The general idea is to make the cellular-to-Wi-Fi hand-off seamless. “If it isn’t deployed correctly, you end up with a lot of bad experiences,” Hotchkiss explained. For example, consumers tend to turn off the Wi-Fi capability in their smartphones when there’s a bad handoff. Anytime that happens, operators lose that Wi-Fi offload benefit.
“You have to carefully control the handshake and the connection between the Wi-Fi access point and the smartphone,” Hotchkiss said.
Plume amplified its focus in that area with recent enhancements to a feature called 5G.11 Offload that combines 5G/cellular and Wi-Fi connections and works with Wi-Fi routers equipped with Plume’s OpenSync framework. The aim is to help broadband operators make their MVNO offerings more efficient and to reduce cellular data usage fees as their mobile customers connect to operator-managed in-home and metro Wi-Fi hotspots.