Comcast has announced the pending deployment of its new xFi Advanced Gateway, the cable company’s first such product to support the WiFi 6 standard.

Comcast said the device will be available in “the coming months” to customers who pay for internet speeds of 300 Mbps or greater.

Billed as the first major redesign of WiFi in 20 years, WiFi 6 aims to better serve the multi-device, multi-gigabit home, fundamentally rendering the way routers and gateways interact with their electronic “clients” to be faster and more efficient.

The xFi Advanced Gateway features four dual-band antennas that support both 2.4 gigahertz and 5 GHz bands. It has a 2.5 gigabits per second Ethernet port to supported wired speeds greater than 1 Gbps. Also features are Bluetooth LE and Zigbee radios capable of connecting to virtually any IoT device, as well as switchable mid-split support between 42 MHz and 85 MHz to allow greater upstream throughput.

“We designed the next-generation Advanced Gateway to be the fastest, smartest and most powerful WiFi device on the planet to continue to deliver on our promise of bringing our customers a great broadband experience,” said Kunle Ekundare, director of product and hardware management for Comcast, in a statement. “The xFi Advanced Gateway is truly the best Internet product we’ve ever built, and we’re thrilled to be bringing our customers into the future with WiFi 6.”

Comcast, meanwhile, also announced today that it will start giving away its cybersecurity tool, which it calls Advanced Security, for free amid its xFi portfolio of WiFi products and services. Comcast debuted Advanced Security a year ago as a $5.99-a-month optional upgrade.

The security tools, which Comcast has ascribed a $72-a-year value, are intended to proceed the computer and iOT equipment of Comcast WiFi customers. New customers will automatically receive the new offering, while the 18 million existing Comcast xFi customers will have access to the tools in the coming weeks, merely by logging to xFi via mobile app or online.

Among the capabilities offered by xFi Advanced Security are the prevention of inadvertent visits to malicious websites; blocking remote access to smart devices from unknown and potentially dangerous sources; monitoring devices in real time and detecting if they’re behaving in unusual ways that could indicate network threat.

“We want you to have the peace of mind to know that in just a few minutes all the devices you connect in the home, and the people that use them, are safe and secured,” said Dana Strong, president of Xfinity Consumer Services, also in a statement. “Our customers asked for a better way to stream content and we answered with Xfinity Flex for free. Now, we’re giving them the protection they asked for with Advanced Security. That’s an incredible amount of value for our internet customers, and we’re just getting started.”

Comcast has announced a further iteration of its xFi WiFi management tool, allowing parents to drill down even further on how they control their children’s use of the internet.

The scheduling feature builds on the xFi’s popular “bedtime mode,” allowing parents to set up 30 different screen-time schedules per profile, covering every device a child may use in the home.

“The xFi bedtime mode feature really resonated with our customers, and we heard from them that they wanted more precision and control in managing their kids’ screen time schedules. As a father of four, I know that screen time is one of the biggest painpoints for parents,” said Dave Puckett, VP of xFi & digital security at Comcast.

Xfinity xFi can be accessed via the xFi mobile app (iOS and Android), the website, or on the TV with the X1 voice remote. The service is available at no extra cost to the more than 17 million Xfinity Internet customers who lease a compatible Xfinity gateway.

Comcast is touting a new feature in its xFi Wi-Fi management and security tools that lets heads of household shut specific users off once they’ve reached a pre-set limit on data consumption.

Comcast is citing a recent Common Sense Media study suggesting that 68% of American parents are concerned that their kids spend too much time staring vacantly into digital devices at home.

“Xfinity xFi was designed to provide simple tools to help our customers see and control all the things connected to their home Wi-Fi network,” said David Puckett, VP of xFi and digital security product management at Comcast. “As a dad with four kids, I know how hard it can be to keep tabs on how long everyone has been online every day, especially during the summer. This latest feature is a great way for parents to better manage their children’s screen time.”

Related: Minim Puts AI-Powered Wi-Fi Management and IoT Security Platform into Motorola and Sercomm Routers

For Comcast, the new feature—which can be easily enabled through xFi mobile apps—further extends the lead the cable company has in the Wi-Fi management and security field.

“There’s a lot to like about Comcast’s xFi solution,” said Jeremy Hitchcock, founder and CEO of Minim, referring to Comcast’s popular Wi-Fi management and IoT security app.

Minim is at the Independent Show this week in Chicago, demonstrating its Wi-Fi management and IoT security tools for smaller operators.

“Smaller operators need those kinds of capabilities, too, but if you’re not Comcast, you probably don’t have the resources to build them yourself," he said.

LAS VEGAS--Comcast is using the crowded confines of CES in Las Vegas to announce a new $5.99 service, which will use artificial intelligence technology to monitor potential hacks into home-based IoT equipment.

Xfinity xFi Advanced Security will be available to Comcast’s 15 million xFi homes. xFi already offers a range of usage features that lets users monitor their WiFi network, as well as do things like shut down certain devices and teenagers at predetermined times.

To scare up interest in its new service, Comcast quotes Symantec data suggesting that the number of attacks on Internet-of-things devices increased 600% from 2016-2017.

“As the digital world gets more complex, we wanted to make it simple and easy for our customers to protect their home networks. That’s why we developed xFi Advanced Security,” said Fraser Stirling, senior VP of digital home, devices and AI for Comcast Cable, in a statement. “We want to give customers digital peace of mind for the devices they already own and the confidence to expand and evolve their connected homes knowing that every new camera, voice-assisted speaker or smart thermostat they add will be protected.”

Following an initial deployment in two markets, Comcast has moved forward with the national launch of xFi Pods, devices that are part of a mesh-based WiFi platform that help to extend broadband coverage to all corners of the customer’s home.

Comcast’s hexagon-shaped xFi Pods, developed in partnership with Plume, plug directly into electrical outlets and work in tandem with the MSO’s xFi Gateway and its new DOCSIS 3.1-based xFi Advanced Gateway (formerly known as the XB3) and have been integrated with the operator’s relatively new xFi WiFi management platform.

RELATED: Comcast Launches ‘xFi,’ Invests in Plume

While the xFi Pods do provide an integrated connectivity layer, they also weave in an additional “intelligence” layer as the monitoring software inside has smarts to support things like dynamic/adaptive channel changes and steer a user’s device to a clean WiFi spectrum band when facing a congested environment, Srindhar Solur, Comcast’s SVP of product development for Xfinity Home and IoT, explained.

RELATED: Whole-Home WiFi Heats Up

Comcast has also configured the xFi Pods to be auto-recognized, onboarded and activated using the xFi app when the small mesh extenders are plugged into the wall.

The national launch the xFi Pod follows an initial rollout last year in Boston and Chicago. Comcast hasn’t revealed sales figures on them, but Solur said they have resulted in higher Net Promoter Scores.

RELATED: Comcast Starts Rollout of ‘xFi Pods’ to Boost Whole-Home WiFi

Comcast is currently selling xFi Pods in three-packs for $119 or in six-packs for $199 online and at some Xfinity retail stores. Later this year, Comcast plans to offer a monthly payment plan option for purchases of xFi Pods.

The rollout also fits with a wider trend that has seen several cable operators and other ISPs introduce premium-level whole-home WiFi products.

RELATED: AT&T Taps AirTies for Whole-Home WiFi

Comcast’s national launch also arrives as The Wi-Fi Alliance looks to drive interoperability standards into whole-home set-ups via its new “EasyMesh” initiative.

RELATED: Wi-Fi Alliance Takes Aim at Whole-Home Networking

For its part, Comcast hasn’t announced any direct work with that project, though Solur said interoperability does represent a “natural progression” for this product/tech category.

“If you’re not standards-compliant, you’re not going to make that happen,” he said. 

Comcast is expanding the utility of xFi, its home WiFi management platform, with a feature that enables real-time updates that are focused on security.

When enabled, those WiFi-related, push notifications are delivered to the customer’s smartphones and TVs when certain events on the home WiFi network occur, including:

-When new devices are connected to the network. Customers can also go into the xFi app on smartphones or on the web to assign those new devices to a member of the household.

-When a WiFi name or password has been changed, important in part because customers will need to reconnect WiFi devices when those credentials have been changed by an authorized user.

-When security settings are changed.

-If the home WiFi’s network name has been hidden or unhidden. xFi has an option that lets customers hide their WiFi network’s name, an option that comes in especially handy in densely populated areas.

xFi customers are also told if their internet service and gateway has been activated for the first time, and if the home network’s IP address has been changed, Eric Schaefer, SVP and GM, data and mobility services at Comcast, explained in a blog post about the new features.

Comcast launched xFi in May 2017, and it’s now available to more than 15 million customers (via Comcast’s xFi Wireless Gateway -- formerly known as the XB3-- and the xFi Advanced Wireless gateway, a new DOCSIS 3.1-based device formerly referred to as the XB6.

RELATED: Comcast Launches ‘xFi,’ Invests in Plume

Last August, Comcast rolled out another set of new features for its cloud-based xFi service, including “timed pause,” enhanced parental controls, and some initial notification center elements.

Comcast’s decision to bring product design in-house has received more recognition, as six products for its video, broadband and smart home services have notched iF Design Awards.

Comcast netted design awards from the organization for its DOCSIS 3.1-based xFi Advanced Gateway (pictured), new boxes and client devices for its X1 service, its recently redesigned X1 voice remote, as well as its xCam and a suite of products from Xfinity Home, Tony Werner, president of technology and product at Comcast Cable, noted in this blog post.

RELATED: Comcast Launches New Voice Remote

For the 2018 awards, iF International Forum Design GmbH, based in Hannover, Germany, said a jury of 63 design experts picked the winners from 6,402 entries, with 75 to receive an iF Gold Award. Full results haven’t been released ahead of the official awards gala, set for March 9 in Munich.

Winners get a quality seal for their respective designs, a profile in the iF World Design Guide, and a spot on-stage.

Examples of 2017 award recipients included the 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple’s AirPod wireless headphones, the iPhone 7 Plus and the PlayStation VR. The iF Design Award is in its 65th year.

Last year, three Comcast-designed products -- its Xfinity XG1V4 ( a 4K set-top box), the Xi5 (an HDR-capable wireless set-top); and the new XR15 X1 voice remote -- won Red Dot Design Awards.

“Led by Tom Loretan, Senior Vice President and Executive Creative Director, and Fraser Stirling, Senior Vice President of Hardware Development, along with their brilliant teams of designers and technologists, we have been on a mission to evolve our approach to product design,” Werner noted.

Shoring up its whole-home WiFi tech strategy, Comcast has begun to roll out complementary “xFi Pod” devices that plug into the wall and work in tandem with the MSO’s primary gateways, including a new gigabit gateway that uses DOCSIS 3.1 technology and 802.11ac version 2. 

RELATED: Comcast Goes Wide With DOCSIS 3.1 Gigabit Gateway

Comcast’s new hexagon-shaped xFi Pods, developed in partnership with Plume, are designed to create an in-home mesh network that can extend the reach of WiFi into all corners of the home. Those devices also work with Comcast’s new cloud-based, xFi-branded WiFi management platform that was introduced in May.

RELATED: Comcast Launches ‘xFi,’ Invests in Plume

Comcast began to deploy the new xFi Pods in Boston and Chicago today, and expects to introduce the products on a national basis next year, Eric Schaefer, SVP and GM of communications, data and mobility services at Comcast, explained in a blog post.

He noted that the new devices are activated using the xFi mobile app for iOS or Android.

Though the latest gateways provide solid WiFi signals and coverage can be tweaked based on their placement in the home, “there are homes that have unique WiFi challenges due to their size, shape, age, or construction materials,” Schaefer noted. “That’s where xFi Pods come in.”

Comcast has been asked for pricing on the xFi Pods, but the company is selling them in packs – a 3-Pod pack for homes with three to four bedrooms (and basements and attics), and 6-Pod packs recommended for homes with five or more bedrooms and L-shaped additions and rooms on multiple stories.

Update: Comcast said the pack of three xFi Pods sell for $119, and the pack of six goes for $199.

There are no flukes in Cable.

Just ask Comcast, which was the first cable operator to report a full year of positive video subscriber growth in a decade, ending 2016 with 161,000 more customers than in the previous year. That Comcast managed to do that just as over-the-top and alternative video delivery systems were proliferating, gaining legitimacy and chipping away at traditional pay TV customer rolls was remarkable enough, but it was no fluke.

The Distributor of the Year Issue:Comcast's Makeover Yields Results|Five Ways Comcast Is Leading in Tech

That growth was a planned, concerted effort that not only yielded a video customer surplus, but was also profitable. Comcast finished the year with a 6.6% increase in cable-systems revenue and a 5.6% rise in cash flow. And it did it all the hard way, with no aggressive promotional pricing or special deals to attract customers that will drop the service in six months.

Instead, Comcast put its collective head down and focused on the fundamentals, rolling out new products like Xfinity Home and Xfinity Mobile at a steady pace and pumping hundreds of millions of dollars to beef up customer service.

The path to positive subscriber growth was a multiyear process, starting with the hiring of former Charter Communications CEO Neil Smit in 2010. It was Smit who initiated a multipronged plan to improve customer service, beef up the network and steer the company on a path toward product innovation and network superiority.

Smit stepped away from day-to-day operations in April — he is now vice chairman of Comcast Corp. — and handed the reins to 20-year Comcast veteran Dave Watson, who moves up to Comcast Cable CEO after serving as the cable unit’s chief operating officer for the past seven years, implementing the plans that he and Smit developed. Watson takes over just as subscriber growth is expected to decline in the wake of two massive storms that devastated homes in Houston and Western Florida. Comcast has said it expects the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to result in the loss of 100,000 to 150,000 subscribers in the third quarter.

MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett observed that the declines weren’t that surprising given that the video subscriber estimates, even at best-in-class Comcast, will have to come down.

Infrastructure Advantage
“We’ve spent 18 years repeating a simple mantra: Cable operators are not media companies, they are infrastructure providers,” Moffett wrote in a research note. “Their infrastructure is still advantaged. Comcast will be just fine.”

But the company is confident that it will continue to hit its financial targets, as well as continue its pace of innovation. For those reasons and more, Comcast is the 2017 Multichannel News Distributor of the Year.

For Watson, Comcast’s success has been the result of the company’s decision to stick to three basic tenets.

“The key for us is that we’re very focused on our core set of operating principles,” Watson said. “Staying focused on sustainable, profitable growth, driving innovation, that’s a big part; and third is to continue to improve the customer experience.”

While that may sound oversimplistic, Comcast has managed to make it work. In the past five years (2012-2016), overall revenue has grown at a 6.2% annual clip while cash flow has risen 7.2% per year. This year, the growth is even more dramatic — in the last 12 months between the first half of 2016 and the first half of 2017, revenue has grown 9.4% to $41.6 billion and cash flow is up 10.2% to $14.1 billion. This in a year that has seen competitive pressures increase as Hulu (25% owned by NBCUniversal) launched its Hulu Live offering, AT&T unveiled its over-the-top product DirecTV Now and networks are queuing up to release direct-to-consumer versions of their channels.

Comcast has used the X1 platform expertly in driving forward what Watson said is its newest mantra — becoming an “aggregator of aggregators.” That means not only offering access to subscription video on demand and over-the-top competitors, but embracing them.

Xfinity subscribers can access Netflix directly from their set-top boxes and over the years Hulu, YouTube and music service Pandora have been added to the lineup. Earlier this year, Comcast reached a deal where Sling TV — the over-the-top MVPD service from Dish Network — received a coveted spot on the set-top (mainly for international and multicultural programming). Just last week the cable operator expanded its relationship with YouTube, allowing customers to launch the online video app merely by speaking “YouTube” into their X1 voice remote.

Including those products is all part of the overall strategy of offering customers best-in-class products in almost every category, Watson said.

‘Aggregator of Aggregators’
“We look at each part of our business, every major product area, and we look at innovation opportunities at each one,” Watson said. “With X1, I think we are delivering in its early stages the promise of being an aggregator of aggregators — the best in linear, the best of on-demand, a terrific DVR, a great app, data and applications integrated. Netflix is a good example and soon-to-come will be You Tube. … To me this is constant improvement of our major product areas.”

That’s a far cry from the past, when a Netflix app embedded in any cable operator’s set-top box would have signaled the end of the world. But the evidence continues to mount that SVOD services like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube aren’t replacements for cable, but can complement the service. And making it easier for an X1 customer to access their SVOD subscriptions only enhances the cable operator’s stature in the customer’s mind.

That shift, along with a continued focus on innovation — Comcast still has a mandate to roll out a new product or product enhancement at least once per quarter — has been a key part of Comcast’s success. In the past five months, Comcast has rolled out a new wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, part of its mobile virtual network operator agreement with Verizon Communications; xFi, a cloud-based home WiFi management platform; and enhancements to XFinity Home that allow consumers to remotely control home functions like heating, cooling, lighting and security cameras through their voice remote.

The voice remote, launched in 2015, is one of those product enhancements that has fared even better than its staunchest proponents had hoped. Comcast has deployed about 17 million voice-remote devices and customers now make about 1 billion voice commands per quarter.

“It’s just remarkable,” Watson said of the product.

Comcast has also embraced products from programmers such as AMC Premier from AMC Networks and 21st Century Fox’s FX+, ad-free versions of the AMC and FX pay TV networks available for an additional fee. In an interview, Comcast executive vice president of Xfinity Services Matt Strauss said the offerings are part of an overall evolution of the video product, and of the strategy to entice customers to buy into the entire Xfinity family of offerings, not just one or two things.

Strauss said the strategy could be traced back to Comcast’s initial investments in infrastructure that laid the foundation for the product suite that is available today.

“We’re now at a point where it’s really about scale, and how do we continue to deliver innovative products and services and accelerate how we get deeper and deeper into our base,” Strauss said.

The answer, Strauss said, is to provide elegant, easy solutions to customer problems even before subscribers know they are problems. For example, as the TV audience became more and more fragmented and finding shows grew more difficult, X1 provided a user interface that made it easier to navigate through the thousands of linear and on-demand content choices. Later, X1 added a voice remote, which made navigation even easier.

For high-speed data, the solution was faster speeds. Comcast has increased data speeds 17 times in the past 16 years and by the end of 2017 will have fully deployed DOCSIS 3.1, which will enable speeds of 1 Gigabit per second.

“Speed is important, but access is equally important,” Strauss said. “Most people now connect devices via WiFi. Ensuring we have the best WiFi in the home, as well as the best WiFi out of the home is also very core to the strategy and that’s where you’re seeing us deploy our newest wireless gateway, the XB6 (xFi) which can deliver the fastest in-home WiFi speeds.”

From there, xFi customers would naturally migrate to Comcast’s XFinity Home product, which again incorporates the aspects of other company products, like the voice remote, to control household functions. Comcast is truly selling a bundle, and that bundle is interconnected.

“When we look at the future, today we typically sell on price,” Strauss said. “And the more products you take, the better the price. The challenge there is when you sell on price, essentially you’re making yourself a commodity.

“What we really want to transition to is selling an experience,” Strauss added. “The more products you take from us, you will of course get a better price, but you will also get a better experience. Starting to weave together the portfolio and reinforcing that, I think, is a big opportunity. A lot of that you’re going to see solidly around the home. There is a big opportunity around the digital home.”

The company is obsessed with giving more choice in the video-on-demand side of the business. “We’re breathing new life into what it means to get video,” Strauss said. “Now we have 130,000 choices, the top 100 Nielsen-rated shows, 900 series fully stacked. We added Netflix, not just as an app, but integrating Netflix contextually.”

As a result, on-demand is growing again — this year, Comcast customers are spending an average of 32 hours a month watching on-demand shows, up 20%.

“When people have said video is in a decline, ratings are in a decline, we see something different,” Strauss said. “We see more and more video consumption moving to time-shifting, we see while live ratings may be declining, the total video consumption is increasing, instead that more is happening outside of traditional measurement. It’s like dark matter, people aren’t seeing it, but we think the total video pie is increasing. And we’re continuing to build the platforms and the capabilities to all people to watch TV smarter and on their terms.”

The emergence of over-the-top players has added to that shift and is continuing to challenge the model, Strauss said, but Comcast doesn’t see any compelling reason to join the OTT fray.

“Part of what is happening in the market, especially on the video side, is you are seeing a lot of increased competition, you’re seeing a lot of competitive offers — in some cases you’re even seeing some of these OTT players offer video at negative gross margins. We’re not going to chase that.”

But the evidence is mounting that younger consumers are increasingly looking outside the traditional pay TV ecosystem for their content needs. Pay TV subscribers fell by more than 900,000 in the second quarter, the worst Q2 performance in history. That’s after a record first-quarter loss of more than 750,000 video customers.

Moffett, who raised his rating on Comcast to “buy” earlier this month after downgrading the stock to “neutral” in June, said he sees the company as the standard for the pay TV business. But he also estimated that the MSO will lose almost 1 million video customers in the next five years, ending 2021 with 21.7 million subscribers, down from 22.5 million in 2016. The analyst does see Comcast adding about 5 million broadband customers in that same time frame, finishing 2021 with 31.1 million high-speed data customers compared to 26 million in 2016.

Competition is also heating up. Google’s YouTube TV expanded to eight additional markets earlier this month, growing its total markets to about 48 cities. In addition, AT&T began pricing its DirecTV Now service even more aggressively in the quarter, at $10 per month for any unlimited wireless subscriber, and returned to offering free Apple TV devices with a three-month commitment.

While weakening subscriber metrics shouldn’t come as a surprise, Moffett said, they aren’t a calamity, either. Pay TV companies, he said, still have broadband pricing power, which should help them in reaching financial targets. That’s just what Comcast said when it predicted the Q3 subscriber loss.

Strauss noted that all the panic over OTT and cord-cutting could be unwarranted. There is no doubt, he said that viewing habits are changing, but life stages and household economics also need to be considered.

As an example, Strauss pointed to Xfinity on Campus, Comcast’s multiscreen managed IPTV service for college students. When the product was in development, Strauss said Comcast realized that the last thing college students wanted was to be tied to a set-top box. So the MSO had to rethink the idea, creating a product that allowed students to download the Xfinity Stream app, offered a cloud-based DVR and would let them watch live TV anywhere on campus. The product has been highly successful and, as students returned for the most recent fall semester, it is deployed in more than 100 schools.

“Millennials do watch TV as much as any other segment,” Strauss said. “They just have different needs and how they want to consume and access it.”

That, Strauss said, has led to Xfinity Instant TV — an in-home, in-footprint, managed IPTV service slated for a Q3 launch — as well as ad-free versions of networks that consumers can buy for a fee. Comcast reached a deal with AMC Networks in August for AMC Premiere, an ad-free version of the popular AMC network for an additional $4.99 per month. A month later, FX Networks announced a deal to offer an ad-free version of its flagship FX channel — called FX+ — to Comcast customers for $5.99 per month.

Strauss said those channels and other services like it are just an example of how Comcast’s foresight in investing in content, infrastructure and innovation have translated into meeting needs even customers didn’t know they had.

“The future we’ve always talked about has finally come, at least for us,” Strauss said. “I think that is because of decisions that we made, not six, 12 or 24 months ago, but years ago, based on where we saw the puck going and ensuring that we would have the technology capabilities and the infrastructure in order to deliver upon the innovation that we believed we were going to need to stay competitive. As a result you’re seeing us deliver on a lot of these products and services. But this didn’t happen by accident. It really happened because of very important strategic decisions we made years ago.”

Comcast has acquired Stringify, an Internet of Things tech startup that helped the cable operator develop xFi, a cloud-based home WiFi management platform that was launched earlier this year.

RELATED: Comcast Tacks On xFi Features

Stringify announced the acquisition via a Sept. 18 blog post, noting that the company would be updating its terms of service soon to signal that Stringify service data will be transitioned to Comcast.

Founded in 2014, Stringify provides a cloud-powered automation service for the IoT, and has introduced apps for iOS and Android. Stringify said it works with 500-plus products and services, including those from Nest (part of Google), Philips Hue, Ring, Amazon Alexa, Honeywell, Insteon and Netgear, among others.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Stringify raised a $6.3 million seed round led by Artis Ventures, according to Crunchbase.

Related: Time to Own the Home

“Comcast is a perfect fit for Stringify,” the IoT provider explained in the blog post. "With xFi and Xfinity Home, Comcast is delivering elegant, powerful IoT and automation experiences to millions of customers. The Comcast team shares our passion for using technology to solve real-world problems, and to connect the world in meaningful ways.”

Elsewhere on the xFi front, Comcast made in investment in Plume, a startup that is helping Comcast develop a lineup of WiFi “pods” that work in tandem with broadband gateways to extend wireless signals to all corners of a consumer’s home.

RELATED: Comcast Leads $37.5M Investment in Plume

For cable operators and other internet service providers, offering a solid broadband service no longer ends where the wire connects to the home.

Now that most devices in the home are wireless, the responsibility of the ISP has rapidly shifted beyond modems and integrated WiFi gateways to tightly integrated, whole-home setups that extend coverage to every nook and cranny of the premises.

Until recently, whole-home WiFi had been the primary domain of relatively expensive retail products tailored for tech-savvy consumers who don’t mind doing things themselves. However, the costs of those products continue to drop, opening the door to core and premium offerings that aim to drive retention alongside some new, incremental revenues while still being simple enough for the masses to install and manage.

Related: Home Builders Eye Designs Optimized for WiFi

That has created opportunities for vendors. Among them, AirTies has hooked up with several ISPs, including Atlantic Broadband, Frontier Communications, and Midco. Eero, which has been focused on retail, has teamed with Blue Ridge Communications on a setup that includes the supplier’s WiFi access points and security solutions. And Cable One has launched WiFi One, a product set designed to boost wireless coverage in the home using a mix of gateways from Arris and Hitron, as well as Hitron-made WiFi extenders.

Related: Time to Own the Home

Those examples are coming into focus as WiFi becomes the de facto means of accessing the internet in the home for most consumers, with some estimates showing that 86% of all in-home broadband now travels over WiFi. According to Cisco Systems’s latest Visual Networking Index study, 63% of all internet protocol traffic will be wireless (including WiFi and cellular), and 98.1% of broadband consumer premises equipment will be equipped with 802.11ac WiFi by 2021.

Top of Mind
WiFi has also become synonymous with internet connectivity in the minds of many consumers. “When we ask customers what is the internet, most tell you that the internet is WiFi,” Cox Communications vice president of product strategy and management Philip Nutsugah said.

With that in mind, Atlanta-based Cox has pushed ahead with the national launch of Panoramic WiFi, a premium-level, whole-home WiFi service that starts at $9.99 per month.

That offering centers on a modem/WiFi router with a DOCSIS 3.0 modem and WiFi extenders that utilize MoCA 2.0 technology and cost an additional $4 each per month. Panoramic WiFi also includes a customized installation, 24/7 support and access to My WiFi, a network management app for iOS and Android mobile devices.

With the emergence of the smart home and the Internet of Things, WiFi is becoming the “critical last foot, last yard inside the home,” Nutsugah said.

Related: Study Finds Home WiFi Mesh Products Work Better With a Wired Backbone

Other major ISPs have also taken notice and are doing something about it.

“We knew two-and-a-half years ago that we needed to do something different in the WiFi space,” Eric Schaefer, Comcast senior vice president and general manager, communications, data and mobility services, explained.

An average of 9.7 devices are connected to Comcast’s gateways at any given time, he said, adding that the MSO expects that number to grow to about 50 in the next three to four years. In another nod to the proliferation of WiFi, about 90% of Comcast’s XB3 gateways don’t have anything connected to their Ethernet ports.

For Comcast, ‘xFi’ Marks the Spot
Comcast is targeting this opportunity with xFi, a cloud-based platform launched in May. It enables consumers to manage their WiFi systems via X1 set-tops, a web portal or mobile apps.

Offered free to Xfinity Internet customers, xFi supports millions of compatible devices, including the xFi Wireless Gateway (the rechristened XB3) and the xFi Advanced Wireless Gateway, a new DOCSIS 3.1-based device that used to be known as the XB6.

“Our vision is to bring enterprise-grade management to every one of our xFi gateways,” Schaefer said.

Later this year, Comcast will complement those gateways with a new line of WiFi “pods” that will fill in coverage gaps in the home. Comcast is developing those in partnership with Plume. (Comcast also led a recent $37.5 million investment round in Plume.)

Among its features, xFi enables users to view their WiFi names and passwords, monitor network activity and troubleshoot connection issues. xFi users can also create individual user profiles and organize the devices they use (including giving nicknames to devices), view the devices connected to their home network and adjust their wireless gateway settings. xFi also lets customers “pause” all WiFi access on the home network, and use a “Bedtime Mode” whereby they can automatically pause WiFi access on the home network during scheduled times.

Comcast is early into its xFi era, “but overall I’m pleased with where we are with the launch,” Schaefer said.

The xFi app for Android devices has received an average ranking of 3.4 (out of 5), based on 311 total reviews, with 148 users giving it a five-star rating.

‘Home Operating System’
Schaefer said the initial batch of features for xFi are somewhat limited, but the platform’s cloud-based nature will allow it to rapidly iterate and tack on new capabilities, as is the case with X1, Comcast’s next-generation video platform.

“It’s really the home operating system … that brings everything together in the home the same way X1 brought all of the programming content together on the video side,” Schaefer said of xFi. “You need to manage WiFi and organize it the way you would organize 100 channels of HD or 100,000 hours of VOD.”

Comcast intends to add the Plume-based WiFi pod products and software to the mix sometime in Q4, Schaefer said. Those will also be woven into Comcast’s cloud-managed platform, which will make near real-time decisions as conditions ebb and flow in the home. For example, those devices will steer to a different band if the current one experiences interference.

“The primary access point remains the gateway and the Plume pods will extend off of that main gateway,” he said.

A big challenge, he said, will be managing all of those data transactions across tens of millions of devices, which Comcast will try to handle with its cloud-based platform and the use of RDK-B. That’s the broadband flavor of the Reference Design Kit, the preintegrated software platform for set-tops and gateways managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Charter Communications (via its acquisition of Time Warner Cable).

“It’s a different kind of scale,” Schaefer said.

That scale also extends to the workforce. Nutsugah said Cox has trained its technicians to support the new whole-home WiFi product, learning about the importance of elements such as device placement.

Providing a more solid WiFi platform will bring some operational benefits, because it will result in fewer customer calls, Nutsugah added.

Making Things Simple
“Our goal is to take the complexity out of it for the customer and simplify it for them,” Nutsugah said.

Plume, which also counts Liberty Global, Samsung, Shaw Ventures and Presidio Ventures (a unit of Jupiter Communications, Japan’s largest cable operator) among its financial backers, entered the whole-home WiFi sector with retail products, but sees partnerships like the one it has with Comcast as the proper path forward. Comcast will be making its own pod designs that integrate Plume’s technology, but Plume has also notched a deal with France’s Sagemcom to make and supply pods to the service provider market.

“The service provider angle … has been our plan from the beginning,” Fahri Diner, Plume’s CEO, said. “We’re launching Plume largely to service providers. This is not something that’s optional for [them]. It’s a must-do.”

And though Plume sells devices, it views itself mostly as a software company, basing much of its activity on an “adaptive” platform that responds as the wireless conditions in the home change. “Hardware is not the issue,” Diner said. “What was missing is a very advanced control plane that can looks across multiple devices. … Think of us as air-traffic control.”

It’s not just about raw connectivity, but connectivity that is optimized for video distribution around the home, Arris chief technology officer of consumer premises equipment Charles Cheevers said.

“Managed video over WiFi absolutely needs to be reliable,” he said, noting that the need is becoming more pronounced as pay TV operators expand on the deployment of wireless set-tops. Comcast, for example, has begun to roll out the Xi5, a wireless set-top for its X1 platform.

Ask cable providers these days about their top customer-service priorities and the answer is likely to be along the lines of: It’s time to own the wireless space inside the home.

That was a familiar refrain at both The Independent Show, the Indianapolis gathering of small to midsized operators, and at the New England cable convention in Newport, R.I., where Charter Communications executive vice president Tom Adams used that very phrase. Providing 60 Megabits per second of internet speed is great, he noted — but how consumers experience that bandwidth in terms of how WiFi-connected devices perform makes the difference in how happy they are about it.

Jeff Baumgartner points this out in "Whole-Home WiFi Heats Up," the feature that opens this week's issue of MCN. As Philip Nutsugah of Cox said, most consumers will tell you “the internet is WiFi.” Cox also sees it as a revenue opportunity, rolling out the $9.99 monthly Panoramic WiFi product promising “fast WiFi coverage in every single part of your home.”

Importantly, it’s not just Cox and Comcast — which recently launched a WiFi-network management platform dubbed xFi — seizing on this, but also smaller operators such as Atlantic Broadband and Midco. Executives from Wave Broadband and Harron Communications in Indy said it was essential to educate consumers about how to get the best experience from their WiFi-linked gadgets.

How many gadgets? An average of about 10 are connected to Comcast’s gateways at any given time — a number seen as quintupling in the next several years.

When cable operators introduced broadband, it was the product that sold itself and a huge quality of life improvement. Now broadband is a necessity and the most important part of the cable bundle. Providers continue to increase the download and upload speeds that consumers crave. Keeping them happy, though, may depend on delivering the best WiFi experience, too.

Comcast has commercially launched xFi, a cloud-based home WiFi management platform, and has also announced an investment in Plume and a partnership that will focus on the development of low-cost, auto-configuring  “pods” that connect to the home’s primary gateways to create a whole-home WiFi mesh network.

Comcast last month began testing xFi and quietly rolled out xFi apps on X1 set-top boxes and for iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as an xFi portal on the web. Among features, xFi enables users to view their WiFi names and passwords, monitor network activity and troubleshoot connection issues.

RELATED: Comcast Nears Launch of ‘xFi’ Home WiFi Platform

Customers can also create individual user profiles and organize the devices they use, including a way to give nicknames to devices), view the devices connected to their home networks, and adjust their wireless gateway settings. xFi will also let customers “pause” all WiFi access on the home network, and utilize a “Bedtime Mode” whereby users can automatically pause WiFi access on the home network during scheduled times. The system also supports parental controls.

Comcast announced its plans for a personalized, smartened up WiFi management product in January, and has now followed up with the consumer launch and will be backing that with a full brand marketing campaign.

Comcast estimates that xFi is already available for no extra cost to about 10 million high-speed Internet customers with compatible devices, including the xFi Wireless Gateway (formerly known as the XB3) and the xFi Advanced Wireless Gateway, a DOCSIS 3.1-based device that used to be known as the XB6.

RELATED: Comcast Taps Arris, Technicolor for ‘XB6’ Gateways: Sources

The vast majority of that initial base for the new smart WiFi platform is the xFi Wireless Gateway as Comcast starts to expand the rollout of the D3.1-based xFi Advanced Wireless Gateway, which will also support 802.11 ac Wave 2 WiFi and an 8x8 radio configuration, and provide enough in-home WiFi capacity to deliver up to about 75 HD video streams.

“It’s forward-leaning in the WiFi space,” Chris Satchell, Comcast chief product officer, said.

He said Comcast has begun to deploy the xFi Advanced Wireless Gateway in Salt Lake City, Utah, to customers who take the operator’s recently launched 1-Gbps (downstream) service there.

RELATED: Comcast Turns Up DOCSIS 3.1 in Utah

Comcast, Satchell said, expects the number of gateways with xFi on board to rise to 15 million later this year as the operator upgrades and adds broadband subscribers.

Origins of the new xFi platform stem back to Comcast’s 2014 acquisition of PowerCloud Systems, a company that specializes in WiFi network management systems and technologies.

Comcast’s Plume Connection

The big, new thing about xFi is the Comcast investment in Plume, which currently sells its own WiFi pods in the form of small devices that plug into power outlets and are designed to immerse the home in WiFi. The retail version of Plume’s product comes in three colors (champagne, silver and onyx), with a three pack selling for $179, a six pack fetching $329, or $69 for each add-on pod.

Plume’s web site suggests that its customers buy a pod for every “space” they went to light up with WiFi (basically any space that is separated by walls). In some examples, it suggests six to 12 pods for a large family home, four to six pods for a townhome, or three pods for a typical apartment (with one bedroom, a living room and a kitchen).

Satchell said Comcast and Plume are working together to create a specific, enhanced version of the pods that integrate with the operator’s xFi platform. Comcast plans to launch them, and announce pricing for them, later this year.

“We are deliberately picking a technology solution that we know can be extremely cost-effective per unit,” Satchell said. “It gives us a ton of flexibility on the business side to get this to customers really broadly."

The resulting Plume-based product for xFi “will be a zero-configuration WiFi extender,” Satchell added, explaining that the pods will plug into wall sockets, talk to the primary gateway and create their own mesh-based WiFi network. “It will be that simple – just plug them in and go.”

The Comcast deal is a big win for Plume in a whole-home WiFi product sector that includes retail vendors or suppliers that focus on service provider deals, such as eero, Linksys, Netgear, Google, Luma, and AirTies, among others.

UPDATE: Comcast also launched a promo video about xFi: