow Wi-Fi devices connect to your latest Wi-Fi 6 radio, sucking all the available “airtime”, it may bring the entire network performance down.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning – traffic control in the home
Each network and topology are unique and may require custom optimizations to provide the best experience. And that’s where see AI and machine learning come into play; to provide some kind of “traffic control” that ensures the best bandwidth for the devices and applications in each network. It can detect the types and capabilities of each device and application to come up with custom Wi-Fi settings for each home network. Operators need a cloud-based mechanism to optimize the performance of both the new Wi-Fi 6 and the much larger pool of legacy devices which will co-exist for many years to come.
Airties Cloud optimization effect
Wi-Fi 6 brings amazing capabilities, but they need to be managed. Airties builds on its wireless expertise to make the best use of the building blocks of Wi-Fi 6, through Cloud and Edge software optimization. Result? Self-optimizing network that learns the best possible home network configuration through analysis of usage pattern and device characteristics to ensure full benefit of Wi-Fi 6 for the latest compatible devices. Learn more about Airties Cloud here.
Article by:
Oz Yildirim,
EVP and GM Americas Business Unit
Sources:
[1] Dec 2020 Airties data – based on actual usage across more than 25 million households worldwide
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Press release | June 27, 2024
Press release | June 6, 2024
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Press release | June 27, 2024
Press release | June 6, 2024
Introduction
Wi-Fi is an essential service – a fact that became clearer during COVID-19 lockdowns around the globe. As cities and nations shifted to remote working and learning, it created a “new normal” and further accelerated reliance on home Wi-Fi. We have recently published a research paper that examines the impact this new normal has had on Wi-Fi usage during lockdown and beyond, and the important implications for the future of Internet service providers.
The research presented relies heavily on real-world, anonymized usage data from Airties Cloud, which supports 25 million homes from leading Internet service providers around the world. It covers a period in 2020 that includes pre-lockdown (January to mid-February) to the widespread lockdown period (mid-Feb through April) to the recent post-lockdown period (May through June). The paper examines the changes in user behavior and the factors affecting Wi-Fi performance and its impact on homeowners’ quality of experience.
Key findings
- During lockdown, the number of actively used Wi-Fi devices within each home increased from 5.9 to 6.6
- During lockdown, not only were more devices in use, but they were being used simultaneously. An average of up to 5 simultaneously connected devices were being used every day of the week. This is a 30% to 40% increase on the pre-lockdown working day, where an average of only 3 devices per home with a peak of 4 in the evenings on weekdays and during the weekend was
- Between the working hours of 9am and 5pm, Wi-Fi activity increased, ranging between 70% to 94% higher than pre-lockdown levels.
- During lockdown, the volume of average Wi-Fi data rose to over 11GB per home, for every day of the week. This compares to pre-lockdown when data consumption was around 6.5GB during the week to over 8GB at the weekends. In other words, average data volumes increased by a massive 62%.
- Propelled by an increase in video conferencing and online file-sharing/storage usage, the volume of upstream traffic more than doubled, with an increase of 116% during the lockdown period.
The Catalyst Effect
While all these examples of the increased demands on Wi-Fi are interesting, the most significant data relates to the homeowners’ measurable Wi-Fi quality of experience (QoE), and a phenomenon that we call the catalyst effect. The findings show that when under pressure, Wi-Fi performance does not worsen in a linear fashion correlated with the increase in usage, but rather that it deteriorates in an exponential way. On an aggregate level, users’ experience deteriorated by 160%, with peaks reaching 200%, relative to the increase in Wi-Fi usage and activity. This catalyst effect remains prevalent in the post-lock down period as well, as measured through mid-June. This deterioration in quality of experience can, in turn, lead to increased customer care calls and lower NPS scores.
Our priority is to support service providers as they focus on keeping their customers connected and productive during this unprecedented global challenge. The final section of the paper briefly discusses solutions that can help mitigate the catalyst effect and improve residential Wi-Fi QoE, and the entire whitepaper can be downloaded here.
Article by:
Bart Vercammen,
EVP & GM Software Product Line
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Press release | June 27, 2024