Today, hundreds of millions of homes around the world enjoy gigabit-class broadband. So is a service provider's job done? The answer is a resounding no because the path to subscriber satisfaction is far more complex than blazing fast broadband to the home:

• Wi-Fi is essential: Subscribers today essentially equate the Wi-Fi through that which their devices connect to their broadband service. When subscribers suffer poor Wi-Fi performance, providers are held accountable, often resulting in significant customer support calls related to Wi-Fi performance.
• Speed isn’t enough: Users contemplate their broadband service through the lens of how their devices and applications (apps) perform. While speed is one important factor, modern apps such as 4K/8K streaming, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), gaming or video conferencing have more complex requirements where parameters such as latency, jitter and packet loss define whether their overall experience is exceptional or lacking. 
• The home network is uniquely complex: Every subscriber’s home network is as unique and ever-changing as the people and devices that use them. App demands and usage profile, concurrency and diversity of connected devices, connectivity technologies and generational capabilities and even the home topology combine to create a dynamic traffic, congestion, and interference profile.

Subscriber satisfaction with broadband service then comes down to not just the service provider’s control of its core and access network resources, but of the less deterministic, highly dynamic and shared spectrum nature of the Wi-Fi network within the home. Excellent user experience depends on how these two networks come together by extending the service providers’ policies to the broadband gateway’s Wi-Fi interface for a seamless end-to-end service.

Bridging the gap for end-to-end service management

With this objective, we have developed Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi, a cloud-to-device Quality of Experience (QoE) framework bringing service and app intelligence to the home gateway and empowering broadband providers with powerful service orchestration and telemetry capabilities to manage their subscriber’s QoE.

Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi technology pillars

Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi technology leverages service orchestration, service aware optimization and service assurance as key pillars to transition the modern broadband gateway into a service-defined gateway.

Service Orchestration 

Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi provides an open API framework to provision the home gateway designed to arm developers with an easy-to-use, cloud-native framework to streamline deployment of new services and abstract the complexity of service provisioning. 

The APIs allow providers to provision a broad range of service classes associated with Quality of Service (QoS) parameters such as minimum throughput, service interval, latency, burst and more to fine-tune service delivery in relation to each service offering.

Service Aware Optimization

Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi network intelligence enables real-time classification of traffic flows using a cutting-edge on-device or cloud-based classifier for identification of app categories in use (gaming, video collaboration, streaming and more). 

Traffic flows are then dynamically prioritized and optimized on the home gateway to deliver significantly reduced latency, jitter and loss in congested home networks and preserve app performance regardless of air interface congestion and traffic load. 

Service Assurance

Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi extends insights into the subscriber’s home all the way to the end device. The open API framework can enable service providers to retrieve performance metrics and continuously monitor network health, channel load and interference, helping them manage services and resolve performance issues proactively.

Redefining broadband user experience

Speed alone is not enough for the needs of today’s modern home: 

The key to subscribers' satisfaction is superior app experiences even when serious congestion, interference and variability in app and user demand are introduced to the network.

The Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi framework is supported across Qualcomm Technologies’ full portfolio of Wi-Fi 7 networking platforms: Qualcomm Networking Pro Series, Qualcomm Immersive Home Platforms and Qualcomm 10G Fiber Gateway platform. Network equipment manufacturers can select the platform best suited for their specific requirements and deployment scenarios.

We focus on the essential role of Wi-Fi, the unique complexity of home networks, and the need for optimized service management.

The three core pillars of service orchestration, service aware optimization and service assurance empower providers to:

• provision services,
• optimize traffic flows and 
• continuously track network health.

The anticipated outcome is an exceptional Quality of Experience for users, even in the face of congestion and variability, so carriers can proactively manage services and resolve performance issues.

And this is how the Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi technology paves the way for a new era of superior broadband service.

You might also like: