The Role of Managed Wi-Fi for Consumers at Home

Since the advent of Wi-Fi in the mid-1990s, through the first decade of the 21st century, consumers were primarily responsible for purchasing their own router and handling setup and configuration. A tedious process from a customer experience standpoint, Wi-Fi coverage in the home was often limited to a few rooms or a portion of the entire house, with little attention to security or SSID (Service Set Identifier) network password management. Parental controls were non-existent (the concept of parental controls first appeared in Windows Vista when it was released in 2007).

During the early days of broadband access, consumers purchased routers separately, and service providers furnished the cable modem. In later years, service providers began delivering both modems and the router (sometimes “combo” products) that the consumer often leased/rented.

Regardless of whether a customer “owns” the router or leases it from the service provider, most customers do not distinguish poor service between the ISP and wireless data streams. As a result, the service providers end up taking the service call. ?With service providers taking a broader level of responsibility for the router cable modem (effectively, the broadband “pipe” into the home), technical diagnosis of wireless issues also became more straightforward and moderately improved customer satisfaction.

In the late 2010s, “managed Wi-Fi” services began to emerge. Service providers realized that the proliferation of smart home devices throughout the home presented an enormous business opportunity that could drive incremental revenue and simultaneously enhance customer satisfaction, and with “managed Wi-Fi,” service providers essentially take a greater responsibility for distributing wireless coverage in the home. A central benefit of the “managed Wi-Fi” experience is a single, unified mobile app.

Each smart home solution often comes with its own app, and with households having multiple devices, consumers have to navigate through many different apps to control and manage their home automation, residential security, home entertainment, and other core functions.

From a consumer perspective, there are multiple advantages to a single, unified app. It mitigates the feeling of being overwhelmed by too many apps, easing navigation through one intuitive GUI and featuring a “single sign-on” approach so that the user does not have to manage multiple IDs and passwords. Moreover, a unified app can pass along information among devices (e.g., automatically lower the living room shades when the smart thermostat reports that the temperature has reached a certain level). It also would give users more information on the health and speed of their network, with tips to improve network performance, which are popular as “add-on” services among consumers.

Adding Value and Revenues

From a service provider perspective, “managed Wi-Fi” offers the opportunity to build a closer and more intimate relationship with subscribers. Parks Associates research reveals that service providers enjoy a high level of satisfaction by consumers (reaching levels of nearly 60%) who obtain their networking devices from an ISP. Service providers are also ranked at the top by consumers as the “most trustworthy company to access and manage” their data, equal to traditional mobile phone providers.

Now that service providers increasingly offer enhanced router solutions with mesh technology, the ISP becomes a singular trusted entity that provides superior performance everywhere in the home. Subscribers often have access to lifetime hardware replacement, providing peace of mind and assuaging future-proofing concerns. These “enhanced” router solutions have significant customer satisfaction benefits as they facilitate remote technical support. Finally, service providers take a more proactive role in providing the latest firmware updates, which help reinforce cybersecurity protection and optimize overall network system performance.

A “managed Wi-Fi” approach reduces operating expenses by increasing efficiency, decreasing truck rolls, and growing revenue by easily enabling value-added services.

Recent Parks Associates consumer research underscores a strong consumer appetite for “add-on” network services. Survey respondents indicated a clear preference (“Interested” or “Very Interested”) for the abilities that monitor the health of their network and give clear guidance on ways to improve performance, which a service provider can deliver through the mobile app for its managed Wi-Fi solution.

“Managed Wi-Fi” also offers service providers the ability to provide additional value-added services, especially in the SMB space. Parks Associates’ New SMB Landscape: Devices, Communication, Security, Support reports that 53% of SMBs are “concerned” or “very concerned” about the security of remote employees’ home networks. In this regard, CPE vendors are now offering new hardware and software solutions as part of the “managed Wi-Fi” experience tailored to the needs of employers managing remote workforces, a situation that is becoming all too common. In this scenario, devices may include embedded cybersecurity solutions that guard against enterprise threats from intrusions and cyber-hazards.

Further, “managed Wi-Fi” provides the inherent capability to employers’ IT resources to remotely support workers more easily by creating separate SSIDs to bifurcate employees’ home networks from business-related internet traffic. More advanced implementations can even include cellular connections for “fail-safe” capability in a network interruption or outage. The recent pandemic has spurred strong increased internet usage due to increases in broadband-related activities. Increases of this magnitude can drive clear and healthy interest levels for add-on network services that could be offered as part of the “managed Wi-Fi” bundle experience, especially network monitoring and cybersecurity solutions.?Parks Associates research finds that 53% of respondents “moderately increased” or “significantly increased” their internet use since the pandemic.

Traditionally, consumers have come to expect premium technical support offered as an upsell for a hardware sale. Service providers can flip this perception on its head. “Managed Wi-Fi” creates an excellent market opportunity for ISPs to offer technical support subscriptions. Superior marketing messaging plays a crucial role here. Service providers can efficiently target work-from-home users with security-related services, remote device/app management, and background network optimization.

“Managed Wi-Fi” offers service providers the ability to reposition and rebrand themselves as the consumer’s trusted IT partner that assures a premium broadband experience across personal and work-related usage applications. These services, which often use agents running directly on customers’ routers, can provide advanced device recognition, parental controls, optimized wireless coverage throughout the home, or “whole-home” security.

The changing dynamics in the service provider space present compelling upsell opportunities as overall market conditions change and consumer broadband usage models in the home morph.

This research is an excerpt from Parks Associates white paper, The Disruptive Potential of Managed Wi-Fi, published in partnership with Calix. To read the full paper, visit: https://www.parksassociates.com/whitepapers/managedwifi-2021

We welcome all feedback and comments about our research. ?Visit www.parksassociates.com or reach out to me directly.