Carving out another revenue stream for its commercial service arm, Comcast Business today introduced WiFi Pro, a Wi-Fi solution that provides cloud-based controls, marketing tools and other advanced capabilities, targeted at SMBs (small and medium businesses) and enterprises. WiFi Pro would cater to a wide range of businesses such as Server Message Block (SMB) and enterprise branch locations.
Cisco recently accounted that by 2017, a majority of all Internet traffic would be powered by Wi-Fi devices. Another study conducted by Tech Pro Research revealed “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies is swiftly treading in nearly 74 percent of businesses today. These new initiatives along with other trends in consumer and employee behavior are facilitating an exponential growth of Wi-Fi.
WiFi Pro would explore this potential and enable businesses to serve both guests/patrons and employees. It would achieve this by providing two high-performance commercial Wi-Fi networks – a private network for employees and a guest network for visitors and patrons – providing additional security. Furthermore, it leverages the latest AC chipset to support the fastest Wi-Fi speeds and expanded range.
“WiFi Pro offers simple management and features to SMBs and distributed enterprises that were previously only available to headquarters and other large office locations, enabling a better employee experience and customer engagement,” said John Guillaume, Vice President of Product Management at Comcast Business.
“The additional marketing features allow SMBs and enterprise branches to create a more personalized experience through Wi-Fi to help drive customer retention and revenue growth.”
As WiFi Pro attempts to build advanced network monitoring and management features into a product, the equipment and its access points are installed and managed by expert technicians, enabling business owners and IT managers to solely focus on running their businesses.
The service can be managed on a smart device via a mobile app or an online portal that give businesses advanced capabilities like on-demand activity reporting and network configuration controls to set schedules. In addition, SMBs and enterprise branch offices can utilize marketing tools such as custom splash or landing pages to help attract new customers and encourage repeat business.
Users can also budget bandwidth from the console, ensuring that, for example, streaming video on the customer-facing network doesn’t interfere with employee use, and scheduling features can turn networks off outside of business hours.
WiFi Pro complements Comcast Business’ full range of Wi-Fi offerings, including managed WiFi from Comcast Business’ new Enterprise Solutions unit, which was announced in September 2015.
This video on top gives a better insight on Comcast’s new business offering.