By Stephanie Kinch, Wi-Fi NOW Staff Writer.
Some of the telecom industry veterans responsible for bringing Wi-Fi to your doorstep have gone one step further with a product that claims to give a strong and fast Wi-Fi signal in every nook and cranny of your home.
It’s called Plume, the world’s first Adaptive Wi-Fi™ solution. Plume is a cloud-coordinated Wi-Fi system that increases signal strength and quality via unobtrusive Pods that are plugged into home electrical outlets. These Pods monitor Wi-Fi activity and balance the network load by using multiple Wi-Fi channels to communicate between them. This helps eliminate congestion as the home when Wi-Fi demands change – like when the kids get home from school or with a movie download.
Adapting to the digital home
CEO Fahri Diner says that Plume’s system differs from traditional routers, extenders, and mesh because it is intelligent with signal delivery.
“Wireless and Wi-Fi, in particular, is ever changing,” says Diner. “Interference comes and goes, devices come on and off the network. Things are moving around the home. Our system responds to this changing environment to give people a high-quality experience.”
This contrasts with repeaters and extenders, which can cause even more interference in a home Wi-Fi system. Mesh systems of coordinated routers are also problematic because they only communicate on a single channel. Plume’s Cloud algorithms figure out which band to use for each device, thus giving devices access to speed and minimizing interference.
Not just a hardware company
Pods are available for purchase on Plume’s web site, but Diner says that the business’s focus goes beyond what you plug into the wall.
“At a higher level, Plume is not a hardware company. We are a control and management system for wireless networks,” he says. “We are designing and licensing hardware to make and sell directly to providers because they are the traffic controllers of the internet.”
Plume is led by an all-star team of telecom industry veterans and has the attention of investors worldwide. In May, the company announced that it raised USD$37 million in its third round of funding. One of the largest investors is Comcast, one of the United States’ largest Internet Service Providers (ISP). Comcast will use Plume’s Pods and technology in its routers to help improve home Wi-Fi signals.
Presidio Ventures, a sister company of Japan’s J:Com, is also a leading investor in Plume, as well as Liberty Global Ventures, Shaw Ventures, and Jackson Square Ventures. The company has raised over USD$63 million in investments to date.
What the reviews say
Digital Trends, which tests and evaluates new tech products, said that Plume “is a dead-simple way to set up a wireless network that can span a larger location than a single wireless router can likely cover.”
Plume is right now competing with a slew of other home Wi-Fi contenders that include Eero, Luma, AmpliFi (Ubiquiti), and even Google. Most of these competitors use a form of mesh networking to build continuous in-home Wi-Fi coverage.
You can read more about Plume here. As of writing, Plume products are only available in the US.
/Stephanie
