ADTRAN New Mesh Network Promises Smarter WiFi at Home

ADTRAN today debuts its cloud-managed whole home mesh WiFi, an offering that could give operators the ability to improve their residential broadband services, reduce costs and upsell service enhancements to customers.

Dubbed the ADTRAN SDX 810-RG and 810-ADP, the solution -- part of Mosaic Subscriber Experience Suite -- delivers "enterprise-class WiFi to residential customers," Kurt Raaflaub, head of strategic solutions marketing, told Broadband World News today.

Service providers, whether cable or telco, are asked to solve some tough broadband support issues -- even ones they didn't create. Consumers may, for example, buy $400 or $500 gigabit home WiFi modems at retailers but, when they do not receive the expected high-speed, whole-home coverage, immediately call their operator, said Raaflaub. Providers have no visibility into a modem or set-up they did not create and have two options: Send out an expensive technician, often more than once, to try to resolve the problems or tell irate subscribers they cannot do anything since the consumers don't rent modems from them.

Neither result bodes well for the next subscriber satisfaction survey. And forget about customer loyalty.

Bonus rounds
Instead, service providers can combine ADTRAN's SDX 810 family with its SD Access open, microservices portfolio, Raaflaub said. They also may opt to add additional components of ADTRAN's Mosaic Subscriber Experience Suite, he said. (See SD-Access: The Foundation for Transformation and Pattern Emerges for ADTRAN's Mosaic.)

By combining whole home WiFi with ADTRAN's SD-Access portfolio and Mosaic, service providers can monetize the broadband infrastructure in which they've so heavily invested -- and so many competitors use to providers' disadvantage, said Raaflaub.

"Carriers want to be able to monetize their broadband to develop and deliver. Service providers are in a land grab for subscriber mindshare. Not only has Netflix got their video, but you can see Amazon and Google coming into the home for the Internet of Things," he said. "Whole home WiFi is a way for providers to take back some of the mindshare that they own."

Return on investment typically takes less than 12 months, Raaflaub estimated. ADTRAN's solution costs less than big-box stores' $500 offerings, he noted, and operators can buy other vendors' optical network terminations (ONTs) or networks, said Raaflaub.

"As a service provider, you have the benefit of taking a solution and can roll in -- for an extra $7, $8 or $9 a month -- for providing this service. The ROI is probably less than a year," he added. "Understanding a heavy user who has just bought a virtual reality headset, you will see that come up on his devices; he's on a 200Mbit/s service, you can push him to 500Mbit/s service. This is really a world where information is power. That is one of the key tenets of software-defined access."

The machines know
ADTRAN's use of machine learning further allows the system to adapt over time, recognizing for example that den users are more important than those in smaller bedrooms -- children, generally. The Mosaic portfolio prioritizes parents' usage during peak hours or at times when the network may be strained, ensuring the mother in the office and father in the living room (in other words, those who pay the bills) have better performance than the teenager who is in the middle of a 12-hour gaming marathon.

"We recognize when we give too much priority to little Jimmy and not enough to mom or dad, we get a phone call. That's the beauty of AI: It learns those things," Raaflaub said, with a laugh. "The den always has to trump the gaming console. "

Or the service provider upsells until every family member has adequate broadband access. Even better.

In addition to the new whole home WiFi solution, ADTRAN recently unveiled Mosaic Subscriber Insight and Mosaic Device Manager.

With Insight, service providers personalize subscriber experiences via a network intelligence tool that enables them to enhance business operations, new service sign-up and customer loyalty, ADTRAN said. For its part, Device Manager is a device management tool operators use to remotely monitor and maintain in-home customer devices and WiFi networks. By empowering providers to detect when subscribers add new equipment -- such as 4K or 8K TVs, virtual reality headsets or Internet of Things devices -- to the network, operators are easily equipped to upsell faster speeds, complementary services or promotional offers, Raaflaub noted. Modules are available for purchase alone or as part of the entire suite.

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• Operators Unlock Millennials' Smart Homes

— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter @BroadbandWN or @alisoncdiana.