This upcoming month is another milestone for SonicNet as we will celebrate our 12th birthday! Just like New Year’s Day for many of us, we find that our birthday month is a time for reflection and setting new goals to continuously improve our customers’ experiences.
Looking back over the past 12 years, it’s really incredible how much change has taken place in our industry. In 2007, we provided up to 2Mbps download speed connections. What an upgrade from 48kbps dial-up or slightly faster satellite services! In 2007, our internet usage was limited to online shopping, online banking, following the day’s news and using our email service. Netflix was still provided through the mail with real DVDs (imagine that!). Photos and graphics were certainly in use, but not nearly to the extent or the quality that we see today. I’m not even sure the term Internet of Things (IoT) was a thing, although perhaps it existed to some degree in a very savvy developer’s eyes.
Fast forward to 2019, and we can now provide 100Mbps connections for businesses and resorts. Residential service is available at the 25Mbps level (and we expect that to be the base tier in 2-4 years). Our hunger for online streaming to replace landline cable or satellite TV service is insatiable, and we easily may have 25 devices in our homes connected at any given time.
So, as we look ahead to the next year, we will be upgrading and adding back-office platforms to enhance our customers’ Quality of Experience (QoE). It’s no longer adequate to send more bandwidth to a site; as different types of devices with different connectivity needs are added in our homes, we now need to send prioritized and customized bandwidth to each device. Yes, I’ll repeat that: each DEVICE.
Over the next few months, that is exactly what we will be testing and implementing. This is incredibly exciting to those of us in the industry of fixed wireless internet. Soon, we will be able to provide an improved QoE for our customers as they stream video, use WiFi phones and check into their online cameras.
With more new QoE applications coming in 2020, it’s going to be a great year!
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