By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
With a new CEO at the helm, what changes can the broadband industry expect from home Wi-Fi optimisation pioneer Plume? Dan Herscovici says he is streamlining and reinforcing Plume’s core value proposition: Helping home broadband ISPs towards better results by delivering amazing customer experiences. ISP operational tools will be Plume’s other core product segment. Meanwhile he is ending Plume’s consumer-facing business.
A new CEO often ushers in a significant change in corporate strategy – and sometimes even in values – but in this case, Plume’s Dan Herscovici says he’s simply realigning and refocusing Plume on what the company already does best: Delivering the best possible connectivity experience within the home. He says Plume is a unique position based on the company’s tremendous achievements since inception.
“There’s still enormous opportunity in the market to help ISPs across the globe deliver the best possible home services. We’re in a unique position going forward also because of our 50 million household footprint, which gives us access to enormous amounts of data. Our systems learn how to optimise Wi-Fi from the largest footprint in the industry. That’s huge value to ISPs,” Dan Herscovici says.
Maintaining and extending Plume’s pole position in home Wi-Fi optimisation, coverage, latency management at the application level, and more – that’s Plume’s bread and butter, he says. But he’s also adamant that the home broadband conversation should not be only about speed. “We’re well past the point where speed is the only meaningful metric. In fact, raw speed figures are often misleading. What ISPs must focus on is the experience that keeps customers delighted and not least loyal,” he says.
Focus area: Delivering value with ISP Ops
Plume’s second strategic focus area is also not new but Dan Herscovici says the company will evolve its ISP operational platform into a more comprehensive solution spanning a much wider swath of support functions inside ISP organisations. “Customer care staff, technicians, product managers, network engineers – they all have different needs when it comes to an effective support platform. We’re now evolving our backend solution to meet an array of ISP needs effectively, including – for example – a market-leading business analysis engine,” he says.
Meanwhile Dan Herscovici says he is ending Plume’s consumer-facing business, which harks back from a time when Plume was mostly known for its Cloud-managed, socket-pluggable Wi-Fi mesh pods. The popular and iconic Plume pods still exist although the company’s original hardware design has long since been licensed out to a third party for manufacturing and sales. Ending this part of the business will help direct the full force of Plume’s efforts towards serving ISPs in the best possible way, he says.
And it would indeed be hard to find a new Plume CEO with better credentials than Dan Herscovici. He spent 8 years at Motorola Mobility – around the time when the first Motorola Razr phones were released – and then another 11 years as VP and SVP at Comcast. Dan Herscovici led the team that designed and launched the original Xfinity home gateway with integrated Wi-Fi, a world first at the time. Later he was instrumental in creating Comcast’s multi-million AP Wi-Fi roaming network.
Dan Herscovici says he’s looking forward to inspiring his team to develop new, innovative Plume services as well as embarking on a new global expansion strategy. “There are opportunities across the globe including in the EU and the Middle East, for example. We’re approaching this with a lot of pride based on what we’ve achieved so far, but also with new humility going forward. We’re listening carefully to what our customers want,” he says.
More changes at the top of Plume
Further changes in Plume’s executive team are many but also promising: Last month Plume hired industry veteran Dave Wechsler for the position of Chief Business Officer while this month the company appointed Chris Griffiths as new CTO. Chris worked alongside Dan Herscovici at Comcast and later at CujoAI.
This week Plume announced the addition of broadband industry veteran Marcio Avillez, who will take on the role as Plume’s new Chief Commercial Officer. Marcio Avillez has previously held leadership positions at CujoAI, Cirrent, Level3, and iPass. “We continue to add experienced operators to our leadership team, who have either worked at tier one ISPs or collaborated with them on developing and scaling new technology solutions. Marcio has a deep understanding of service provider needs and his wide network will propel Plume toward new future-focused opportunities,” Dan Herscovici says.
/Claus.
