By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
If you think the home Wi-Fi experience can only be improved marginally with remote Wi-Fi optimisation platforms, think again: ACT Fibernet of India says subscriber Wi-Fi devices connected to ACT Fibernet CPEs now enjoy an average of three times higher speeds following the rollout of the ACT SmartWi-Fi service to 250,000 homes. Aprecomm is delivering the AI technology making the transformation happen
Many operators would surely be delighted if they could improve the home Wi-Fi quality of experience by a one or two dozen percent by remote optimisation. As it turns out, it now appears possible (at least in some cases) to improve Wi-Fi speeds by several multiples. The remarkable result was reported by Indian fiber operator ACT Fibernet last week following the deployment of a new customer QoE solution dubbed ACT SmartWi-Fi to 250,000 fibre-connected homes in January.
ACT Fibernet says the deployment has resulted in nearly twice as fast Wi-Fi speeds for smart TVs, twice as fast speeds for laptops, and four times faster speeds for mobile phones. The QoE solution – provided by Aprecomm – has seen the majority of active Wi-Fi devices successfully steered away from interference and congestion and towards optimal Wi-Fi channels. The results reported this week are the consequence of ACT Fibernet’s early decision to own the air inside the home following years of heavy traffic loads during the pandemic, the company says.
“The transformation needed to happen because the massive increase in number of devices and Internet traffic never came back down after the pandemic. While managing the fibre network quality to the subscriber’s home is standard practice and well understood, owning the air between CPEs and Wi-Fi devices turned out to be a bigger challenge but at least as important,” says Ravi Karthik, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer of ACT Fibernet.
Today ACT Fibernet is upholding its promise to deliver a ‘superior quality online experience’ for its subscribers – largely through its technology partnership with AI platform provider Aprecomm, the company says. “We’re really redefining what high-performance Internet is all about for Indian homes,” Ravi Karthik says. ACT Fibernet says about one third of the company’s 2.3 million subscriptions are upgradable to the new ACT SmartWi-Fi service without changing their CPEs.
The rest are being offered an upgrade path by switching to new hardware from legacy routers or CPEs purchased via a third party. Third party routers cannot be managed by the system today but it is expected that over time most subscribers will opt for operator-managed CPEs in order to receive the full benefit of their fibre-based subscription, ACT Fibernet says.
ACT SmartWi-Fi – powered by Aprecomm’s agentic AI solution – proactively scans and monitors in-home Wi-Fi. It identifies potential issues, such as congestion and interference, while optimising the experience in real-time through features like channel switching and band steering. The algorithm captures more than 15 parameters in real-time, calculating a Wi-Fi quality of experience score for each device and continuously optimises to ensure enhanced experience across all devices, applications, and corners of the home, 24/7. For more read here. Also see our previous coverage on Aprecomm recent rapid global expansion here.
Don’t miss meeting Aprecomm live and in person at Wi-Fi World Congress USA 2025 in Mountain View, California, on April 28-30. For more view the full agenda and all other details here.
/Claus.
