For mobile operators, Wi-Fi represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Traditionally seen by many as competitive to cellular, Wi-Fi is now recognized as a way to maintain a more consistent user experience by offloading traffic when cellular networks become congested. The challenge for operators is to offer that consistent experience without pushing users off the cellular network prematurely, or leaving them on Wi-Fi indefinitely.
Striking that balance is the goal for Devicescape, which markets a device-side client for Wi-Fi offload. The software detects degradation in cellular connectivity and switches the device to Wi-Fi. Policies can be set to enable the operator to determine how much degradation will prompt a move to Wi-Fi.
“Many operators would like to retain connectivity on their cellular networks as much as possible, and only use the Wi-Fi network as a ‘fallback,'” said Devicescape CEO Dave Fraser. “This differs from the ‘best network’ configuration because even though the Wi-Fi network may be performing better from a technical standpoint, there may be more important issues, like consistency of the connectivity or the ability to monetize the usage, which make it more desirable to retain the user on cellular.”
Devicescape calls its offering Coverage Continuity, and said it will return users to the cellular network as soon as quality is restored. The client will examine signal strength and other available parameters, and will passively monitor traffic on the network in order to determine data throughput rates. It also provides analytics to show the operator when and where users move on and off the network.
Part of Devicescape’s “curated virtual network” are 20 million amenity Wi-Fi hot spots. Most are in the United States, but the company is rapidly adding capacity in Europe. The company has patented technology that authenticates users to nonstandard networks. Devicescape’s cloud-based service relays authentication instructions to the client.
The user may see the transition to or from Wi-Fi, but does not need to take any action to enable it. Users can take action on the front end, however, to establish their preferences with respect to Wi-Fi. Devicescape calls this the consumer “preference panel.”
“Consumers don’t really want to give up control of Wi-Fi,” said David Nowicki, Devicescape’s CMO. “Right now consumers figure out which Wi-Fi they want to connect to and they don’t really want to give that up. So we introduced a preference panel. The preference panel says ‘Do you want to prefer Wi-Fi, do you want the best connection, or do you want to prefer mobile?’ And that may change during the month, depending on where the service plan is. When we introduced this to consumers … we found that they were willing to give up control of Wi-Fi and allow the operator to manage both cellular and Wi-Fi for them.”
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