Plume enhances personalisation and consumer control with App Priority

Plume has introduced new AI-driven personalisation features within its HomePass app. 

App Priority from Plume allows users to prioritise their own application-level traffic and ensure peak performance  through general application categories across the home,  applications running on individual devices, or applications being used by specific people on the WiFi network.

The company is also introducing a Security Boost feature that enables users to automatically prioritise network traffic for home security devices and applications when away from home or when the household is asleep.

These new developments are part of Plume’s recently announced Full Stack Optimization that added the sophistication of application awareness needed to identify, measure, and prioritise application traffic flows.

 Key benefits

According to Plume, key benefits include App Category Priority—users can boost the throughput and performance of bandwidth-intensive Gaming, Streaming, Video Calling, or Home Security app. Device Priority—Throughput to apps running on specific devices can be prioritised for  one hour, end-of-day, or indefinitely. People Priority—Application flows for the devices assigned to a specific user profile can also be prioritised for different time periods.

In addition, Home Security Boost—combining App Category Priority with Plume’s Sense service which uses WiFi signals to detect movement and track each user’s primary device inside the home—consumers can opt into “Away Mode” which will trigger the HomePass app to automatically boost throughput for home security devices and their associated apps when the home is empty or inactive. Dynamic traffic prioritisation—In each case, non-urgent traffic, such as software updates, is deprioritized to reduce interference with real-time applications to bring additional optimisation of the home network. Monitor app performance—Users can monitor each app family’s performance rating on a scale of excellent, fair, or poor to gain visibility into the home network, make decisions around what to prioritise, and verify their boosts are achieving better connectivity.

Lastly, the new controls are entirely optional—Users can choose to allow Plume to optimise performance based on its AI-driven algorithms via the default Automated Mode. Plume’s adaptive WiFi intelligently monitors the home network and tunes it for optimal performance based on multiple factors including usage patterns, load, and interference. Efficient and proactive support—The new prioritisation-based feature set presents an opportunity for service providers to improve customer support. Application category-, device-, and people-level insights available through Plume’s Haystack^® Support Suite can enable service providers to diagnose and resolve network performance issues more rapidly, leading to reduced support calls, improved customer satisfaction, and reduced churn.

“Consumer experience is the new currency for the modern service provider,” said Michael Philpott, research director at Omdia. “The days of focusing marketing campaigns on speed and price are numbered—our research shows that consumers now value experience over all else. This new development will bring them greater control over their in-home device and application experiences.

Plume expects to roll out the new features globally via the Plume HomePass app beginning in the first quarter of 2024.