Invention Story Behind Bond – How (and why) Mobolize Made Wi-Fi and Cellular Networks Work Well Together

 In Blogs & Bloggers

By JP Brocket, Mobolize | Senior Product Director

During the explosion of Smartphones and streaming content, operators and technology providers focused on anything and everything to ease the growing pains on the networks from the massive amounts of data consumption. Wi-Fi offloading, data optimizations, throttling, usage caps, Wi-Fi connection managers, service optimization, zero-rating lower bitrate streams, on and on and on.

Smartphone users just want to use the apps and services, when they want, where they want, at home, at work and on the go. The Smartphones themselves are packed with radios and technology designed to work on Wi-Fi or Cellular. Operators everywhere are improving cellular coverage and speed (heard of 5G lately?) while Wi-Fi continues to advance (Wi-Fi 6 anyone?) and is available almost anywhere you go.

Why do we have to put up with our apps and services not working well all the time?

  • Ever backed out of your driveway trying to get directions in navigation only to have it fail due to the Wi-Fi signal dropping and delaying switching over to cellular?
  • Ever been at concert or convention where you keep trying to go back and forth from Wi-Fi to cellular just to find enough data for that social post?
  • How about that time you were on Wi-Fi and 30 minutes later, wondering why you have not had any notifications come in, you discover you are in a dead zone and shut Wi-Fi off?

Then I met the technical team at Mobolize and challenged them to solve this one thing. Let my phone work for me so that I always have a usable connection! Not Wi-Fi or cellular, but BOTH working in harmony.

Customer research was very clear on detractors. When an app or service did not work the operator was to blame most the time and the phone manufacturer secondary to that. Not fair to the operator, but that was the general feedback. The solution seemed so clear, eliminate detractor moments by letting the radios work together.

The challenge was to smoothly and effectively bond the usage of the two radios. No other company in the mobile industry could do this except Mobolize. Their unique advantage is an on-device packet engine that recognizes all traffic on a mobile device. If its SmartVPN® could make smart decisions about Wi-Fi security, it also could make smart decisions about managing usage of the Wi-Fi and cellular radios.

Mobolize did it. MOBOLIZE | Bond fixes those dead zones where the mobile phone hangs onto the unresponsive Wi-Fi network and won’t transfer the connection over to cellular. The on-device packet engine knows when the Wi-Fi signal is weakening and switches to cellular before the connection is lost in a dead zone. Bond puts the best technology to work for solving a key point of detraction for customers – dead zones of slow to non-responsive Wi-Fi – by leveraging Wi-Fi and cellular together in harmony.

Cellular is not everywhere. Wi-Fi is not everywhere. Working together you get data coverage almost anywhere without the hassle of choosing one or the other.

From a carrier point of view, turning off the Wi-Fi radio results in full cellular onloading. Ouch. With Bond, Mobolize complements Wi-Fi with Cellular when needed to eliminate those moments of frustration and that results in better offload and happier customers. A rare win-win!

Thanks for the inspiration Mobolize, and thanks for delivering the goods.

 

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