Consumers recognize the importance of whole-home WiFi, are ready to embrace new technology, and demand the simplicity of a single provider. Broadband service providers are perfectly positioned to provide this full suite of service offerings today and in the future. However, in a time of flux, providers can’t afford to reinvent their service offerings in response to every market disruption.
The pandemic has accelerated digital adoption, spurring a large-scale and lasting shift in consumer behavior. With stay-at-home orders, many shifted their work, school and daily lives to the Internet. Video calls took the place of in-person meetings and classrooms. Subscribers streamed more video, shopped online and adopted new technology…from intelligent home devices to wearables and voice-enabled digital assistants. In most cases, home Internet – particularly home WiFi networks – became the gateway to the world.
The ramifications for broadband service providers are clear. First, subscribers pushed the limits of their home WiFi networks with more devices and more traffic than ever before. With full households streaming simultaneously, network performance is crucial – congested networks contributed to frustrating video meetings, sluggish downloads and spotty coverage.
Home WiFi has become the central battleground and broadband providers need to focus on the experience their customers are having with their in-home WiFi in order to prevent churn. However, this is easier said than done. WiFi is a dynamic that is continually changing within a household. New devices are added and removed daily. Bandwidth consumption has peaks and valleys throughout the day and week, depending on which household members are home and what they’re doing. As a result, the WiFi environment needs to be adaptable to produce a reliable and fast experience no matter who’s gaming or on Zoom, YouTube and Netflix.
There are new opportunities too. Partly driven by the necessity of lockdowns, people are adopting new digital habits and trying new products and services as a result. For example, an Accenture survey found that consumers are more likely to increase their usage of voice-enabled digital assistants, online recommendation apps, self-service apps, intelligent home devices and wearables.
The best strategy for service providers is to create a home WiFi solution that can adapt and evolve to meet new market trends and consumer demands. Trying to reinvent one’s services each time a market disruption occurs will not work – waiting months to bring new products and services to market leaves you vulnerable to the competition. Rather, the goal is the ability to deploy new services at scale and directly into subscriber’s homes without wait times or professional installation. And that’s where Hitron’s cloud-based architecture comes in.
Solution: An agile and adaptive approach to service delivery with Hitron’s end-to-end Managed WiFi solution
With Hitron’s Whole Home WiFi solution, service providers can be ready for today and tomorrow’s trends. This end-to-end solution couples a smart, self-healing home network with the agility of the cloud. Providers get the flexibility to future-proof their services with modules that can be added and deployed directly into customers’ homes with ease. As a result, providers can create new revenue opportunities, retain customers and respond to their competitors’ activities regardless of what is happening around them.
Unlike other piecemeal software solutions that require the orchestration of multiple vendors and solutions, Hitron offers a robust end-to-end solution:
- Agile service delivery with HitronCloud and Agent
- Managed WiFi with Hitron Gateways, Apps, Dashboards, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- Self-service installation and support with MyHitron App
- Complete security that protects the home, IoT devices, as well as mobile devices on the go
1. Agile service delivery with HitronCloud and Agent
HitronCloud and mobile apps provide the adaptability and flexibility that service providers need to easily and quickly deploy updates and new products directly into customers’ homes. HitronCloud is a cloud-based platform that drives a fully-integrated service delivery solution leveraging Machine Learning, AI and Big Data.
The solution includes the Hitron Agent that’s installed on the customer gateway and managed from the HitronCloud. This architecture enables faster deployment of new services and value-add products – there’s no need to send out a technician or ask the customer to manually install new firmware. New features can be rolled out nearly instantaneously, enabling providers to adapt and evolve their service offerings to effectively capitalize on new revenue opportunities and market trends.
2. HitronCloud Marketing Insights: Leverage customer insights to identify new revenue opportunities
HitronCloud and the Hitron Agent gather detailed data about a subscriber’s home network, giving providers the insights to deliver great new experiences, products and services. This data enables a quantum leap in monetization opportunities – providers can get the right offer to the right customer at the right moment and via the right channel. Such visibility can produce a fundamental shift from pushing products to engaging customers one-to-one and solving specific customer problems.
Providers can use data gathered from the HitronCloud to help identify opportunities to improve the customer’s experience, such as:
- Extender Candidates: Identify customers with a need for an extender
- Extender placement: Identify extenders that have been placed in the wrong location
- Broadband Throughput: Identify customers not getting the speeds that they are paying for
- Broadband Disconnections: List customers experiencing internet disconnections, with duration of internet disconnection
- Device Reboots: Identify devices experiencing an excessive number of reboots per day
- Devices with high CPU/low memory: Identifying customers with device related issues, and could benefit from an equipment swap
3. Hitron Managed WiFi: self-serve, self-healing and self-optimization
Hitron offers a full solution family of apps, gateways, extenders, dashboards, AI and machine learning. This end-to-end solution enables seamless WiFi coverage and connectivity throughout the entire home. Subscribers get intelligent tools to self-serve and self-manage broadband and WiFi services in the home. Customer support representatives and field technicians get real-time visibility into the home network to analyze problems and recommend solutions.
Intelligently managed WiFi empowers the provider to understand the entire customer experience – where issues are and how they can be quickly resolved. It can identify business opportunities with data insights into the customer’s network. And it can lower overall customer care costs and customer churn rates.
HitronCloud offers a trifecta of self-install, self-healing, and self-optimizing tools. HitronCloud provides the tools and end-to-end solution providers need to enhance and manage the delivery of support, services, data insights, management and optimization of home broadband networks and devices in the customer’s home at scale. Tools include:
- Speed Test: uses patented technology to measure actual end-to-end broadband and WiFi throughput simultaneously to identify performance bottlenecks. It isolates problems outside and inside the home without requiring software on the device.
- WiFi Optimization: Assists with professional and self-service WiFi installation experience by creating a survey overview of the home. Continuously measures WiFi throughput and connectivity to proactively identify coverage dead spots and the best location to place the WiFi router, access point or identify where a WiFi extender might be needed.
- Proactive Troubleshooting: provides a full network view with the HitronCloud Agent and enables subscribers to view recommendations and take actions to resolve issues with their home network and connected devices.
- Remote Management: provides subscribers and field technicians access to the subscriber’s gateway.
- Cloud Agent: resides on the gateway to ensure scalability and optimal performance. It enables gateway-based broadband speed tests that measure the true broadband speed and does not impact nor get impacted by end-user activity. The Cloud Agent performs real-time monitoring and optimization while facilitating firmware policy updates that is seamless to the customer.
4. MyHitron: End-user app
The MyHitron app is a white-labeled self-service solution that enables service providers to develop deep, continuous relationships with customers. Customers access the app seeing the provider’s branding and using the login credentials assigned for their broadband service for a seamless brand experience. The app offers: self-guided self-installation, home network setup, optimization, performance management, parental controls, network security setup, and intuitive guided troubleshooting.
Self-installations:
Self-guided installations can help future-proof a provider’s services, since new services and products can be delivered at scale directly into customers’ homes via the cloud without lengthy wait times or professional installations.
Customers will be able to use the friendly, self-guided onboarding installation journey within the MyHitron app to quickly and effectively authenticate, set-up and configure their home network and broadband account themselves. The easy, step-by-step install process connects the app to the modem/gateway, configures the gateway, connects their WiFi and tests the speed of their broadband connection to ensure its performing at its best.
WiFi and Network Optimization
A simple, user-friendly interface lets customers check the overall health of their WiFi network, adjusting band, channel, guest network, network password and name, enable/disable/pause devices, adjust security settings or parental controls settings. Customers can identify and fix areas in their home with poor WiFi coverage, all without having to call tech support!
Self-Healing Troubleshooting
The MyHitron app can proactively manage and optimize the performance of a customer’s home network to ensure that it and its connected devices are performing at their very best, so each customer experiences flawless broadband and WiFi in their home. Customers receive “self-heal” direction when anomalies are detected on devices or their home network, and they will receive proactive maintenance direction to quickly resolve WiFi connectivity issues.
A customer’s experience with their in-home WiFi represents the provider’s brand – and the MyHitron App helps ensure it’s as enjoyable and trouble-free as possible.
5. Home network security
As the number of connected devices in the home grows, so does the security risk. IoT and smart home devices are particularly vulnerable to attacks and are attractive targets for hackers and other cyber criminals. Broadband service providers are in an ideal position to provide security and protect home networks and families. By offering Hitron’s Security Suite, service providers can make security easy for their subscribers, boost subscriber confidence in the connected home, and increase ARPU.
Hitron partners with SecuringSam, a leader in cybersecurity for the connected home, to offer complete network, privacy and data protection that can be seamlessly installed on a Hitron gateway and remotely managed by the provider. It doesn’t require any extra hardware or user intervention.
Hitron’s Security Suite includes:
- Protection against data theft, privacy violation and service disruption widespread attacks for all connected devices (IoTs)
- Parental Controls, including in-home and on-the-go protection against age-inappropriate content or excessive screen usage
- And unlike many other security offerings, Hitron’s solution protects a subscriber’s mobile devices that are on the go. Wherever a family goes with their devices, they will have Parental Controls and device security protection – just as if they were at home.
The pandemic has revealed just how critical home broadband/WiFi is to daily life. To win the battle for home connectivity, broadband service providers need to focus on the experience that customers are having with their whole-home WiFi, as any performance issues won’t be tolerated. In this fast-changing market, providers can’t afford the extensive time or the capital investment to reinvent their WiFi platform with every new consumer or competitive trend. Most importantly, providers need to create a long-term solution that can adapt and evolve.
With Hitron’s cloud-based solution, you get it all…whole-home managed WiFi, intelligent self-healing home networks that reduce support costs, critical data insights and business intelligence, and a modular, cloud-based architecture that enables new services to be instantly rolled out at scale. Contact our friendly team to find out more.