Advanced Television

AirTies, Broadcom strategic alliance

May 18, 2017

Colin Mann @ Connected TV World Summit

At the 2017 Connected TV World Summit in London, AirTies, a provider of premium in-home wireless systems announced a strategic alliance with analogue and digital semiconductor connectivity solutions specialist Broadcom, to provide carrier grade, whole-home Wi-Fi solutions to service providers worldwide.

Specifically, the two companies are collaborating on managed Wi-Fi Mesh systems designed to satisfy the performance, coverage, management and mass deployment requirements of today’s forward-looking operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Unlike traditional Wi-Fi, which relies on a single Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) embedded in a home gateway/router, managed Wi-Fi Mesh networks use the gateway/router and multiple APs to deliver improved whole-home Internet coverage and provide advanced performance monitoring capabilities.

“Operators around the world are rethinking their approach to in-home Wi-Fi, and many are looking to Mesh networking as their future,” said Gregory Fischer, senior vice president and general manager, Broadband Carrier Access, Broadcom. “As a pioneer of advanced Wi-Fi solutions to leading broadband operators around the globe, we’re proud to work with AirTies on a collaborative roadmap that brings our joint abilities to this growing market. Broadcom is committed to helping service providers deliver the best in-home Wi-Fi experiences possible.”

“It’s clear to AirTies and Broadcom that consumers have rising expectations for fast and consistent Internet performance throughout every corner of their homes, on all of their devices – and they expect their service providers to deliver,” said Philippe Alcaras, CEO of AirTies. “Broadcom is a recognized world-leader in Wi-Fi chipsets and technology, and by teaming up for the long run, we can help operators seize new opportunities to improve customer satisfaction, drive incremental revenue, and differentiate with new classes of premium Wi-Fi services, with the guarantee of integrating all critical innovation in the future.”

Product Integration and Collaboration

Moving forward, AirTies’ Wi-Fi Mesh compatibility will be a default feature in all of Broadcom’s wireless platforms like router, DSL, GPON, DOCSIS and Video Decoding CPE platforms (i.e. residential gateways or set-top boxes) as part of the new Wi-Fi driver software available May 2017. AirTies’ versatile software can turn residential gateways and wireless set-top boxes into an additional Mesh Wi-Fi access point, thus reducing the costs needed for additional APs in the home.

For homes requiring additional APs, AirTies supplies dual band concurrent APs built on various Broadcom chipsets/CPUs (i.e. BCM4366E, BCM4360, BCM43217, and BCM47081). These compact APs include Client and Band Steering technology to ensure devices always connect to the best available AP and frequency band (2.4GHz or 5GHz) based on real-time network usage. The APs also provide Channel Management, which improves performance in high interference Wi-Fi environments. To provide a fully managed experience, operators can also use AirTies’ Remote View software, a cloud-based performance monitoring platform used by field support and network engineering teams to optimise in-home Wi-Fi and gain valuable real-time insights.

With operations around the globe, AirTies provides premium in-home Wi-Fi solutions to leading international service providers, such as Atlantic Broadband, Frontier, Midco, Singtel, Sky (SKY Q in the UK; Germany; Italy and New Zealand), Swisscom, Vodafone, Waoo, and many others. AirTies supplies operators with devices, software, apps, and cloud-based performance monitoring and improvement capabilities that enable ISPs to provide a managed Wi-Fi Mesh solution for their subscribers, and differentiate with new classes of premium Wi-Fi services.

Categories: Articles, Broadband, Business, Equipment, Joint Venture