By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Home Wi-Fi optimisation leader ASSIA has released a ‘Commande’ service and solution to unlock the unhealthy dependencies of home ISPs on proprietary gateway hardware and software. The aim of the new solution is to allow any ISPs to deliver what every subscriber wants: Better whole-home Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi supports all the home broadband subscribers’ important uses. But ISPs are often kept from effectively optimising home Wi-Fi services because they are locked into proprietary and hence technically impenetrable hardware and software for gateways. ASSIA’s new ‘Commande’ solution – released last week – aims to remove exactly those obstacles and delivers the high-performance, whole-home Wi-Fi everyone wants.
Getting unstuck in the delivery of great WI-Fi
ASSIA says it is common for ISPs not to be able to deliver the home services they want – including multiple concurrent services – without swapping out CPE hardware. And even if they go that route, they may eventually get stuck again facing another set of restrictions, the company says.
ASSIA says they’ve tested more than 100 routers, middleware, and home gateways in their labs in order to crack the Wi-Fi optimisation challenge. “We put ISPs in command of their own Wi-Fi network quality. In addition to Wi-Fi diagnostics and optimisation, we’re now working with ISPs to develop a set of best practices for interoperability,” says ASSIA CEO and Chairman, John Cioffi.
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“Our expertise includes understanding what APIs are needed for effective Wi-Fi performance management. And this is what we’re including as a critical part of the Commande service,” says Tuncay Cil, Chief Strategy Officer at ASSIA. At this time ASSIA is already remotely managing more than 125 million home broadband connections including Wi-Fi, the company says.
ASSIA currently serves a long list of telcos and cablecos including AT&T, BT, Telefonica, Charter, Orange, and many more. Remote Wi-Fi optimisation services can boost customer retention by up to 20% while reducing customer service calls by as much as half, ASSIA says.
Standards the ultimate answer, says ASSIA
But ASSIA also says the new offering is only an interim solution to the overarching problem of lack of standards for effectively delivering and managing home broadband including Wi-Fi. Ultimately, the only right solution is to introduce properly designed and universally adopted standards for all relevant home broadband interfaces and software, Tuncay Cil says.
“A lot of ISPs are interested in introducing standards for home networking as are for example Facebook. At ASSIA we’re working strongly towards that goal. History tells us that the successful adoption of technical standards can boost market size by a factor of ten or more – and everyone wins, including the vendors,” Tuncay Cil says.
Momentum builds towards home Wi-Fi standardisation
In July of this year the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced a new standard for Wi-Fi diagnostics and data collection called ‘Wi-Fi Certified Data Elements,’ an initiative that ASSIA has been instrumental in driving, Cil says. In February of this year Facebook kicked off a Wi-Fi industry program aimed at speeding up collaboration on – among other things – standards for home Wi-Fi delivery.
Early this year telco analysts Analysys Mason reported on the results of a survey that maps out factors affecting home broadband subscriber satisfaction. Four out of five top factors – including connection reliability and speed – relate to Wi-Fi quality, the survey found. The fifth is price.
Don’t miss ASSIA’s Tuncay Cil at Wi-Fi NOW International conference & expo in London on November 12-14 – read more here.
/Claus.
