How to Offload Costly Bandwidth to Wifi Networks | STAND 8 | Stand8
Remember when the most advanced thing your nokia cell phone could do was squeeze out an 8-bit game of snake? Me either.
These days we expect to be connected to the internet all the time. Home, work, city, country — everywhere, all the time. That's what we expect, but how does it work?
Don't worry, telecom companies have figured it out and they're more than willing to play the middle man. And why shouldn't they? It's a good business that will only grow as 5G expands.
For one such telecom company, they were looking for an edge, and STAND 8 was just the partner to find it for them. To understand the challenge, it helps to understand how telecom companies turn a profit.
Major providers own their own towers, many providers do not, they are bandwidth resellers. Companies like Boost, Mint Mobile, and several others - lease blocks of traffic from major carriers and resell them to subscribers. As they say, the art of business is being a good middle man.
These providers pay for the minutes and data that is trafficked on leased bandwidth. By buying bandwidth at wholesale prices, they calculate a profit margin and resell the bandwidth to customers at retail prices. If their customer base, on the whole, uses more data than anticipated, providers have to pay a premium and it cuts into profits.
But what if they could offload traffic for free, not run the risk of overages, and provide the same service to customers? That would mean more profit.
That's exactly what STAND 8 Data Services helped the client do.
Looking at the client's data we found reliable public wifi spots where, using geofencing, they could offload data traffic to wifi rather than a cell network. The best thing about this was that it didn't degrade the customers' experience. Let's discuss how this works.
The identification of home and work wifi networks is currently hard-coded into the operating system of each mobile device. Home and work wifi networks accumulate tally points for connections during select windows of time.
Once each week, the tally points are summed up and wifi a network ID is assigned based on the number of tally points. Results are saved in a list in the operating system. Every time a customer is near a hotspot, the wifi ID is run against the list in the OS. If it's on the list, the device joins and the customer doesn't use leased bandwidth.
From the customer's perspective, the service was the same. From the client's perspective, their bill to the large carriers was reduced. From a Managed Services perspective, the client didn't have to use precious resources.
For more on this solution and to learn how we can help you contact our Data Services.