Liberty Global isn’t just a Plume investor. It’s a customer.
The operator has announced the expansion of its relationship with WiFi tech vendor Plume, with plans to deploy the company’s smart home solutions across its European footprint.
In fact, that deployment already started last year with Virgin Media in the UK.
Liberty Global gateways across the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland and Poland will now include Plume’s open-sourced WiFi management software, which allow parents to set digital controls on their kids, monitoring device usage, pausing internet connectivity and generally having the ability to shut all things digital down as needed.
The so-called Connect App will be available to Liberty Global service subscribers at no additional cost.
Additionally, Liberty Global will start rolling out Plume hardware, including its mesh WiFi boosters (Liberty has branded these as “Connect Pods”), as well as the vendor’s open-source WiFi optimization platform, OpenSync.
Liberty Global and Comcast are among Plume’s backers.
And as you might have guessed, Liberty Global CTO Enrique Rodriguez is pretty excited about the partnership. He wrote it about it in a pre-packaged press release quote: “Combining Plume with Liberty Global’s gigabit network capabilities releases the full potential of broadband speeds and spreads them throughout the home, adapting to the unique environment each connection operates in,” Rodriguez stated. "The expanded partnership with Plume builds on our commitment to creating the next-generation of broadband by working with partners to enhance our network capability and go beyond speed-leadership. This strongly positions Liberty Global to offer a highly reliable internet residential services in the home that enables smart homes, online gaming and wide variety of use cases which rely on wireless connectivity.”
