By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
After more than 21 years in the business of Wi-Fi, Airties has finally said goodbye to building its own CPE hardware. Robust standards and open source platforms means that hardware and software can now finally be fully separated, which also means that Airties can now focus entirely on its core value proposition: Delivering the intelligence that makes home Wi-Fi perform at its absolute best, the company says.
It is not that long ago when unmanageable Wi-Fi hardware boxes were simply shipped off to home broadband subscribers. At the time, building excellent hardware – including Wi-Fi extenders – was the only way to improve in-home Wi-Fi performance including coverage. Over the past decades, the world of home broadband has undergone a paradigm shift towards full separation of hardware and software. This also means that Airties is finally saying goodbye to hardware, says Airties CEO Metin Taskin.
“Our legacy harks back more than 20 years, which means we for many years were deeply involved in developing and delivering the right hardware gateways and extenders for ISPs. But since then, a most of our work has concentrated on intelligent software as well as supporting the evolution of universal standards. Today, we’re delighted to say that we’re out of the hardware business – also because there’s a lot of excellent hardware available from OEMs. Our business today is creating the software that makes it all run perfectly, so as to deliver the best possible Wi-Fi and overall Internet connectivity experience to the end user,” Metin Taskin says.
Home Wi-Fi delivery has gone through a few evolutionary steps to arrive at its current state, he says. “Until fairly recently, Wi-Fi extenders were specialised hardware that ran on their own software and were managed from the gateway with proprietary protocols. Today, the Wi-Fi Alliance’s EasyMesh standard allows us to manage any EasyMesh compliant extender via our gateway agent. This is a huge benefit to ISPs since it does away with hardware lock-in,” he says. He also points out that Airties has been an important contributor to the EasyMesh standard.
Airties today delivers optimised Wi-Fi via more than 180 CPE models – which means that the company’s solutions are fully hardware agnostic. Metin Taskin says the company made the decision to exit the hardware business in 2022 and achieved this goal last year. “The big difference is that all operators today expect to be able to manage their gateways and extenders. Our software agent can comfortably exist and deliver excellent Wi-Fi performance on any CPE platform,” he says.
Open source platforms drive innovation up and costs down, Airties says
Another important evolutionary step has been the introduction of open source platforms for gateways and mesh, which has enabled operator control of gateway operating systems, lower costs, more innovation, and much easier introduction of new services. “Both RDK and prpl are empowering operators to deliver more and better services and it is also enabling a company like Airties to deliver our intelligent management to more homes everywhere. The combination of RDK, prpl, EasyMesh, and Data Elements – another Wi-Fi Alliance standard – is our fastest path to success and great Wi-Fi for all homes. Standards such as TR-181 and 369 are also important, and we of course support those fully,” Metin Taskin says.
He also says that although operator-managed home Wi-Fi is clearly the solution that delivers the best quality of experience, some markets still allow and even encourage subscribers to buy and install their own gateways and mesh. “For example: In parts of the Middle East, this is still common, even though this practice has been done away with many years ago in other markets. But awareness among operators about the importance of ISP-managed home Wi-Fi is generally growing,” Metin Taskin says.
Beyond the home, Airties is also intent on helping ISPs address other potential revenue growth areas. Earlier this year, Airties expanded its portfolio with the additions of Airties Multi and Airties Pro software platforms designed for ISPs to serve MDUs and SMBs with optimised connectivity, respectively. The company also launched Airties Nova, a newly released SaaS-based testing platform for ISPs. Heading into 2026, Airties is focused on its brand promise of “empowering operators to provide ‘smooth, smart connectivity’ for all,” Metin Taskin says.
/Claus.
